Bob Garfield

Russians have access to more than 100,000 pirated e-books and just 60,000 legitimate e-books. For some authors and publishers the theft is infuriating, but others take the view that it’s good to have your book out there in front of eyes no matter what the cost. In an interview from 2012, Bob speaks with Peter Mountford, author of A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism,  who didn't just turn a blind eye to his book being pirated, but actually helped the process along. Mountford's new book - to be released in 2014 - is A Dismal Science. 

British Prime Minister David Cameron just announced a bold, two-pronged attack on both pornography that exploits children, and the availability of pornography to children. Bob talks to Mic Wright, tech reporter for the Daily Telegraph, about how Cameron's proposal will be both technically impossible and an invasion of privacy.

Johan Borger - Goodnight My Friend

Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, delivered a son. The baby boy is the third in line for the throne, and this is the first heir the royal family has had in this century—and in...

This week, ABC announced that model, comedian, and anti-vaccine activist Jenny McCarthy would be joining the hit daytime talk show The View. Bob looks at the controversy surrounding her hiring and at the media's description of McCarthy's "controversial" views. 

Sponsored content, or "native advertising," is increasingly becoming a source of revenue for the financially strapped news media. But this can be dangerous territory since native advertising is often made to resemble the actual editorial content. Bob talks to Steve Rubel, chief content strategist at the PR firm Edelman, about an ethical framework for navigating the murky waters of sponsored content partnerships.

William Tyler - Country of Illusion

The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act goes into effect this month, lifting prior domestic broadcast bans on U.S. propaganda. Bob talks to historian Thomas Fleming, author of The Illusion of Victory: America in World War One, about how powerful domestic propaganda was in the past, and how unlikely it is to have much impact today.

The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act was intended to shield U.S. citizens from American propaganda, which the State Department has been broadcasting abroad for decades. This month, the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act takes effect, allowing that material to be broadcast stateside. Bob talks with Washington State Democrat and bill co-sponsor Adam Smith who says there is no need to worry.

Andrew Bird - Orpheo Looks Back

 

A military coup is essentially a military action that transfers government power from one entity to another. This sounds a lot like what happened in Egypt with the military's removal of President Mohamed Morsi, but the new Egyptian leadership - and the Obama administration - are refusing to call it a coup. Bob talks to Harvard law professor Noah Feldman about using the C-word.

Shigeto - Ringleader

A new tv news show launched in New Jersey this week, called Chasing NJ. It’s supposed to revolutionize local news by modelling it after syndicated celebrity-gossip show TMZ. Chasing NJ has already sparked outcry from Jersey politicians who want the FCC to rescind the license of its broadcast station, WWOR. Bob talks to the Brian Stelter of the New York Times about the new show.

Bob Pinado - Africa

During the past couple months, the media have been scrambling to cover all angles of the impending birth of Kate Middleton's "royal baby." Included in those angles: What clothes the pregnant Duchess wears, what the baby's gender will be, and just how Kate Middleton will give birth. Bob reports from London on the royal baby media frenzy.

There is a scientific consensus that the oft-claimed link between vaccines and Autism simply doesn't exist. And yet, after a decade of no convincing evidence of a link many in the public are still scared and vaccination rates are down. In an interview that originally aired in 2011, Bob speaks to Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus, about why it’s so hard to dislodge misinformation and fear.

Some academic journals have embraced a “gold open access model” of publishing, wherein the scholars whose work appears in the journal pay for the privilege. Bob speaks with Jeffrey Beall, an academic librarian at the University of Colorado Denver who has assembled a list of "predatory journals" - journals that may be more interested in profit than academic contributions. 

Last year, an anonymous Fox News employee started writing for the news and gossip website, Gawker. The pen-named Fox Mole was associate producer Joe Muto of the O’Reilly Factor. Bob talks with Muto about his years with the network. Muto has written a book about the experience, An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal's Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media.

On Wednesday, journalists discovered that Edward Snowden was an avid poster in their online forums. For more than ten years, he posted under the name TheTrueHOOHA. Ars Technica's Joe Mullin has been reading Snowden’s posts. He tells Bob that, taken as a whole, they trace the thinking of a precocious teenager into a tech-savvy geek into an opinionated adult. 

This week saw several revelations about US government surveillance of both Americans and foreigners. Brooke and Bob talk to Washingtonian writer Shane Harris and co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, Elizabeth Goitein, about the what we can glean from the information that became public this week.

Historically, Prime Minister Erdogan has consolidated much of his power by raising fears about the threat of domestic terrorism and the so-called “deep state,” a covert network of military and civilian elites who for decades have stifled any perceived threat to a secular Turkey. It’s a kind of cabal of unseen hands, often violent, that smacks of conspiracy theory. Except, as The New Yorker staff writer Dexter Filkins tells Bob, it actually exists. 

The Turkish protests of the last two weeks have seen the rise of citizen journalists using social media to tell the story. Early on mainstream Turkish broadcast media paid no attention to the demonstrations. Turkish journalist and Al-Monitor columnist Tulin Daloglu explains why. Daloglu runs the Twitter feed @turkeypulse.

Next week, Iran is holding its first presidential election since the one in 2009 that sparked the protests in the street known as the Green Revolution. The Iranian government is hoping to avoid a repeat of what it saw in 2009, in part by restricting the free flow of information in the country. Bob speaks to Golnaz Esfandiari, a senior correspondent for Radio Free Europe and editor of the Persian Letters blog, about what the Iranian media landscape is looking like in the run up to the election.

How do you get to Nashville's famed Bluebird Cafe, the launch pad of dozens of country music's biggest stars? If you're Bob Garfield - and you're trying to make it big in country music in less than 36 hours - "practice, practice, practice" is not an option. Luckily, Bob has chutzpah, and a brilliant song, just waiting for a record exec to bite. In this piece from 1996, Bob goes on a journey to pen the next country music hit.

To hear the full piece, click here.