On the Media

The U.S. has waged war on Iran for more than a month now. On this week’s On the Media, what Defense Secretary Hegseth’s monthly Pentagon prayer meetings reveal about his war strategy. Plus, hear how trans rights are being curtailed across the country. 

[01:00] Host Brooke Gladstone sits down with Brian Kaylor, president and editor-in-chief of Word&Way and author of The Bible According to Christian Nationalists, to talk about Defense Secretary Hegseth’s monthly prayer meetings at the Pentagon. They discuss what the violent rhetoric reveals about Hegseth’s approach to war and why these meetings signal a troubling fusion of church and state. 

[18:46] Brooke talks with Marlene Laruelle, professor at Luiss University in Rome and director of the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University, about Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel’s series of lectures on religion, tech, politics, and society, which he took to the doorstep of the Vatican last month. They discuss his controversial beliefs about the antichrist, and what Thiel’s theology reveals about his desire to reorder politics.

[33:04] Brooke speaks with Alejandra Caraballo, civil rights attorney and a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, about the torrent of legal attacks against trans people, and why she's been looking toward a legal framework invented in the wake of Nazi Germany, called "the dual state," to better understand this moment.

 Further reading / watching:

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Last Friday, the Washington state Attorney General sued Kalshi, the prediction market platform where users can place bets on real world events, such as the number of deportations this year or the winner of Survivor 50. Washington’s civil lawsuit is now one of twenty waged against Kalshi, and follows on the heels of Arizona’s Attorney General filing criminal charges against the platform earlier this month. Prediction markets generated almost $64 billion in trading volume last year, up 400% from 2024. And when the US and Israel initiated strikes on Iran in early February, Kalshi users took to the platform in droves, spending $54 million on “Ali Khamenei out as Supreme Leader?” during the first week of the war. 

Prediction markets are just an intensification of a process that’s been slowly transforming our relationship to our bodies, our careers, our hobbies, our lives – everything is now saturated with numbers, and we can’t stop counting them and tracking them and comparing them. But what do we lose out on when we become obsessed with numbers or lines moving up or down on a graph, when we turn aspects of real life into games? Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen turned to actual games, like Twister and The Mind, to root out the answer in his latest book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. For the midweek pod, host Micah Loewinger speaks to him about the dangers of scoring systems and metrics in the context of real life, why those same scoring systems are so freeing in games, and what the philosophy of games can reveal about the meaning of life.

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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A judge ruled that the Pentagon’s recent restrictions on the press are unconstitutional. On this week’s On the Media, hear how Pete Hegseth’s ever-changing media policies have made it harder to cover military actions abroad. Plus, how a tenacious journalist used access to the Pentagon building to expose war crimes during the Vietnam War. 

[01:00] Host Micah Loewinger sits down with Dan Lamothe, who covers the US military and Pentagon for the Washington Post, to talk about leaving the Pentagon press corps alongside reporters from major news outlets in October of last year, after refusing to sign onto stringent new rules on how they could do their reporting.  

[09:45] Micah talks with Anna Merlan, senior reporter at Mother Jones, on the cast of right wing influencers and conspiracists now staffing the Pentagon press corps. Plus, Micah interviews content creator Cam Higby, a member of the new press corps, about why he agreed to the Pentagon’s restrictions on access.

[33:23] Micah speaks with Laura Poitras, a journalist and filmmaker whose past works include CitizenFour, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, and Risk, to discuss her latest documentary, Cover-Up, which chronicles the life of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh and his ferocious drive to uncover government wrongdoing, and what today’s press corps can learn from him.

 Further reading / watching:

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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This week, the Idaho Senate is considering a bill that would block transgender people from using public bathrooms that conform with their gender identity, escalating the state’s preexisting trans bathroom ban in public schools. A first offense could land someone in prison for a year. This bill is just the latest in a devastating cascade of legal actions stripping away trans rights. For the midweek pod, host Brooke Gladstone speaks with Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney and a Clinical Instructor at Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, about why she's been looking toward a legal framework invented in the wake of Nazi Germany called "the dual state" to better understand this moment. 

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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President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are demanding “more patriotic” coverage of the widening war in Iran. On this week’s On the Media, hear how the Pentagon is cracking down on its publication, Stars and Stripes. Plus, fake AI images of the Iran war are proliferating, and they're getting more convincing.

[01:00] Host Micah Loewinger breaks down the calls from the Trump administration for the media to produce “patriotic” coverage of the war in Iran. Plus, a closer look at the reporting by legacy outlets with journalist Minnah Arshad.  Arshad analyzed The New York Times’ early coverage of the war, and found that Iranian victims were underrepresented. Next, Micah sits down with scholar Mahsa Alimardani to discuss fake AI images of the Iran conflict, and how AI detection tools are being used to discredit authentic footage.

[22:30] Micah speaks with Samantha Gross, the director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution, to dissect the developing energy crisis being caused by the disruption of oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz.

[37:54] Host Brooke Gladstone talks to Erik Slavin, Editor-in-Chief of Stars and Stripes, the independent, award-winning newspaper that has served the military for roughly a century, about the Pentagon’s plan to crack down on their reporting and refocus their content away from “woke distractions.”

 Further reading / watching:

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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Brooke Gladstone talks with Pasha Talankin, star and co-creator of the new documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin. Pasha is a high school teacher who made an incredibly vivid and detailed account of Putin’s efforts to indoctrinate schoolchildren in Russia. 

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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The US and Israel have continued a large-scale bombing campaign in Iran, killing over 1,300 civilians. On this week’s On the Media, the far-reaching implications of the Department of Defense’s scrapping of an initiative to protect civilians. Plus, how different corners of the MAGA-verse are metabolizing the Epstein files.

[01:00] Host Brooke Gladstone interviews Wes J. Bryant, a former senior policy advisor at the Pentagon and retired Air Force Master Sergeant, about the civilian protection initiative he was working on for the Department of Defense and the deadly consequences of Secretary Hegseth’s decisions to close it down.

[31:28] Host Micah Loewinger sits down with David Gilbert, a reporter at WIRED covering disinformation and online extremism, to explore how different segments of the right are reacting to the Epstein files, from far-right commentators like Nick Fuentes to Fox News to Qanon conspiracists. 

 Further reading / watching:

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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Recently a surprising ruling came down from U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth. The Reagan-appointed judge found that Kari Lake - (formerly best known as the loser of two state-wide races in Arizona), had acted unlawfully in running the United States Agency for Global Media, the body that oversees Voice of America and the handful of other government-assisted media outlets. 

Kari Lake, wrote the judge "satisfies the requirements of neither the statute nor the Constitution," potentially making all of her actions this past year null and void. Lake, who once described herself to a gaggle of reporters as "your worst fricking nightmare" told NPR that she would appeal the ruling. 

Last spring February when Lake started slashing and burning the 80-year old service, Micah spoke to Nicole Hemmer, a historian at Vanderbilt University to learn about the history the VOA.

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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The US military used AI tools for real-time targeting in its strikes on Iran. On this week’s On the Media, what recent conflicts can tell us about AI-powered weapons and the dangerous future of warfare. Plus, lessons on democratic resilience from around the world.

[01:00] Host Brooke Gladstone interviews  Siva Vaidhyanathan about how the U.S. military is using artificial intelligence in its strikes on Iran, and what can be gleaned from recent conflicts about the state of AI-powered warfare. Plus, what does accountability for war mean when AI is involved? Brooke also hears from Alan Rozenshtein, Senior Editor at Lawfare, about the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on AI company Anthropic. 

[33:45] Brooke sits down with Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent at Vox, to talk about why he got fed up reporting on “democratic backsliding,” and decided to instead investigate “democratic resilience”— and what lessons exist for Americans around the world. 

 Further reading / watching:

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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“To Catch a Predator” aired on television as a segment of NBC’s Dateline in the early 2000's. Men would be lured into talking online to a decoy posing as a child then would show up at a so-called 'sting house' fitted with hidden cameras where the truth of their situation would be revealed.

The show eventually became one of the biggest and most influential true crime shows ever, drawing seven million viewers per episode by its final season in 2007. The main draw? Watching the humiliation of the would-be child predators play out in front of your eyes. 

David Osit, is a filmmaker whose recent documentary “Predators,” probes the ugly legacy of the show -- how it blurred the lines between justice and entertainment and what it says about us that we watched it. 

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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