On the Media

By WNYC Studios

History Social Sciences

What's On the Media about?

The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield examine threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.
WNYC Studios is a listener-supported producer of other leading podcasts including Radiolab, Snap Judgment, Death, Sex & Money, Nancy and Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin.
© WNYC Studios

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LAST EPISODE

Designed to Intimidate

11.15.2019

Millions tuned into impeachment hearings this week — the first two of five already scheduled. On this week’s show, why shifts in public opinion may not necessarily sway the GOP. Plus, what we can learn from the predatory tactics that ...

On the Media episodes:

11.15.2019 Designed to Intimidate Millions tuned into impeachment hearings this week — the first two of five already scheduled. On this week’s show, why shifts in public opinion may not necessarily sway the GOP. Plus, what we can learn from the predatory tactics that ...
11.13.2019 OTM presents: Shell Shock 1919: How the Great War Changed Culture You really have a feeling that here is a building that looks fantastically beautiful, and it’s got its whole façade simply blown off by this war. -Philipp Blom World War I presented civilization with unprecedented violence and destruction. The shock ...
11.08.2019 Curiouser and Curiouser President Trump’s concerns about corruption in Ukraine began, in part, with a series of articles in a publication called The Hill. On this week’s On the Media, a close-up on the columnist whose dubious tales may lead to an impeachment. ...
11.06.2019 Can We Govern Ourselves? As Americans battle for control of the future of the United States, it seems that we're always going back to founding documents and core principles: relying on them and reinterpreting them, in what seems to be an increasingly arduous effort ...
11.01.2019 Band-Aid On A Bulletwound As wildfires tear through California, our decades-old infrastructure comes back to bite us. On this week’s On the Media, how we can understand this latest climate catastrophe through a metaphor from the computer world. Plus, the on-going struggle over the ...
10.30.2019 OTM presents Trump Inc: All the President's Memes President Trump's Doral resort has been in the news a lot lately. His chief of staff announced from the White House that America would host the next G-7 summit there. Then, Trump backed off. We're looking at a conference that ...
10.25.2019 When They Come For You There’s a growing movement on the left and right for prison reform. On this week’s On the Media, a deep dive into the strange bedfellows coalition working to close prisons down. Also, in speeches, testimony, and leaked audio, Mark Zuckerberg ...
10.23.2019 OTM presents: Impeachment Pod, the Taylor Testimony This week's OTM pod extra is another episode from the new podcast hosted by WNYC's Brian Lehrer: Where are we on impeachment today?Yesterday evening, the public got the chance to read the opening statement of U.S. emissary to Ukraine William ...
10.18.2019 Hanging In The Balance In covering President Trump’s decision to stop protecting Kurdish fighters in Syria, press reports have focused on the Kurds as US allies and tools in fighting ISIS. This week, On the Media looks at a different aspect of Kurdish life: ...
10.16.2019 Introducing... Impeachment: A Daily Podcast The pace of impeachment-related revelations is breathtaking, and it isn't slowing yet. With each day comes yet another executive branch staffer defying the White House by testifying behind closed doors on Capitol Hill — new names, fresh allegations, and ever ...
10.11.2019 Sticks and Stones “The right to throw a punch ends at the tip of someone’s nose.” It’s the idea that underlies American liberties — but does it still fit in 2019? This week, On the Media looks back at our country’s radical — ...
10.09.2019 "The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee" This coming Monday, some states and cities will celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, renamed from Columbus Day to honor the lives and history lost due to centuries of colonialism. Meanwhile, the few American Indian stories most Americans learn in school, like ...
10.04.2019 A Likely Story The talk from the Trump team is becoming increasingly hard to follow. This week, On the Media takes a look at the conspiracy thinking that’s taken over the executive branch. Plus, leaders at Fox News search for a path forward ...
10.02.2019 Go and Get Yourself a Whistle and Blow Ever present in the Snowden and Manning era, the word "whistleblower" is again dominating the airwaves. But where exactly did the word come from? Who gets to decide who qualifies as a whistleblower? Back in 2015, Brooke spoke to language ...
09.27.2019 Nice Democracy You've Got There... The impeachment inquiry into President Trump is tangled up in Ukrainian politics, but few Washington reporters understand the dynamics at play. This week, On the Media looks at what we all need to know to make sense of the news. ...
09.25.2019 Live Streaming Truth and Reconciliation It's been two years since the brutal and bloody 22-year reign of Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh ended and the country is now embroiled in a uniquely transparent truth and reconciliation process. Officials are interviewing killers and victims about the deaths ...
09.20.2019 Too Hot For School Roosevelt’s New Deal remade American society, and now climate activists are pushing for a Green New Deal to do it again. This week, On the Media looks at the attacks from conservatives against both projects, and why congress underestimates support ...
09.18.2019 OTM presents Trump Inc: The Family Business Trump, Inc. takes a step back to make sense of the seemingly endless scandals swirling around the White House. They're not random. They fit a pattern and that has a precedent. It turns out, Trump is running the government a ...
09.13.2019 A Very Bitter Joke Good riddance, John Bolton! By dismissing his third National Security Advisor, President Trump prompted renewed concern over White House instability. This week, On the Media makes the case that John Bolton’s outster is good news for the republic. Plus, after ...
09.11.2019 Why Many Afghans Don't Understand 9/11 This weekend in a series of tweets, President Trump both disclosed and scrapped secret talks with the Taliban in Camp David. Of course, the Taliban did not perpetrate 9/11. But they did offer safe haven in Afghanistan to Al Qaeda, ...
09.06.2019 Pressure Drop As Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas, Democratic presidential candidates promised climate action in an unprecedented televised event. On this week’s On the Media, how CNN’s town hall advances the climate conversation. Plus, how the bulk of gun violence coverage fails ...
09.04.2019 Remembering Les Gelb On Saturday, Leslie Gelb died at the age of 82. Gelb was a Senate aide in his 20s, a New York Times correspondent in his 30s, an assistant Secretary of State as he neared 40, then back to the Times ...
08.30.2019 Whose Streets? The message from Silicon Valley seems to be that self-driving cars are the way of the future. This week, On the Media considers the history behind the present-day salesmanship. Plus, why transit rights mean much more than point-A-to-point-B mobility. Also, ...
08.28.2019 A History of Persuasion: Part 3 Silicon Valley’s so-called “millionaire maker” is a behavioral scientist who foresaw the power of putting persuasion at the heart of the tech world’s business model. But pull back the curtain that surrounds the industry’s behemoths, and you'll find a cadre ...
08.23.2019 Empire State of Mind In a special hour this week, On the Media examines the history of US imperialism — and why the familiar US map hides the true story of our country. Brooke spends the hour with Northwestern University historian Daniel Immerwahr, author ...
08.21.2019 A History of Persuasion: Part 2 Ted Kaczynski had been a boy genius. Then he became the Unabomber. After years of searching for him, the FBI finally caught him in his remote Montana cabin, along with thousands of pages of his writing. Those pages revealed Kaczynski's ...
08.16.2019 A Civilization As Great As Ours The Indian government has revoked autonomy for the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir. This week, a close look at how Hindu nationalists are rewriting Indian history in the world's largest democracy. Plus: what are the stories that America has told about ...
08.14.2019 A History of Persuasion: Part 1 Infinite scrolling. Push notifications. Autoplay. Our devices and apps were designed to keep us engaged and looking for as long as possible. Now, we’ve woken up from years on social media and our phones to discover we've been manipulated by ...
08.09.2019 The Democracy We Think We Live In The pathways and origins of white nationalist thought were a matter of deadly importance in coverage of last weekend’s shootings. On this week’s On the Media, how mainstream punditry launders a tolerance for xenophobia. Also, the history of American presidents ...
08.07.2019 Deciphering the White Power Movement When events like the shooting in El Paso happen, the elements may indeed be obvious: Guns. Sociopathy. Alienation. But the obvious is also reductive, and risks obscuring larger forces at play. The same goes with the vocabulary of race violence: ...
08.02.2019 Repairing Justice: How to Fix the Internet Harassment and bullying are plaguing our online lives, but social media companies seem fresh out of solutions. This week, On the Media experiments with a radical approach for detoxifying the web. Can theories of criminal justice reform rehabilitate trolls and ...
07.31.2019 Repairing Justice: An Alternative to Prison Last week on the show, we examined the power of the prosecutor in our justice system, and how voters are electing a new wave of so-called “progressive prosecutors” to try to turn the tide on mass incarceration. If you haven’t ...
07.26.2019 Repairing Justice: The Prosecutor It was the week of the prosecutor, with Special Counsel Robert Mueller grabbing most of the attention. But on this week’s On the Media, a closer look at the “progressive prosecutor” movement — from neighborhood politics to local media to ...
07.24.2019 What, Me Worry? Earlier this month, DC Comics announced that MAD Magazine will mostly stop doing what it’s done for some six decades, which is to pointedly mock American politics and culture. Barring the occasional end-of-year special, future copies of MAD will consist ...
07.19.2019 Internal Scream Puerto Ricans packed the streets night after night this week to call for Governor Ricardo Rosselló’s resignation. On this week’s On the Media, what happens when a leader’s mockery becomes too much for citizens to bear — in San Juan, ...
07.17.2019 The Right-Wing Web Goes to the White House On this show, we’ve often observed that what happens online rarely stays online. In the age of Pizzagate, Trump tweets and Wiki Leaks data dumps, it is obvious that conversations online increasingly dominate, even define, our politics — a fact ...
07.12.2019 Uncomfortably Numb Migrants in detention centers, another assault allegation against the President, and the start to a potentially devastating hurricane season… On this week’s On the Media, how painful news might be making America numb. And, why sometimes it’s okay to tune ...
07.10.2019 The Epstein Story Didn't Just Happen Overnight Julie Brown of the Miami Herald conceived, reported, and wrote one of the most explosive criminal justice stories in recent memory. She revealed the shutting down of an FBI investigation that may have been on the verge of discovering the ...
07.05.2019 Full Faith & Credit Ten autumns ago came two watershed moments in the history of money. In September 2008, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers triggered a financial meltdown from which the world has yet to fully recover. The following month, someone using the name ...
07.03.2019 The Sound of America There are many Americas. Nowadays they barely speak to each other. But during the most perilous years of the last century, one young composer went in search of a sound that melded many of the nation's strains into something singular ...
06.28.2019 The Scarlet E, Part IV: Solutions We have an eviction crisis, which is really just one part of a broader housing affordability crisis. Incomes are too low for rents. Rents are too high for incomes. The barriers to home-buying are growing, especially for younger Americans. The ...
06.26.2019 Coming Out Posthumously June marks LGBTQ Pride month, and fifty years since the Stonewall riots. In the past five decades, the conversation around gay rights has moved so quickly that it can be hard to remember where it was in the very recent ...
06.21.2019 The Scarlet E, Part III: Tenants and Landlords This is episode three in our series, “The Scarlet E: Unmasking America’s Eviction Crisis.” It’s the dollars-and-cents episode, in which we account for what we know and don’t know about those who own and those who rent. We digest some ...
06.18.2019 How to Influence US Iran Policy ... Without Actually Existing Heshmat Alavi, an Iranian commentator, has been portrayed as a courageous dissident with a broad constituency and rare insight into the inner workings of the Iranian theocracy. His columns have been printed in Forbes, The Diplomat, The Federalist, Voice of ...
06.14.2019 40 Acres President Trump claims to have struck a deal with Mexico to settle a dispute of his own making. On this week’s On the Media, a look at the lives of the people who stand to suffer most. Plus, how the ...
06.12.2019 What "Running From Cops" Learned From "Cops" The first episode of the TV show "Cops" aired thirty years ago, and in the ensuing decades it's become influential enough to mold the attitudes of new aspiring police officers. But if the show holds up a mirror to law ...
06.07.2019 Introducing: The Scarlet E Millions of rent-burdened Americans face eviction filings and proceedings every year. On this week’s On the Media, what we think we know, and what we definitely don’t know, about America’s eviction crisis. Plus, how local journalists failed the Central Park ...
06.05.2019 Making America Antitrust Again This week, the US House Antitrust subcommittee announced a probe into the mainly-unchecked power of tech giants like Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon. The investigation could include public hearings and subpoenas toward antitrust intervention into the businesses of Silicon Valley ...
05.31.2019 Climate Obscura The Trump administration has ordered federal agencies to stop publishing worst-case scenario projections of climate change. This week, On the Media examines the administration’s pattern of attacks on climate science. Plus, a look at the dark money behind environmental deregulation. ...
05.29.2019 Hurricane Season is Nearly Here. Brace Yourself for the Coverage. Tornadoes ripped across multiple states on Tuesday, killing at least one person. It was the twelfth straight day of tornado activity in the U.S. — a new record, according to the National Weather Service. But as the New York Times ...

Older episodes

On the Media

What's On the Media about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

On the Media episodes:

Designed to Intimidate

OTM presents: Shell Shock 1919: How the Great War Changed Culture

Curiouser and Curiouser

Can We Govern Ourselves?

Band-Aid On A Bulletwound

OTM presents Trump Inc: All the President's Memes

When They Come For You

OTM presents: Impeachment Pod, the Taylor Testimony

Hanging In The Balance

Introducing... Impeachment: A Daily Podcast

Sticks and Stones

"The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee"

A Likely Story

Go and Get Yourself a Whistle and Blow

Nice Democracy You've Got There...

Live Streaming Truth and Reconciliation

Too Hot For School

OTM presents Trump Inc: The Family Business

A Very Bitter Joke

Why Many Afghans Don't Understand 9/11

Pressure Drop

Remembering Les Gelb

Whose Streets?

A History of Persuasion: Part 3

Empire State of Mind

A History of Persuasion: Part 2

A Civilization As Great As Ours

A History of Persuasion: Part 1

The Democracy We Think We Live In

Deciphering the White Power Movement

Repairing Justice: How to Fix the Internet

Repairing Justice: An Alternative to Prison

Repairing Justice: The Prosecutor

What, Me Worry?

Internal Scream

The Right-Wing Web Goes to the White House

Uncomfortably Numb

The Epstein Story Didn't Just Happen Overnight

Full Faith & Credit

The Sound of America

The Scarlet E, Part IV: Solutions

Coming Out Posthumously

The Scarlet E, Part III: Tenants and Landlords

How to Influence US Iran Policy ... Without Actually Existing

40 Acres

What "Running From Cops" Learned From "Cops"

Introducing: The Scarlet E

Making America Antitrust Again

Climate Obscura

Hurricane Season is Nearly Here. Brace Yourself for the Coverage.

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