On the Media
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Top 10 On the Media Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best On the Media episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to On the Media for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite On the Media episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Pigeon with A Mustache
On the Media
12/03/21 • 51 min
By now, the new coronavirus variant has been detected in dozens of countries – including the U.S. On this week’s On the Media, hear what pigeons can tell us about how to react to the omicron variant. Plus, why we should know the names of the scientists in Botswana, South Africa, and Hong Kong who found the new strain. And what rights we do, and don't, have when it comes to when we die.
1. Katherine J. Wu [@KatherineJWu], staff writer at The Atlantic covering science, on what we do (and mostly don't) know about the new omicron variant. Listen.
2. Jeremy Kamil [@macroliter], associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport, on the scientists who found omicron, and why we should know their names. Listen.
3. Katie Engelhart [@katieengelhart], journalist and New America fellow, on the complicated right to die. Listen.
Music from this week's show:
Horizon 12.2 - Thomas NewmanEye Surgery - Thomas NewmanSlow Pulse Conga - William PasleyCello Song - Nick DrakeBerceuse in D Flat Major, Op. 57 (Chopin) - Ivan MoravecTime After Time (Cyndi Lauper) - Miles Davis
4 Listeners
Out of Sight
On the Media
10/01/21 • 51 min
Facebook and Instagram are harming young users, according to leaked research discussed in a Senate hearing this week. On this week’s On the Media, hear why lawmakers are chasing the white whale that is tech accountability. Also, how do we cover the tightly guarded, and complicated, news that comes from Guantanamo Bay? And, as the documentary industry booms, its ethics standards lag far behind.
1. Brandy Zadrozny [@BrandyZadrozny], NBC senior reporter, unpacks the evolving responsibilities of social media companies for our health. Listen.
2. Jess Bravin [@JessBravin], Supreme Court reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Michel Paradis [@MDParadis], senior attorney for the Department of Defense, on the lasting difficulties of covering one of America's most notorious military prisons, Guantanamo Bay. Listen.
3. Muira McCammon [@muira_mccammon], doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications, on what the library at Guantamo Bay can tell us about the place and the media's coverage. Listen.
4. Patricia Aufderheide [@paufder], University Professor of Communication Studies in the School of Communication at American University, on the tension between production and ethics in the world of documentaries. Listen.
Music from this week's show:
Nino Rota - Juliet of Spirits Nicola Cruz - Colibria Kronos - FlugufrelsarinnVijay Iyer - Human Nature Merkabah - John ZornBooker T and The MG's - Slim Jenkins Place Alex Wurman - Going Home for the First Time
3 Listeners
Scene of the Crime
On the Media
12/24/21 • 50 min
On this week’s On the Media, a look at the journalists and newspapers we lost in 2021, and hopes for the press in the year ahead. Plus, is the ever-popular genre of true crime good for us? And the mob gets a podcast. 1. Micah Loewinger [@micahloewinger], tells Brooke about a year of newspaper closures, murdered journalists, and the end of the Trump Bump. Listen.
2. Emma Berquist [@eeberquist], author of Devils Unto Dust, on how the true crime genre can rot our brains. Listen.
3. Rachel Corbett [@RachelNCorbett], author of You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin, on why the feds love podcasts by mobsters. Listen.
Music:After The Fact by John Scofield The Hammer of Los by John Zorn Smooth Criminal by 2Cellos
3 Listeners
Road To Insurrection
On the Media
01/07/22 • 50 min
It’s been one year since the armed insurrection at the Capitol, what do we know now about how it happened? On this week’s On the Media, hear about the signs that reveal militia groups were preparing for that day — or something like it — long before January 6th. Plus, how the attack may have transformed the far-right in America.
1. OTM reporter Micah Loewinger [@MicahLoewinger] on the efforts to shape the media narrative among gun rights activists at Virginia's Lobby Day. Listen.
2. OTM reporter Micah Loewinger [@MicahLoewinger] and Militia Watch founder Hampton Stall [@HamptonStall] investigate how a walkie-talkie app called Zello is enabling armed white supremacist groups to gather and recruit. Featuring: Joan Donovan [@BostonJoan] Research Director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University, and Megan Squire [@MeganSquire0] Professor of Computer Science at Elon University. Listen.
3. OTM reporter Micah Loewinger [@MicahLoewinger] on Zello's role in the January 6th insurrection, and what the app is finally doing about its militia members. Featuring: Marcy Wheeler [@emptywheel] national security reporter for Emptywheel, and Cynthia Miller-Idriss [@milleridriss] Director of Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University, and Jared Holt [@JaredHolt] Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. Listen.
Music:
Tick Of The Clock by ChromaticsCyclic Bit by Raymond ScottGenocide by Link Wray Procession Of The Grand Moghul by Korla Pandit Gormenghast by John Zorn
2 Listeners
12/15/21 • 11 min
Write a great book and you're a genius. Turn a book into a great film and you're a visionary. Turn a great film into a book...that's another story.
Novelizations of films are regular best-sellers with cult followings -- some are even more beloved than the films that spawned them -- but respected they are not. Instead, they're assumed to be the literary equivalent of merchandise: a way for the movie studios to make a few extra bucks, and a job for writers who aren't good enough to do anything else. But the people who write them beg to differ.
Back in 2016, former OTM producer Jesse Brenneman went inside the world of novelizations; featuring authors Max Allan Collins, Alan Dean Foster, Elizabeth Hand, and Lee Goldberg.
Songs:
"The Blue Danube Waltz" by Johann Strauss
"The Throne Room and End Title" by John Williams (from the film "Star Wars")
*Correction: In the piece it is stated that the Star Wars novelization begins, "Another time, another galaxy." In fact it begins, "Another galaxy, another time."
2 Listeners
The Divided Dial: Episode 1 - The True Believers
On the Media
11/15/22 • 29 min
Episode 1: The True Believers
In 2016, Christian talk radio host Eric Metaxas begrudgingly encouraged his listeners to vote for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. By 2020, he pledged his life to fighting the “stolen election” while talking with Trump on the air. Ahead of the midterm elections, Metaxas and many of his fellow talk radio hosts made sure the falsehood of massive 2020 election fraud was top of mind — on the airwaves and beyond. And while election-denying candidates didn't do as well as many on the right had hoped, at least 170 such candidates have been elected to state and national offices, some of whom will be in charge of future elections. We meet the company whose hosts never backed down from the lies of the stolen 2020 election: Salem Media Group, the largest Christian, conservative multimedia company in the country – and perhaps the most influential media company you’ve never heard of.
The Divided Dial is hosted by journalist and Fulbright Fellow Katie Thornton. Her written articles and audio stories have appeared in The Atlantic, 99% Invisible, The Washington Post, BBC, NPR, WNYC, Minnesota Public Radio, The Guardian, Bloomberg’s CityLab, National Geographic, and others. She is a lifelong radio nerd who got her start in media as a teenager, volunteering and working behind the scenes at radio stations for many years. You can follow her work on Instagram or on her website. The Divided Dial was edited by On the Media's executive producer, Katya Rogers. With production support from Max Balton and fact-checking by Tom Colligan, Sona Avakian, and Graham Hacia. Music and sound design by Jared Paul. Jennifer Munson is our technical director. Art by Michael Brennan. With support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.2 Listeners
It's Tax Season!
On the Media
04/13/22 • 9 min
Few clichés are as well-worn, and grounded in reality, as the dread many Americans feel towards doing their taxes and the loathing they have for the IRS. But as much as the process is despised, relatively little is known about how it could be improved. Pro Publica's Jessica Huseman said that's largely because tax prep companies keep it that way. Brooke spoke to Huseman in 2017 about what an improved system might look like and how tax prep companies work to thwart any such changes.
One of the primary roadblocks to change, said Huseman, is an organization called the Free File Alliance, a public-private partnership whereby private tax companies agree to provide a free service for most Americans in exchange for the IRS not offering any such service itself. Brooke spoke with Tim Hugo, Executive Director of the Free File Alliance, about whether it is really the best way to help American taxpayers.
2 Listeners
Work Work Work Work Work
On the Media
04/22/22 • 50 min
Checking in on the so-called Great Resignation. On this week’s On The Media, hear why the trend is a logical response to the cult of work. Plus, when technology makes our jobs harder, maybe being a 'luddite' isn't such a bad thing.
1. Sarah Jaffe [@sarahljaffe], journalist and author of Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone, on how love and meaning became intertwined with our jobs. Listen.
2. Anne Helen-Peterson [@annehelen], writer and journalist, and Charlie Warzel [@cwarzel], contributing writer at The Atlantic, on how technology is—or, dramatically is not — making life easier at work. Listen.
3. Gavin Mueller [@gavinmuellerphd], assistant professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, on what modern lessons can be learned from the Luddite workers of 19th century England. Listen.
Music from this week's show:
Sign and Sigil by John ZornBROKE by Modest MouseMiddlesex Times by Michael AndrewsBlues by La Dolce vita Dei NobiliLiquid Spear Waltz by Michael AndrewsStolen Moments by Ahmed Jamal Trio
2 Listeners
10/20/23 • 51 min
More than twenty journalists have been killed during the recent Israel-Hamas conflict. On this week’s On the Media, hear about the deadly challenges facing reporters on the ground. Plus, why comparisons of the Hamas attack on October 7th to September 11th serve as a warning for the geopolitical fallout that may lie ahead.
1. OTM host Brooke Gladstone [@OTMBrooke] on the worsening fog of war surrounding Israel and Palestine, and the confusion and disinformation in the coverage of the conflict. Listen.
2. OTM correspondent Micah Loewinger [@MicahLoewinger] and Sherif Mansour, the Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, on the sharp rise in cases of violence against reporters in Gaza and Israel. Listen.
3. Tareq Baconi, president of the board of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and David Klion [@DavidKlion], contributing editor at Jewish Currents, on why comparisons of 9/11 to the Hamas attack forewarn us of geopolitical conflict. Listen.
2 Listeners
The Big Screen version of Boom and Bust
On the Media
09/29/21 • 14 min
It was 13 years ago this month when news broke that the Wall Street investment firm Lehman Brothers collapsed, setting in motion the financial crisis that devastated the world’s economy.
For all the misery the financial meltdown caused, Americans have never balked at opportunities to relive the crisis through hundreds of films, books and even plays. But while greedy investment bankers have become a staple archetype of recent movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, and Margin Call, Hollywood hasn't always portrayed Wall Street with such cynicism. In 2018 Brooke spoke to Per Hansen, professor of business history at the Copenhagen Business School, about his study examining cinematic depictions of big business and financial institutions. Hansen sifted through 81 films to understand how America's volatile attitudes on capitalism have evolved through other periods of boom and bust. He and Brooke discussed how classics like Wall Street, It's a Wonderful Life, and The Apartment have reflected and actively shaped the way we feel about money.
This segment is from our September 14th, 2018 episode, Doomed to Repeat.
2 Listeners
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FAQ
How many episodes does On the Media have?
On the Media currently has 676 episodes available.
What topics does On the Media cover?
The podcast is about Radio, News, Media, History, Amendment, Journalism, Newspaper, Advertising, News Commentary, Podcasts, Wnyc, Technology, Npr and Tv.
What is the most popular episode on On the Media?
The episode title 'Pigeon with A Mustache' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on On the Media?
The average episode length on On the Media is 36 minutes.
How often are episodes of On the Media released?
Episodes of On the Media are typically released every 2 days.
When was the first episode of On the Media?
The first episode of On the Media was released on Sep 11, 2019.
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