Brooke Gladstone

It's been predicted that this election season will produce a record number of political ads. Wouldn't it be nice if you could simply wave your phone in front of an advertisement on the TV to find out what group is behind it and how much they're spending this on ads? Brooke talks to Dan Siegel, co-creator of the forthcoming SuperPacApp, which will allow you to do just that.

White Rabbits - Back for More

The Obama and Romney campaigns have been slugging away at each other this week about transparency and disclosure. And yet Tuesday, the Disclose Act, which would have allowed you to better know the people behind superpacs was smothered in the Senate by filibuster without earning a single Republican vote. Huffington Post reporter Dan Froomkin explains to Brooke what happened.

It’s possible for the average person to collect and analyze unprecedented amounts of data about themselves.  What was once the province of extreme athletes and dieters has been democratized and the resulting movement is called ‘The Quantified Self.’  Brooke speaks with Gary Wolf who coined the term, a number of self-quantifiers and MIT professor Deb Roy about what all this personal data really tells us about ourselves.  

Surprising and exciting scientific findings capture our attention and captivate the press.  But what if, at some point after a finding has been soundly established, it starts to disappear?  In a special collaboration with Radiolab we look at the 'decline effect' when more data tells us less, not more, about scientific truth.

Correction: An earlier version of this short incorrectly stated that Jonathan Schooler saw the effect size of his study fall by 30% on two different occasions. In fact, he saw it fall by that amount the first time he repeated the study and saw a general downward trend thereafter. The audio has been adjusted to reflect this fact.

Correction: An earlier version of this short incorrectly attributed a statement to Jonathan Schooler’s advisor. The statement was actually made by his colleague. The audio has been adjusted to reflect this fact.

The immense amounts of data collected by local, state and federal government agencies can be an incredibly valuable trove for enterprising journalists.  It can also be a pointless slog. NPR's StateImpact project database reporting coordinator Matt Stiles and computational journalism professor at Duke Sarah Cohen explain how they find good stories in a sea of government data.  

Mexico has an image problem around the world, exacerbated by stories of violence and corruption —not to mention lingering stereotypes from the era of the Frito Bandito. Brooke talks to a number of people grappling with Mexico's image problem.

Paco de Lucia & Rámon Algeciras - Cielito Lindo

"Alejandra," a reporter who was threatened by the Zeta cartel, began to publish news on place mats that she sold to local restaurants. Brooke talks to "Alejandra" about her determination to report in the face of threats to her and her family.

Brooke and WNYC reporter Marianne McCune report from Mexico City about how the Mexican media is grappling with the country's upcoming presidential elections, and the youth movement that is tired of business-as-usual.

Los Lobos - El Gusto

Brooke talks to Mike O’Connor of the Committee to Protect Journalists about the risks that reporters face in a country beset by drug-violence, often targeted at the media.  

Veracruz, home of the bloody Zeta cartel, is now the most dangerous place in Mexico to be a journalist. Nine journalists have been killed in the last 12 months alone. Brooke travels to Veracruz to talk to journalists about reporting under a constant threat of violence.

Elizabeth - Soy Loca Por Ti

On the Media host Brooke Gladstone reports from Mexico on that country's upcoming presidential elections, its campaign laws, and Yosoy132, the movement being called the Mexican Spring.

Earlier this week, science fiction writer Ray Bradbury died. Bradbury is the author of Fahrenheit 451 and many, many other books. Brooke explains how her love of science fiction began with Bradbury.

Slate writer Daniel Engber set out to debunk the idea of the 5-second rule -- the myth that if you drop food on the floor and pick it up quickly, it’s still clean enough to eat. Engber's quest led him onto a bigger story, about a wellspring of scientific misinformation that's flowing into American papers from Britain. 

There's often a really interesting story behind a retraction. That's what Ivan Oransky told us. He's a doctor and journalist and founder, along with Adam Marcus, of a blog called Retraction Watch. They monitor scientific journals and investigate why articles were retracted. They uncovered serious ethical breaches at a variety of journals. Oransky tells Brooke about some of the stories he's covered this year.

Quantic - Una Tarde en Mariquita

When a paper released by a scientific journal turns out to be wrong, either due to human error or intentional fraud , the journal’s editors often will issue a retraction advising scientists to disregard the research. A Wall Street Journal study has found the number of such retractions to be soaring. New Yorker science writer Jonah Lehrer tells Brooke what he thinks is going on.

Even if you're not among those who believe the world will end on 12/21/2012, it's gotta end sometime right? And if there are still journalists at the end, they'll need a game plan. At a recent journalism pow-wow, the role of journalists in two apocalyptic scenarios -- global pandemic and alien invasion -- were discussed with funny and useful results. Brooke speaks with Andrew Fitzgerald who suggested the topic.

In a Washington Post op-ed last month, Senator Joseph Lieberman spoke of “horrific human rights abuses perpetrated daily, including the widespread and deliberate use of rape and other sexual violence as weapons of war.” Lauren Wolfe, director of the Women Under Siege Project, which has curated a map plotting instances of sexual violence in Syria, talks with Brooke about trying to check the senator's claim and the difficulty of verifying claims of rape in a war-zone.

The Chieftains - The Stone

According to an article in The New York Times last week, the Obama administration treats “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants”. Brooke talks to Chris Woods, reporter for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, who has been working with reporters on the ground to confirm and put names to civilian casualties of drone strikes, about the discrepancies between his reporting and the reports of the US government.

Chinese censorship is nothing new. But recently the relationship between censor and dissident has grown more complicated as the government comes to accept that social media is no longer something it can simply take away from Chinese citizens. Brooke speaks with Slate's Jacob Weisberg, who recently traveled to China and spoke with some tech-savvy new dissidents.

Lit - My Own Worst Enemy

The world of shows produced expressly for consumption on the web seems to be expanding rapidly, attracting not only amateurs with cameras, but seasoned Hollywood veterans. Brooke talks to Thinkprogress.org culture reporter Alyssa Rosenberg, and the co-creators of the web series Husbands, Brad Bell and Jane Espenson,