Brooke Gladstone

It’s been a violent, sad week. Sometimes the only way to wring anything positive out of it all is through the transformative power of comedy. Brooke talks with Sharon Taicher, a writer at Eretz Nehederet, a satire show watched by 1 out of 8 Israelis.

In Gaza, the media that locals have access to is primarily Hamas-controlled. Brooke talks with Sherine Tadros, a middle east correspondent for Sky News who's spent years reporting from the region, about what Gazans are seeing, and what many of them have come to believe.

For reporters covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, choosing the right words is a daunting task. So the International Press Institute set out to identify those hot-button words and phrases that the media throw around and create a glossary, called "Use With Care", that offers context and more neutral language. Brooke talks with Naomi Hunt, editor of the glossary and senior press freedom adviser at the IPI.

Alongside the usual war for hearts and minds waged through conflicting narratives in the media, there’s a parallel fight happening on the rhetorical battlefield. Brooke talks with Jodi Rudoren, Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the New York Times, about her recent piece, “In Gaza, Epithets Are Fired and Euphemisms Give Shelter,” in which she explores the issue of semantics.

In the wake of the crash of Malaysia airlines flight MH17, the Russian media has been providing its own theories about the source of the downed plane. Brooke talks with novelist and screenwriter Michael Idov, who lives in Moscow, about what he's seeing there.

Brooke examines how comedians like Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Stephen Colbert make us laugh by combining silliness and moral indignation.  

Truvada is a drug that, taken daily, has been show to prevent HIV infection by as much as 99 percent. Like the polio vaccine, or like the birth control pill, it's a medical breakthrough worthy of massive coverage. Why hasn't there been? Brooke speaks to Rich Juzwiak, a Gawker staff writer, about the drug and what’s holding it back in the media.

It was a New York Times blog that chronicled daily shootings across the country, in an effort to highlight victims of gun violence between highly-covered mass shootings. Co-author Jen...

Spending on negative Obamacare ads eclipsed spending on positive ads by a remarkable 15-1 ratio. Brooke talks with Niam Yaraghi of the Brooking Institution, who says that anti-Obamacare ads actually drove up enrollment.  

The latest surge of violence in the Gaza Strip and Israel was fueled by a horrific series of events involving Israeli and Palestinian teenagers. Brooke talks with Philip Weiss, co-editor of Mondoweiss, about coverage of these recent events, and how the view of the conflict is shifting in the media. 

For the past few weeks the media have been reporting on a surge in unaccompanied minors who are crossing the border illegally, bringing attention to the latest immigration crisis. But the reality of the situation is far more complicated. Brooke talks with reporter Bob Ortega about what's really happening on the border.

There's an estimated 40,000 unidentified human remains in the United States. When writer Deborah Halber heard this figure, she did some research and discovered a thriving community of internet sleuths who spend hours trying to attach names to these John and Jane Does. Brooke speaks to Halber about her new book, The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America’s Coldest Cases.

Univision anchor Jorge Ramos has been dubbed "Star newscaster of Hispanic TV." In addition to his role as news anchor on the Spanish-language network, Ramos now hosts "America with Jorge Ramos", an English-language program on the recently launched Fusion network. Brooke speaks with Ramos about how his new job is exposing him to a wider media audience.

After hearing the rest of this special hour, Latino Rebels co-founder Julio Ricardo Varela returns to tell Brooke if we accomplished our goal to "not suck" in our exploration of Hispanic media. He tells Brooke why we didn't do as well as we'd hoped, despite our best intentions.

An overview of the Hispanic media landscape, including a list of rules for how to discuss Hispanics without sucking (#NoMames). Bob and Brooke speak with Mark Hugo Lopez of the Pew Research Center's Hispanic Trends Project, and Julio Ricardo Varela from the website Latino Rebels. You can find Latino Rebels' collection of #NoMames fails here.

"Metastasis" is an almost scene-by-scene Spanish-language remake of the hit show "Breaking Bad," starring Colombian actor Diego Trujillo — who has also worked on remakes of "Desperate...

Mosi Secret is the new "sin and vice" reporter at The New York Times. He explains how his new beat came to be, and the challenges of reporting stories about people on the fringe.

Since the violent extremist group ISIS began taking control of large parts of Iraq, a common media narrative has emerged: in the absence of a tyrant or occupying force, sectarian hatred is once again tearing the country apart. Brooke talks with history professor Ibrahim al-Marashi about whether that narrative is actually the best way to look at what's going on in Iraq.

The Pew Research Center recently published a study titled “Political Polarization in the American Public,” which prompted a wave of alarmist reporting about how Americans are more ideologically divided than ever before. But, as Stanford political scientist Morris Fiorina explains, that's not what Pew's data actually shows.

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