FRESH AIR: CNN correspondent Brian Stelter says President Trump’s “cozy” relationship with Fox News is “like nothing we’ve seen in American history.” In his new book, Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, Stelter describes the president as a “shadow producer” to Fox News host Sean Hannity — who, in turn, acts as a “shadow chief of staff” for Trump. “This is a relationship that is extraordinary, because Trump shapes Hannity’s show [and] Hannity advises the president on policy and personnel,” Stelter says. “And then at 9 o’clock sharp, the president is watching Hannity deliver […]
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NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: That’s the sound of an immigration raid getting underway in the new six-part documentary series “Immigration Nation” now streaming on Netflix. Our guests today are the series’ co-directors and co-executive producers, Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz. They spent three years filming immigration enforcement actions and their effects after President Trump took office, and they had remarkable access to agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. As you’ll hear, the filmmakers’ relationship with ICE deteriorated sharply after the agency saw rough drafts of the planned episodes. The series follows ICE agents, their supervisors and spokesmen, activists, immigrants and […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are frequently seen as opposing forces in the struggle for civil rights and against white supremacy; King is often portrayed as a nonviolent insider, while Malcolm X is characterized as a by-any-means-necessary political renegade. But author and Black Power scholar Peniel Joseph says the truth is more nuanced. “I’ve always been fascinated by Malcolm X and Dr. King … and dissatisfied in how they’re usually portrayed — both in books and in popular culture,” Joseph says. In his book, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X […]
CINEMA: The Best Film Of 2020 So Far
BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC While we can all agree 2020 has been a pretty terrible year, the films that have come out thus far actually have actually been pretty good. Because Hollywood’s blockbusters have been sidelined until further notice, smaller, quirkier films — which would ordinarily be trampled under foot by the marketing juggernaut of Big Hollywood tentpoles and superhero franchises — have been given a chance to shine. Here’s my list of the best films released in the first half of 2020 and currently streaming. Hopefully these films will offer a welcome distraction in these dark and dire […]
EXHUMING MCCARTHY: The Father Of Trumpism
FRESH AIR: On Feb. 9, 1950, Joseph McCarthy, a junior senator from Wisconsin, stunned the nation — and stoked the paranoia of the Cold War — when he alleged that there were 205 spies working within the U.S. State Department. It was the beginning of a four-year anti-communist, anti-gay crusade in which McCarthy would charge military leaders, diplomats, teachers and professors with being traitors. Author Larry Tye chronicles McCarthy’s infamous smear campaign in the new book Demagogue. He describes the Republican senator as an “an opportunist and a cynic” who deliberately preyed on public fears. “His tactics included playing […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: People who have been taking antidepressants for several years sometimes hit a wall, a point when that treatment no longer seems to ease their symptoms. Psychiatrist Julie Holland says that’s where psychedelic drugs could help. Holland was in charge of Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric emergency room on the weekends from 1996 until 2005, and currently has a private psychotherapy practice in Manhattan. She’s a medical monitor on the MAPS studies, which involve, in part, developing psychedelics into prescription medication. Her new book, Good Chemistry, explores how she thinks psychedelic drugs, including LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and marijuana, might be […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
Photo by ALEX PATERSON-JONES FRESH AIR: In the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police, protesters across the country are demanding systemic changes in the way American police forces operate and are funded. Journalist Jamiles Lartey says the discussion about policing feels different now than it has in the past. “You’re hearing so much less of the ‘few bad apples’ argument and so much more of the, ‘What is wrong with this system?’ [argument],” he says. Lartey is a staff writer for The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the U.S. criminal justice system. He […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: The Fable Of Reconstruction
FRESH AIR: In the period after the Civil War, former slaves were made promises of equality and citizenship by the federal government. Historian Eric Foner analyzes the fate of those promises in Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. The drastic changes in American society are pointed up by three amendments to the Constitution: the 13th abolished slavery; the 14th guaranteed birthright citizenship and equal rights for all Americans; and the 15th barred states from discriminating on the basis of race in voting rights. Foner writes, “The unresolved legacy of Reconstruction remains a part of our lives. In movements […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
Self portrait of photographer Astrid Kirchherr. FRESH AIR: Astrid Kirchherr, who took the first publicity photos of a then-struggling rock group called The Beatles, died last week. She was 81 years old. In 1960, young Astrid had just completed a photography course at the College of Fashion and Design in Hamburg when her boyfriend, Klaus Voormann, took her to the seedy Kaiserkeller in Hamburg’s red-light district. He wanted to show her a new rock group from Liverpool he had discovered the night before. When Astrid met the group in 1960, The Beatles consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: John Barry, author of the 2004 book, The Great Influenza, draws parallels between today’s pandemic and the flu of 1918. In both cases, he says, “the outbreak was trivialized for a long time.” MORE DISCOVERY MEDICINE: The great influenza pandemic began in 1918 and ended in 1920. Worldwide, the virus itself caused an estimated 20 to 100 million deaths most of which occurred between September 1918 and early 1919. In the U.S., with about 105 million people at the time, the virus killed approximately 675,000. Conventionally influenza causes its mortality among the elderly and infants due to their […]
WORTH REPEATING: Will Americans Lose Their Right To Vote To The Covid–19 Pandemic?
NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK TIMES: A national election is a giant pop-up event, larger in scale and significance than any other private or public occasion. Two-thirds of Americans expect the Covid-19 outbreak to disrupt voting in November, according to a late-April survey by the Pew Research Center. A successful election will require some Covid-era changes. The main one is enabling tens of millions more people to vote by mail (also called absentee balloting — the terms are synonymous) than have ever done so before. It’s also important to make adjustments to keep polling places open for people who don’t […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Apocalyptic novelist Max Brooks is something of an expert on planning for pandemics and other disasters. The author, whose books include World War Z, Germ Warfare and the forthcoming Devolution, has toured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has reviewed government response plans related to various emergency situations — all in the course of research. “We have a network in place that we as taxpayers have been funding to get us ready for something just like this,” Brooks says of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But, he adds, “we have been disastrously slow and […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
Click HERE to enlarge FRESH AIR: The U.S. has had two recent presidential elections in which the winner of the popular vote — Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 — ultimately lost to the challenger for the seat. That’s because the U.S. has an Electoral College — each state gets a number of votes (by representative electors) in the Electoral College that’s proportional to its population. And 48 of the 50 states (Maine and Nebraska are the exceptions) have been awarding those electoral votes on a winner-takes-all basis. But New York Times journalist Jesse Wegman says it […]