On the Media

Welcome to our new summer series!

Each week through Labor Day, we'll be pulling an OTM gem from our vast archives for you to enjoy on the beach, in a park... or on a sticky subway, while imagining you're on a beach. 

For our second installment of our summer listening series, the story of an actor who's appeared in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, and Toy Story, to name a few. Well, not quite an actor, but a star nonetheless. 

To hear more of our summer listening, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a review while you're there! And as always, follow us on twitter @OnTheMedia. 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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Bob dissects the media's sloppy and disingenuous use of polls to fill air time and manufacture conflict. Plus: how the Dominican press is covering a a looming humanitarian crisis there; blocking ad-blockers; DuckDuckGo; and more.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to our new summer series!

Each week through Labor Day, we'll be pulling an OTM gem from our vast archives for you to enjoy on the beach, in a park... or on a sticky subway, while imagining you're on a beach. 

For our first installation, a very classic and very special piece from one of our favorite contributors, John Solomon. If you've ever wondered about the inner workings of On the Media, you'll be sure to enjoy this one. 

In 2010, John passed away from complications with leukemia, but his witty, incisive voice can be heard in many of his OTM pieces, like this one called "Playing One on TV" and many more. 

To hear more of our summer listening, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave a review while you're there! And as always, follow us on twitter @OnTheMedia. 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On the popular misconceptions surrounding the Greek debt crisis, women whose lives were mistold by the media, and humor, both robotic and Soviet.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this week’s episode of On the Media, we’re engaging in some chillingly informed speculation: what would happen if we, as a species, lost access to our electronic records? What if, either by the slow creep of  technological obsolescence or sudden cosmic disaster, we no longer could draw from the well of of knowledge accrued through the ages? What if we fell into...a digital dark age?

One scenario we explore isn’t speculative: it’s real. In the 1990’s, NASA experienced its own version of a digital dark age, when more than a million reels of data -- including the 1969 Apollo Moonwalk video and Earthrise, the iconic picture of our planet floating above the surface of the moon -- were either destroyed or rendered unreadable. We hear from Keith Cowing, a former NASA employee and co-founder of an initiative to rescue images and readings from the Lunar Orbiter missions, including that 1966 Earthrise photo: the first view of Earth from the moon.

Earth taken from Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966. This is the poor-quality image originally shown to the public.

Internet pioneer and Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf says we’ve grown complacent in our approach to media storage. If we don’t take action now, he warns, we may find ourselves lost in a future where we can’t access important media documents, scientific data, or treasured family photos. He tells us about combating the phenomenon he calls “bit rot,” as well as the role he thinks Google ought to play in the fight.

Vint Cerf, one of the Internet's many fathers. (flickr)

Meanwhile, in outer space, we look at the possibility of digital disruption from an unexpected source: the sun. Earlier this week, a solar flare caused auroras in the night sky as far south as Georgia. And in 1859, a huge flare caused telegraph machines to spontaneously catch fire. Astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz tells us that story, and explains the science behind it.

A solar flare! (wikimedia commons)

If we’ve gotten you sufficiently concerned about your personal histories falling victim to defunct hard drives and ephemeral cloud storage, never fear, DNA is here! We hear from Dr. Nick Goldman, a genome scientist who thinks coding information inside DNA is the best way to apocalypse-proof the world’s data.

Plus, Margaret Atwood, chronicler of all things dystopian, tells us about her latest work… which won’t be published for 99 years.

A specially planted forest in Norway will eventually supply the paper for Atwood’s book.

We also have a resource guide to help you protect (or recover) your media from obsolescence. 

Subscribe to the On the Media podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, or listen on our website.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if, either by the slow creep of technological obsolescence or sudden cosmic disaster, we were cut off from our electronic records? 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the wake of another mass shooting tragedy, Brooke looks back at a history of racially-motivated hate crimes. Plus, the strength and responsibility of comedy in the face of extremism, misconceptions about the future of the Affordable Care Act, and the climate change deniers' "I'm not a scientist" defense.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As videos of police violence continue to make headlines, a guide to filming the police as a bystander. Plus, making sense of data breaches, a lesson in coding, and a trip into the future of storytelling, where virtual reality makes journalism a bodily experience.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Two newspapers' quests to count every person killed by police in 2015, how librarians shaped the original debate over the Patriot Act, and more.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Congress is locked in a battle over the future of the Patriot Act. This special hour of OTM reveals the origins of the act in a post-9/11 climate of fear... and considers whether it really is at the heart of the nation's struggle between security and privacy.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.