Brooke Gladstone

The publishing industry is not the first to be shaken by a newly digital world. It’s also not the first to resist that change. Brooke speaks with Mathew Ingram, a senior writer at GigaOm, who thinks the publishers’ efforts to tame Amazon may delay a brighter future for the book industry.

John Williams - Hedwig's Theme

As a newly minted editorial assistant at Norton, writer Tom Bissell was able to resuscitate an out-of-print novel called Desperate Characters by Paula Fox. In Bissell's new book, Magic Hours, he wrote about how, paradoxically, that experience shook his faith in publishing. Brooke talks to writer Tom Bissell about whether we as readers will miss the publishing industry, imperfect as it is, if it disappears.

Julian Smith - I'm Reading A Book

Publishers are trying to adapt as the book industry changes dramatically, and they're doing so in the face of rapidly changing reading habits among consumers. Publishing industry analyst Mike Shatzkin talks to Brooke about how readers' behavior is changing, and about ways the publishing industry might survive in the coming years.

Michael Shatzkin, publishing futurist, tells us the story of Pottermore, J.K. Rowling's one-woman attempt to challenge the mighty Amazon.

Harry and The Potters - This Book is So Awesome

Without the ability to work together, industry watchers say the 'Big 6' publishers won’t be able to stop Amazon from pricing books as the company sees fit. Brooks speaks with Barry C. Lynn, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, who believes that the DOJ decision opens the door to an Amazonian monopoly in the book industry.

The video game series Mass Effect has earned millions in sales and near-universal critical acclaim, but the series' conclusion, released this month, was met with howls of rage by gamers. Their gripe? They hated the ending. In response, the game's developers have promised to add additional content that would give fans "more closure." Brooke talks to Grantland's Tom Bissell about whether or not dissatisfied gamers are entitled to a new ending.

Controversy broke out last week in Brooklyn New York, when members of the Park Slope Food Co-op argued over a proposed boycott of Israeli-made foods. Remarkably, coverage of the local dispute made its way into some prominent news outlets. Brooke muses about why the little feud became so large. 

Anika - Officer Officer

When "Obamacare" first debuted, opponents of the legislation criticized its cost and reach—not the possibility that it might be unconstitutional. But this week the Supreme Court spent three days hearing arguments on the mandated health care law. Brooke speaks to Politico's Josh Gerstein about how challenging Obamacare on constitutional grounds went from a zany fringe idea to a mainstream conversation.

Anyone who’s played videogames like Call of Duty or Red Dead Redemption knows what kind of narratives they tell. Their protagonists are snipers or outlaws ready to fight missions that step outside all legal bounds. Game designers Anna Anthropy, Sebastian Janisz and Michael Molinari choose to tell very different stories. No ambushes, no clandestine ops or full throttle attacks. Brooke talks to the designers about their very personal games.

If last week Trayvon Martin’s death broke as a national story, then this week it reached a full boil. Every day new details have been leaked and analyzed, pundits have opined and the interested parties have sought to characterize each other.  Brooke again talks with Huffington Post senior reporter Trymaine Lee about how this story has continued to develop.

Breton - The Commission

One of the greatest assets of the internet is that it leads to great content discoveries that readers might not otherwise be able to find. One of the biggest liabilities is that content is frequently repackaged without crediting its creators or where it was found. Brooke talks to Maria Popova, editor of the website Brain Pickings and one of the creators of the Curator's Code, which seeks to honor the way people discover content online.

With social media, so much of our interactions with the world now live online, even after we may not be living at all. Brooke talks to James Norris, the founder of the website Deadsocial about prolonging social media relationships after death.

Atlantic editor Ta-Nehisi Coates has also been covering the Trayvon Martin story since very early on. However, he tells Brooke that he hesitated for a couple weeks before he started writing about the story. Coates says he sees so many stories about young black men who are killed in questionable circumstances, and those stories are rarely covered by the media. 

Breton - The Commission

Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed by his neighbor on Feburary 26th, but the story didn't become ubiquitous until this past week. Trymaine Lee has been covering the story since very early on for the Huffington Post -- he talks to Brooke about why the story took so long to spread. 

It’s easy to forget that Facebook has only been around for eight years. In that time, Facebook’s grown from a college dorm room project to a multi-billion dollar company, and made its 27 year-old founder the 4th richest person in the United States. But Facebook’s life represents an eternity in internet years, where sites live, dominate and die at historic speeds. Surely, then, Facebook must one day die, right? According to Clay Shirky, no one ought to hold their breath waiting for Facebook's demise.

Bangs - Meet Me On Facebook

Over the last year the Associated Press has tried to answer a simple question: Of the more the 100 countries with freedom-of-information laws on the books, how many actually work?  These laws are increasingly popular, but Martha Mendoza, the AP’s lead reporter on the project tells Brooke that when it comes to compliance talk is cheap.

Co-host and managing editor of NPR's On The Media and author of The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media, Brooke Gladstone joins Slate’s War Stories columnist and author of 1959: The Year Everything Changed (and her husband), Fred Kaplan, to discuss how their respective beats have changed since 9/11 and how their family experienced 9/11 and the aftermath.

Sometimes political truth is stranger than political fiction, but the fiction is always more fun.

For that reason, It's A Free Country brings you Video Club with Brian Lehrer, in which our veteran analyst looks at the fun-house mirrors of our government's (in)action: television and the silver screen. What did the writers get right, and where did they flop? Why were the fictional characters more sympathetic, or more detestable? How did the political theater play out in real life? More often than not, it's the reality that looks funny.

To launch our new club, Brian watches the budget debacle unfold on The West Wing Season Five in an episode called "Shutdown." Then, Brooke Gladstone, co-host and managing editor of WNYC's On the Media,  gives her take. You'll get a chance to weigh in as well. 

On the Media’s Brooke Gladstone gives a rundown of the Rupert Murdoch phone hacking scandal and looks at how it’s been covered by the media, how far and wide the scandal has spread, and what the repercussions of it will be in the British press, government, and here in the United States.