Spectrum

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Spectrum episodes

May 03, 2017 NPR’s Bob Boilen Has Shaped a Whole New Generation of Music Lovers
National Public Radio’s Bob Boilen has shaped the way an entire generation consumes music. During his 20 plus year career at NPR, Boilen has served as creator and host of the online series “All Songs Considered” and created the increasingly celebrated “Tiny Desk Series.”

Earlier, he was producer and director for the afternoon news show “All Things Considered.”

Sound is important to Boilen. He grew up in a noisy Brooklyn neighborhood and he recalls falling in love with the sound of a baseball card tucked in the spokes of his bicycle as a child. Throughout his young adulthood, he worked at record stores, which acquainted him with a diversity of musical knowledge that would carry him throughout his professional career.

After growing disillusioned with the nature of the recording business, Boilen sold his car and bought a synthesizer, subsequently becoming one of the first musicians to extensively utilize sound sampling in the late 1970’s. His band, “Tiny Desk Unit”, continues to release at least one record per year.

Last year, Boilen released a book, “Your Song Changed My Life,” It examines the intimate power of pop songs through the perspectives of musicians such as Pokey LaFarge, Jeff Tweedy, Colin Meloy and many others.

Spectrum’s Arts and Culture reporter Emily Votaw spoke with Boilen about his lifelong fascination with the nature of sound; the many ways he enjoys live musical performances, and his deep-set belief that there isn’t such a thing as a “bad song.”
29 min
April 26, 2017 Giving Kindness Changed Her Troubled Life Says Author Nicole J. Phillips
Nicole J. Phillips once had a personal life in turmoil until she discovered the gift of giving kindness to others and to herself.

Outwardly, she appeared to have it all: a prominent and loving husband, three beautiful children, and a job as a television news anchor. It was a life that most people would only dream about and fight to get. Yet, Nicole was “miserable.”

She was depressed and engaged in self-destructive behaviors that drew her away from her marriage and her family. In addition, she carried resentments from her tortured childhood and “venom” towards her mom who Nicole thought abandoned her as a child.

However, one day about seven years ago, Nicole committed a random act of kindness towards another young woman and felt an exhilaration that she had never experienced before. She wanted to replicate that feeling and knew that if she could, it would change her life.

Nicole started performing other acts of kindness and began writing a weekly syndicated newspaper column about “kindness.” She began using the concept of kindness to repair relationships in her life. It helped her harness her depression, reconcile with her mother, lose weight and eliminate other unhealthy choices.

The concept of “kindness” was so powerful that she decided to write a book – telling stories of kindness called “Kindness is Contagious: 100 Stories to Remind You God is Good and So are Most People.”

Then in 2015, Nicole was diagnosed with breast cancer. Undeterred through her surgeries and many treatments, Nicole says she used “kindness as chemotherapy.” She practiced giving kindness to others and as she did, she felt that she removed herself from the dark clouds of cancer hanging over her.

Now, she is an unflinching “advocate for kindness.” She is trying to spread its joy and its healing powers to others through her columns, her blogs, her speeches and her book.

Nicole is truly a woman on a mission.
40 min
April 19, 2017 Poor Black Women Are Not Valued by Politics, Courts & Media Says VICE Editor
It is Will Cooper’s firm belief that the American judicial system doesn’t value the lives of poor black women and therefore, their stories of abuse, deprivation and courage are seldom told by mainstream media. Their conditions are ignored by politicians, he argues.

If their stories are told, Cooper contends that mainstream media “sanitizes” the stories so as to not offend the sensitivities and stereotypes of audiences.

Today is the last of a three-part weekly Spectrum Podcast series examining issues surrounding race, media and politics and the interrelationships between the three.

Cooper, a Senior Editor for VICE Media Inc. in New York City covers race and law enforcement for VICE among other topics.

He has a unique perspective of institutional racism and the criminal justice system. Being the son of two Cleveland police officers, he has seen the judicial system from all sides.

He has produced both long-form and shorter stories and he also has produced critically acclaimed full-length documentaries.

Additionally, he has written a series of essays and investigative reports about race among other topics.

Cooper says that VICE is different from mainstream media. It tells stories from a “unique perspective” – from the reporter’s perspective.

VICE allows its reporters to get involved in stories and not to sit on the sidelines. He claims that a VICE story is often told through a reporter’s personal involvement the reporter’s eyes.

Cooper sites as an example a series that he did on serial murders of poor black women in Cleveland. He started the series by taping a conversation he was having with his law enforcement parents about the short-comings of the investigations.

Cooper continued to tell the story from the perspective of being an African-American man in his hometown of Cleveland. Cooper argues that this type of “personal” reporting is better than the standard objective format used by other media.

More people can relate to a story if it is told from the perspective of someone who totally understands the issues or the people involved from first-hand experience, according to Cooper.

He cites his love for the “new journalism” movement promoted by writers such as Truman Capote and Hunter S. Thompson. Personal involvement was the cornerstone of that era of journalism.
40 min
April 12, 2017 Some Politicians “Dehumanize” Blacks Through Degrading & Incendiary Rhetoric
This is part two of our three part series on race, media and politics.

Washington Post’s Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Wesley Lowery covers law enforcement, justice and he served as the lead reporter for The Post in Ferguson, Missouri.

He has covered the Black Lives Matter Movement for a number of years. And, in November, he had a book published called “They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era In America’s Racial Justice Movement.”

Lowery has traveled the country studying cases where African Americans have been shot by police and talking with community organizers and residents. He has chronicled the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

He notes that the inflammatory political rhetoric during the 2016 Presidential Campaign took the spotlight away from the movement which had been gaining momentum. Politicians often denigrated Blacks and other urban dwellers. The media covered this desecration as part of “normal” campaign coverage

Urban citizens were characterized by politicians as being violent, angry, desperate, and out-of-control. Neighborhoods are often characterized as being “war-zones.”

Lowery also says that politicians often “dehumanize” urban dwellers similar to the way soldiers dehumanize the enemy. If someone is less than human, then one doesn’t care what happens to that person. They get what they deserve according to the rhetoric.

Dehumanizing equals desensitizing. Both are negative to urban dwelling blacks and other people of color, according to Lowery.

Lowery also is critical of media – especially broadcast – for filing our homes with negative and misleading images of Blacks.

For example, Lowery has often gone to neighborhoods just outside areas of major demonstrations and found that most people were living their lives in a normal fashion while the demonstration was going on just blocks away. But, he says, those images are never shown.

Instead, we just see the glaring images of angry black men and women who appear out-of-control and dangerous. They are not the whole neighborhood or the majority of urban citizens. Yet, they are what the media characterizes as the typical inner city dweller.
40 min
April 06, 2017 The Real Meaning of Trump’s Climate Change Orders – In Plain Language
In this special edition, Spectrum breaks down the Trump Administration’s recent actions against climate change into plain English that everyone can understand.

To help us with that, we are assisted by Dr. Geoffrey Dabelko, Professor and Director of the Environmental Studies Program at the George V. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University.

For 15 years prior to that, Dr. Dabelko served as director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. He continues to work as a senior advisor to the Wilson Center.

Dr. Dabelko knows climate change but also knows how to assess the strengths and weaknesses of governmental policies.

Although President Trump, when he signed new Executive orders last week nullifying most of President Obama’s climate change efforts, told coal miners that they would be getting their jobs back, Dr. Dabelko doubts that is true. He argues that economics are preventing coal jobs and not climate regulations. The whole energy field, according to Dabelko, has moved beyond coal and into cheaper and cleaner fuels.

He also explains how the new Trump policies could interfere with economic growth in the clean energy sector giving advantages to China and other European countries like France and Germany over the United States in developing new products and processes.

Dr. Dabelko states that it will be a long, complicated and difficult process for the Trump Administration and its EPA to rewrite the Clean Power Plan and its regulations that closed hundreds of coal-fueled power plants and halted construction on others.

He also believes it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the United States to extricate itself from the 2015 multi-country Paris Agreement on climate change actions. Instead, he believes that the Trump Administration just will not have the USA comply with the provisions of the accord.

Dr. Dabelko also notes that 13 to 15 states have adopted President Obama’s approach to climate change actions and those states will challenge, in court, the dismantling of the similar federal statutes and regulations. In short, lawsuits over President Trump’s actions will abound slowing his dismantling efforts.
30 min
April 05, 2017 African Americans are Portrayed Badly by Mainstream Media, Says Researcher
Researcher and former photojournalist Danielle Kilgo asserts that African Americans are negatively stereotyped by the mainstream media – especially in photos and video.

Danielle Kilgo is receiving her doctorate from the University of Texas-Austin and next fall will start teaching in The Media School at Indiana University. She has been part of a research team at the University of Texas.

Her research analyzes the visual images of African Americans in the media. She contends that both Black men and women are often portrayed in a derogatory light. She also has some interesting observations about photographing political candidates and how images can alter campaigns.

Prior to starting her academic life, Kilgo worked as a photographer, designer and writer – so she fully understands the job of collecting and publishing images of people in a fair and unbiased manner.

In the podcast, Kilgo talks specifically about unfair depictions of black men and women and how these images frame political discourse and public impressions.

She contrasts how whites participating in a protest or demonstration are portrayed in a more positive context than blacks who protest an injustice. Whites are characterized as having justifiable outrage where blacks, most often, are portrayed as being angry and out-of-control.

Kilgo was a participant in the 2017 Schuneman Symposium for Photojournalism & New Media sponsored by the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism and the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University. This year’s Symposium focused, in part, on media and racial issues.
25 min
March 29, 2017 Drug Addiction in Cycling: One Man’s Personal Story
Ian Mullins, 40, is a professional mountain biker based in Seattle. He started taking a drug in 2008 to ease pain after a bicycle accident. The drug, Tramadol, not only stopped his pain but improved his performance by allowing him to race through any physical discomfort. Soon, he was addicted.

For seven years, he struggled with addiction to the painkiller. Eventually, it took over his life. He then needed the drug just to keep from being sick from withdrawal.

When he couldn’t get Tramadol, he took other medications trying to get the same feeling and to keep the sickness at bay: hydromorphone, Percocet, Codeine syrup, fentanyl, and some forms of Benadryl. Most of the time, however, he found a street supply of prescription grade Tramadol to use.

In 2015, Mullins bottomed out. His life was falling apart due to his addiction. At that point, he started his road to recovery which has not always been smooth. He has battled depression and other emotional and psychological issues entwined with drug addiction and sobriety. But, he continues his quest.

As part of his recovery, Mullins is warning cyclists and other athletes about the dangers of Tramadol. A study by the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) shows that 80 percent of Tramadol abuse occurs in the sport of cycling. It is routinely given to some racers, toward the end of a race, combined with caffeine to give them a finishing kick.

For four years the drug has been on WADA’s “watch list” but to date, it has not been banned by the agency.

Although the drug is still legal worldwide, Mullins has made significant headway with the US Anti-doping Agency. It is now pushing to have Tramadol added to the list of banned substances as a performance enhancing drug.

Mullins hopes that by sharing his story of addiction he will help other cyclists and athletes avoid the difficulties that he has encountered.
38 min
March 22, 2017 How Safe Are Your Compounded Drugs? Safer Since FDA Involvement
How safe are the special drug compounds you take or put in or on your body? Most people, today, think that they are pretty safe but that has not always been the case.

Back in 2012, the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts produced 18,000 vials of a contaminated steroid that was distributed across about 20 states.

The tainted compound, to date, has sickened 751 people with fungal meningitis and related illnesses. At last total, there were 64 deaths.

In 2015, the company reached a $200 million civil settlement to victims and various creditors but, as of today, nothing has been paid.

The federal government also has charged company head Barry J. Cadden, 50, with 96 criminal counts including 25 counts for racketeering acts of second-degree murder. A trial began in Boston on January 9 and the jury just started its deliberations on March 17.

No verdicts have been reached at the time of this recording. If convicted of the murder counts, Cadden could be facing life in prison.

Today, we talk with Ed Zatta, owner of RXQ Compounding LLC about new federal regulations to guarantee the safety of small batch drug compounding.

Before the New England Compounding Center disaster, each state regulated its own drug compounding firms. There are a patchwork of different laws and different safety inspection procedures.

After the tragedy, 18 states enacted new regulatory laws and the Federal Drug Administration created a new category of compounding called 503 (b) where each drug compound must be tested for sterility, potency, and whether any of its elements exceeded the “Beyond Use Date.” The new federal law began in January 2017

Zatta took advantage of the federal regulations and created a new “outsourcing facility” under the stricter federal guidelines before they were required.

It takes extra care and extra procedures to make drug compounds safe, according to Zatta. But, he thinks that the federal regulations ensure quality and safety for unsuspecting consumers. He asserts that the federal guidelines can prevent future tragedies such as the New England Compounding Center disaster.
47 min
March 15, 2017 Time’s Phil Elliott Unmasks the Administration of the “Adlib President”
Philip Elliott has “seen it all” in Washington D.C. and today’s White House is nothing like he has ever seen before. It is “chaos” despite protestations to the contrary by Administration members and President Trump himself, according to Elliott.

Elliott has experienced the West Wing under three different administrations. He covered President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama for the Associated Press for over a decade and then switched to Time in 2015 to finish out the Obama Administration and cover the 2016 campaigns.

Now, he is watching mass confusion at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.: ad hoc meetings with seemingly random people by the President and a Chief of Staff (Reince Priebus) actually running from meeting to sometimes impromptu meeting trying to keep a handle on what’s going on minute by minute. Elliott calls President Trump the “Adlib President.”

It is quite a spectacle to observe compared to the meticulous organization of President Bush and the intense pre-meeting preparation by President Obama.

Although the chaotic atmosphere is grist for a reporter’s mill, Elliott thinks it is disruptive for the country and the Washington political establishment.

Elliott also doesn’t relish being a target for Presidential abuse. He says it is uncomfortable, to a degree, to be characterized by the President as an “enemy of the American people” by being a working journalist. However, Elliott says that the barbed criticism and hyperbole has made him check and re-check his stories. In short, it has made him a more accurate and thorough journalist. The criticism has backfired.

Targeting the media also has caused reporters to be placed in dangerous situations on the campaign trail making reporters and news organization enlist special security protections, according to Elliott.

Despite his concerns about being a target, Elliott concedes that we are witnessing “a first” in American politics. We have a President who has mastered social media concepts and knows exactly how to change the conversation from uncomfortable topics by Tweeting something new and outrageous.

Trump also has a direct link to his constituents without going through reporters to deliver his messages. We have never had such direct communication, according to Elliott, and he feels, the rules of politics have changed forever.

Elliott is a graduate of the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.
39 min
March 08, 2017 NPR’s National Security Editor Gives Insight into Trump’s Hot Security Issues
Philip Ewing, National Security Editor for National Public Radio (NPR), gives us his insights into the National Security Council, President Donald Trump’s proposed military budget, the ongoing investigation of Russian ties to the Trump campaign and ISIS.

Ewing has been the National Security Editor since November 2015 but he also has had almost a decade of prior experience covering military and defense issues in Washington.

He echoes the general consensus that Lt. General H.R. McMaster is a wise choice for National Security Advisor. However, Ewing outlines some areas for potential conflict between McMaster and President Trump’s Senior Advisor and political strategist Stephen Bannon.

Ewing suggests that Bannon won the first conflict with McMaster. The National Security Advisor suggested to President Trump that he no long use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” in public discourse. Trump, however, heeded Bannon’s contrary advice and used the term with emphasis in his speech before a joint session of Congress last week.

Ewing states that potential battles between McMaster and Bannon will be interesting to watch as they evolve. They will encompass the internal battle between national security/military interests and political interests and rhetoric.

President Trump’s proposed increase in his military budget amounts to a $54 billion or about a 10 percent jump in defense spending. Ewing, however, notes that there were no details given about how that money is to be spent or in reality, how the money will be raised without a tax increase. The feasibility of the proposal is, therefore, unclear.

Ewing also said that for the next several months or more, Washington will be fixated with the various investigations of potential Russian ties to the Trump campaign. He asserted that the leak about Attorney General Session’s questionable testimony to the Senate about his Russian involvement was timed to take any gloss off of Pres. Trump’s speech to Congress the night before. He does not foresee any quick resolution of these issues.

Finally, Ewing suggests that the national security story to watch in the future is what the Trump Administration will do in its war against ISIS. How will it play out and will it involve a commitment of US ground troops to Syria or other spots in the Middle East?
37 min

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