Bob Garfield

The big political story this week was an argument between the Obama and Romney campaigns about whether or not Romney would have killed Osama Bin Laden, were he president. As the New Yorker's John Cassidy observed, the argument was actually beside the point -- it was a piece of calculated political distraction by the White House. He explains to Bob how it worked, and what news we missed as a result.

In the cat and mouse game between the prying eyes of oppressive states and anti surveillance technology designers, there’s a new paradigm.  But it’s not the technology itself, it’s the way it’s being designed - everything from the funding to the code is available for everyone to see.  Sascha Meinrath, founder of Commotion Wireless, explains to Bob the paradox that the more information they reveal about their privacy software, the more secret it is. 

 

JD Samson and MEN - Life's Half Price

Much of the hardware and software used by oppressive regimes to monitor foreign dissidents is manufactured in the west. Margaret Coker, Middle East Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, talks to Bob about President Obama's recent Executive Order banning the sale of this technology to Iran and Syria.

Nick Merrill is building an internet service provider called Calyx. Calyx will be designed to encrypt user's data in such a way that it'll be inaccessible to anyone but that user. Which means that if the government asks for your browser history or emails, Calyx will be technologically unable to hand them over. Bob talks to Merrill about his plan.

A year ago veteran war photographers Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington died of injuries sustained while covering the Libyan uprising.  When friend, colleague and fellow war reporter Sebastian Junger learned that Hetherington died of injuries that didn’t need to be fatal he founded Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues or RISC.  Junger tells Brooke why freelance journalists need the tools to save themselves and their fellow reporters on the battlefield.

 

Breton - The Commission

The United States Senate has taken a page from Invisible Children's playbook and produced a video about bringing Joseph Kony to justice that they hope will go viral. Bob speaks with Senator Chris Coons, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee on African Affairs and one of the senators behind the video. 

A group of Ugandan journalists has released their own online response to Kony 2012. Their aim is to recapture the narrative established by Invisible Children. Bob speaks to contributor Rosebell Kagumire who says the group is focusing more on Ugandans recovering from the war then on the search for Joseph Kony. 

 

Ballake Sissoko and Vincent Segal - Oscarine

Bob speaks with former government employee Dr. Annetta Cheek who began advocating for clearer government writing after seeing a single, beautifully clear regulation.

Statistician Gareth Sundem has devised an equation that predicts, with pretty fair accuracy, the shelf life of a celebrity marriage. He explains to Bob how it works.

In Britain’s inquiry into the Murdochs this week the big revelation was a trove of 163 emails highlighting a cozy relationship between the office of the UK culture minister and one of James Murdoch’s closest aides. Daily Beast reporter Peter Jukes talks to Bob about the latest travails of the ...

Buying a cheap knock-off is not just a problem with watches and hand bags—if you go onto Amazon's website to buy the latest bestseller, you might accidentally end up with an imitation book. Bob speaks to Fortune senior editor Stephen Gandel, who looked into the knock offs on Amazon, and found a number of books that he says were clearly meant to confuse people by trading off of more popular titles.

Copyright protections for books have had the effect of driving the vast majority of them from public view.  Meanwhile books in the public domain are surprisingly visible in places like Amazon.com.  So says law professor Paul Heald, who’s been testing this idea. He explains to Bob the negative effects of copyright extension and the not-so-threatening reality of the public domain.

Most big publishers fear running afoul of Amazon, but one very small publisher has proven to be fearless. Bob talks to Randall White, who recently pulled all of his company's books from Amazon's web site.

 

Quartetto d’Archi Dell’Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi - Paperback Writer

This year, for the first time in 35 years, there was no Pulitzer Prize awarded for fiction.  Was it a bad year for novels, is the Pulitzer selection process broken or is it a dire sign of things to come for the fiction industry?  Author, Salon senior writer and past Pulitzer fiction judge Laura Miller explains to Bob which way to read the Pulitzer’s non-award.

 

Papa Razzi and the Photogs - I Like the Books of Jane Austen

The non-profit Media Access Project has advocated on behalf of consumers in the areas of media diversity, freedom of expression and universal communication access for almost 40 years. But now the funding well has run dry and the organization is closing its doors. Bob speaks to Andrew Schwartzman who has been MAP's policy director for more than 30 years.

Brendan Nyhan is a Dartmouth political scientist who studies why scandals break when they do. According to Nyhan, before this month's GSA fiasco, President Obama had the longest streak of scandal-free coverage of any President in recent history. Nyhan tells Bob that according to his theory, we can expect the coming months to be full of scandal coverage.

Schools are failing.  At least that’s the consensus if you’ve read any school reporting or heard any politicians promising much needed school reform since, well, approximately the beginning of American public education. But … is it true?  Washington Post reporter and columnist for the American Journalism Review Paul Farhi explains to Bob why the story doesn’t add up.   

 

The Spinanes - Kid in Candy

This week, news organizations selected by the North Korean government were permitted to report inside the country on the launch of a supposed weather satellite by the autocratic regime. The launch, which was more about military power than meteorology, was a spectacular failure. Bob speaks with B.R. Myers, who says that despite that failure, the mere presence of international media is useful to North Korean domestic propaganda.

Carl Malamud, government transparency advocate and president of public.resource.org believes safety standards should be easily accessible to all citizens for free. Yet many of these standards  --  from the design of bicycle helmets to water treatment components to hazmat suits – are the copyrighted creation of the industry organizations that have promulgated them. So Malamud has ponied up the dough to purchase exactly 73 of these standards, which he will publish online, copyright or no copyright.

 

The Spinanes - Lure and Cast

The world’s media may have been invited for a rare peek into North Korea this week but one news organization was already there - the Associated Press.  After a year of negotiations the AP opened the first all format, full-time bureau in Pyongyang in January, the first western journalism outfit to ever do so.  Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of the Associated Press Kathleen Carroll talks to Bob about what it means to bring the AP’s journalistic standards to reporting in North Korea.

 

Smog - I'm New Here