Media Culpa

Summary

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode Title: Media Culpa
Date: September 16, 2016
Host: Dorothy Wickenden (Executive Editor, The New Yorker)
Guests: Evan Osnos, Margaret Talbot, Ben Wallace-Wells (Staff Writers)

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Overview

"Media Culpa" dives into the media’s fraught role during the 2016 presidential election, examining the challenges faced by journalists in covering two historically unpopular candidates—Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The episode explores how media biases, evolving voter attitudes, and the rise of new political phenomena (like the alt-right and Bernie Sanders’ surge) have created unique hurdles for both press and public understanding. The discussion is candid about missteps by media outlets and raises tough questions about responsibility, reporting standards, and what voters are truly looking for.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Media Misjudgments and Voter Discontent

(01:16–03:07)

• The press corps was surprised by both Trump’s and Sanders’ deep resonance, having underestimated the appeal of their outsider messages.

• Evan Osnos reflects on covering Trump’s supporters, including fringe elements ("alt right"), and acknowledges failing to recognize the spectrum of grievances fueling Trumpism:

  “There’s a continuum; a version of an idea which is bigoted in its most extreme form can also exist in other lesser, more mainstream and more meaningful versions.” (Evan Osnos, 03:46)

• Osnos quotes a white nationalist he reported on, critiquing the "self-congratulatory journalism" of elite outlets:

  “New Yorker readers can feel smug without even reading the article. Mr. Trump appeals to losers, just as they always thought, unquote.” (Evan Osnos, quoting a critic, 03:36)

2. The Sanders Phenomenon and Clinton’s Problems with Young Voters

(05:42–07:53)

• Margaret Talbot describes her initial surprise at Bernie Sanders’ energetic rallies:

  “It really took me and a lot of people aback to see the incredible enthusiasm for, you know, [an] aging Vermont socialist…” (Margaret Talbot, 06:26)

• Sanders’ messaging left "lasting damage" to Clinton’s image among young voters, convincing many she was too close to Wall Street:

  "He really did, especially with younger voters, sort of convince them that she was too closely allied with Wall Street… it kind of obscured a lot of the progressive record." (Margaret Talbot, 07:25)

3. Email Scandals, Media Coverage, and Shifting Standards

(08:48–12:03)

• The media’s “scandal calibration” is off, given the dramatically different natures of each candidate’s alleged misdeeds.

• Ben Wallace-Wells: Old rules about what constitutes a political scandal no longer apply:

  "What was a scandal even four years ago pales in comparison to what Trump produces, but it still sort of meets the same old standard.” (Ben Wallace-Wells, 11:00)

• NBC's Matt Lauer is criticized for focusing on Clinton’s emails during a commander-in-chief forum while Trump’s issues receive less scrutiny.

4. Conspiracies, Health Scares, and the Trump-Clinton Fringes

(12:34–14:57)

• How conspiracy theories filter into “mainstream” coverage; Clinton’s health episode is one example.

• Wallace-Wells notes it’s normal for media to question a candidate’s physical fitness, but Clinton’s perceived secrecy fuels suspicion:

  “There has been a tendency of the press to reach for Clinton scandals, both because there’s a longstanding feeling among reporters that there are some unsavory things going around… and also because of the Clintons’ habit of privacy and self defensiveness." (Ben Wallace-Wells, 13:15)

• Osnos warns against focusing solely on "the message" and missing underlying social divides:

  “Our focus on the message… can distract us from what is a deeper and in some ways much harder problem to solve.” (Evan Osnos, 14:40)

5. Can Clinton Win Over Young and Sanders Voters?

(14:57–16:13)

• Talbot discusses Bernie’s role in rallying young voters for Clinton and his influence on policy shifts, especially around college affordability.

6. Trump’s Health and Press Responsibility

(16:14–19:03)

• Trump’s appearance on Dr. Oz is described as a media “performance” rather than genuine transparency.

• Osnos notes that the electorate often doesn’t expect candidates to fulfill extreme promises, but historically, most campaign pledges are enacted:

  "Presidents do an overwhelming majority of the things that they say they would do on the campaign trail. They do more than 70% of the things that they promised." (Evan Osnos, 17:48)

• Journalists should grill candidates on specifics, not just sound bites.

7. The Unasked (and Unanswerable) Questions

(21:43–23:32)

• Talbot argues debates should challenge candidates with more substantive questions—on the Constitution, on policy specifics, and on the foundations of their slogans or past statements.

  "Answer the question of what specific era he's talking about when he says, ‘make America great again.’ When was it great, and why?" (Margaret Talbot, 22:30) "For Hillary...I would actually like to hear more about her specific vision for some of these important issues...including climate change." (Margaret Talbot, 23:08)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On media bias and mistakes:

  “This point about being smug is absolutely crucial.” (Dorothy Wickenden, 04:53)

• Bernie Sanders on focus and the press:

  “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” (Bernie Sanders, 08:03)

• On the failure to scrutinize Trump earlier:

  “[Republican candidates] during all of the primary season were basically taking the attitude that Trump was going to be a flash in the pan…but they didn’t want to alienate his voters, so they were pretty much going to give him a free ride, and they did.” (Margaret Talbot, 21:55)

• On campaign promises:

  "Presidents do an overwhelming majority of the things that they say they would do on the campaign trail. They do more than 70% of the things that they promised." (Evan Osnos, 17:48)

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Segment Timestamps

• 01:16 — Episode opens; discussion of media surprise at 2016 campaigns.
• 03:08–04:53 — Osnos analyzes media’s misreading of Trump voters and broader social currents.
• 05:15–07:53 — Talbot recounts the rise of Sanders and shifting millennial allegiance.
• 08:03–08:48 — Sanders’ famous “damn emails” debate quote.
• 09:56–12:03 — The effect of partisan media watchdogs and evolving scandal standards.
• 12:34–14:57 — How conspiracy theories and health rumors are covered.
• 14:57–16:13 — Clinton’s efforts to draw Sanders voters with policy adjustments.
• 16:14–19:03 — The Trump-Dr. Oz stunt and core press responsibilities.
• 19:37–21:43 — Undercoverage of climate change and shifts in the media’s investigative focus.
• 21:43–23:33 — What the upcoming debates should address.

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Closing Thoughts

The episode paints a picture of a press corps caught off guard by an electorate in flux, struggling to keep pace with the country’s changing expectations and the outsize impact of outsider candidacies. The panel emphasizes the urgent need for media to move beyond soundbite-driven coverage and commit to substantive, fact-based scrutiny—both for the sake of informing voters and sustaining democracy.

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Transcript

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. It's Friday, September 16th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. No one has been more surprised by this campaign than the members of the press assigned to cover it. Here's Anderson Cooper interviewing Donald Trump in July 2015, before the start of the primaries when there were 16 Republican candidates.

[Anderson Cooper]

I think I know the answer to this question. Would you accept a vice presidential position if it didn't work out for you for president? I mean, you're doing great right now, but I'm doing. But it's not that I wouldn't. It's not. It's a phenomenal position. You know, when I think it's a very powerful position, it's not for me. I love what I'm doing. I'd rather be doing this. I have all over the world. I'm not doing this to be president. I'm doing this to make America great again. You rule out the idea running as an independent party candidate or third party candidate. If for some reason you don't get the GOP nomination. Everybody asks me to do it. I have had so many people saying, would you run as an independent? Would you run as a third party candidate?

[Ben Wallace Wells]

And.

[Anderson Cooper]

And I think, you know, they see the kind of votes I get a lot of votes.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

A few of our own political reporters are here to discuss how we ended up with two presidential candidates whom voters deeply distrust and dislike. Evan Osnos, Margaret Talbot, and Ben Wallace Wells. Welcome, everyone.

[Margaret Talbot]

Hi.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

Hi.

[Evan Osnos]

Hi, Dorothy.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Evan, let's start with you. Recriminations are flying among members of the press and the party establishment about how this race has been covered. Just this morning, I read a story saying that Clinton's campaign was dismayed to discover that many voters still now two months before Election Day and after she has spent a quarter century in public life, know almost nothing about her. I think at this point, people could rattle off any number of things they've learned about Donald Trump. So how is this possible?

[Evan Osnos]

Well, I've been thinking a lot about this recently. The question of what we really absorb when. When we listen to voters that are part of, for instance, the Trump phenomenon. A year ago, I wrote a piece about his supporters, including some of the people who are white nationalists, or as we've come to call them more recently, the alt right. And afterward, one of the white nationalists who I wrote about was unhappy with the story, which was not terribly surprising, and he blogged about his objections. And, you know, frankly, at the time, I really didn't pay much attention to it. Some of that was because it was a little bit unsettling. You know, he had posted online the make and model of my car. And I just didn't really think about it in terms of what it actually said about journalism. And then recently, it's been coming back to me a lot more because in particular, there was a point that he made in which he said, quote, this was blinkered, self congratulatory journalism. And as he put it, New Yorker readers can feel smug without even reading the article. Mr. Trump appeals to losers, just as they always thought, unquote. And actually, there's some truth to what he says there. You know, I was writing about something that I believed at the time was marginal. What I failed to understand was that there's a continuum, that a version of an idea which is bigoted in its most extreme form can also exist in other lesser, more mainstream and more meaningful versions. On a much broader, broader basis, there are many people who are feeling some version of the loss and the fear and the frustration that Trump identified that I think was something that I wish I had understood earlier.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

This point about being smug is absolutely crucial. And I want to turn to you, Margaret, because you've covered the Bernie Sanders campaign right from the beginning and have been closely watching that phenomenon throughout. So last fall, the mainstream media had another shock, this time from the left. Here's MSNBC's Chris Hayes speaking with Bernie Sanders in September before the Iowa caucus.

[Bernie Sanders]

We got to start creating a government that works for all people. We got to create millions of jobs. We have to make public colleges and universities tuition free. We ought to control the outrageous increases in prescription drug costs. We have to have pay equity for women workers. We have to rebuild our infrastructure. All of those ideas I knew in my heart were going to resonate with the American people, but I did not believe that they would resonate quite so fast.

[Anderson Cooper]

But do they resonate with the American people, or do they resonate with a very small subsection of Democratic primary voters who are liberals and they share love Bernie Sanders, and they're watching us right now, or do they resonate more broadly?

[Bernie Sanders]

Chris, don't become an inside the Beltway.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

I'm not.

[Anderson Cooper]

I asked that partly tongue in cheek, Senator.

[Bernie Sanders]

You know that. All right, come on out to our rallies. And you know what you're going to find? You're going to find thousands of working people, thousands of, of young people who want to see fundamental changes in the way we do economics and politics in this country.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So, Margaret, you are out there with these, with these Bernie voters, and you also live and work inside the Beltway. What were you seeing at that time?

[Margaret Talbot]

Well, I think last summer when I was going to a lot of the rallies, and what I mean is summer of 2015, you know, I think it really took me and a lot of people aback to see the incredible enthusiasm for, you know, aging Vermont socialist who many people underestimated the lasting power of and the ability particularly to attract millennial voters and to really attract a lot of enthusiasm with a sense of kind of a vision and an overarching argument that the Hillary campaign, for many reasons, doesn't seem to have been able to put across. And I think we also probably underestimated the lasting damage that he could do to her. And I think he did because he really did, especially with younger voters, sort of convince them that she was too closely allied with Wall street to wealthy donors, you know, the speeches to Goldman Sachs, her support for tpp, and it kind of obscured a lot of the progressive record that I think she legitimately can lay claim to that younger voters don't necessarily know about it. It has stuck around and you see it now in the high levels of support among young voters, particularly 18 to 24 year olds, apparently for Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, the third party candidates.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

During one of the Democratic primary debates, Sanders uttered what will probably still remain at the end of all of this, one of the most memorable statements of the campaign.

[Bernie Sanders]

The secretary is right and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Thank you.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

Me too.

[Bernie Sanders]

Me too. The middle class, Anderson. And let me say something about the media as well. I go around the country, talk to a whole lot of people. Middle class of this country is collapsing. We have 27 million people living in poverty. We have massive wealth and income inequality. Our trade policies have cost us millions of decent jobs. The American people want to know whether we're going to have a democracy or an oligarchy as a result of Citizens United. Enough of the emails. Let's talk about the real issues facing America.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

But Ben, then last week NBC's Matt Lauer was still at it during a New York City forum about serving as commander in Chief.

[Matt Lauer]

The word judgment has been used a lot around you, Secretary Clinton, over the last year and a half and in particular concerning your use of your personal email and server to communicate while you were Secretary of State. You've said it's a mistake. You said you made not the best choice. You were communicating on highly sensitive topics. Why wasn't it more than a mistake? Why wasn't it disqualifying?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Clinton replied to that with a kind of mind numbing explanation of how government documents are classified. So Ben, this time Lauer was skewered by his colleagues and by the pro Clinton machine Media Matters. In particular this organization run by David Brock, whom she at one time regarded as part of the vast right wing conspiracy during Bill Clinton's presidency. Now Media Matters is leading the charge for her campaign. Tell us a little bit about these groups on both sides and how they've influenced the way we cover the two candidates.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

Well, yeah, I think in certain ways they're a little bit of anachronism. They've given way in some ways to the world of Super PACs. So Brock's organization, Media Matters, which has their similar organizations on the right, exists basically to check what is perceived as conservative bias in the media. And so every day if you're a reporter, you get absolutely bombarded with releases from Media Matters about things that conservative politicians said on talk radio or ways in which Fox News is spinning the latest statement from the president or whatever it is. I think it's interesting, though, that Brock himself is less involved with media matters these days, and he is running a PAC in which, among other things, he is offering to pay for dirt on Trump. The Hillary Clinton campaign is not really running against a media that's inflected by conservative ideas. You know, you go out on a stump and you see Hillary and Tim Kaine, and every three seconds they're saying, did you see this story in Newsweek this morning, you know, uncovering something nasty about Trump. What they're struggling with is the particular problems that Clinton herself has presented, but the Clinton foundation, influence of the emails. And in a different election, if you think about the standards to which we held, for instance, Mitt Romney, the things that made him seem unqualified to be president, which seemed extremely quaint by those standards, what Clinton has done in this election, the criticisms of her, I think the issue is, you know, we have another presidential candidate who is being sued for fraud over Trump University, a very credible lawsuit, has associated himself extensively with the Russian dictator. And so I think part of what we're seeing is just a calibration problem with the media. What was a scandal even four years ago pales in comparison to what Trump produces, but it still sort of meets the same old standard. And I think the media in some ways has just sort of struggled to meet that difference.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

America is changing, and so is the world.

[Bernie Sanders]

But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

[Evan Osnos]

I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.

[Bernie Sanders]

Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.

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Every weekday, we'll bring you a story.

[Katie Drummond]

From this intersection where the world and America meet.

[Bernie Sanders]

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Ben, what about the fringes and how some of the most the craziest conspiracy theories make their way into solid reporting and to a certain extent, have to. So the bout with pneumonia is a perfect example. And the clips playing endlessly on social media and TV of her buckling as she left the 911 ceremonies, I think.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

That it seemed a conspiracy theory when it was just a slur against an older woman, that she struggled with her health, I think, legitimately. I think if a presidential candidate was captured on video, stumbling, having to cancel events, that reporters would have focused on that. I mean, these people are not just running under the banner of ideas and coalitions. They're also putting their person forward. Though I think that there is there has been a tendency of the press to reach for Clinton scandals, both because there's a longstanding feeling among reporters that there are some unsavory things going around around the Clintons, and also because of the Clinton's habit of sort of privacy and self defensiveness. I think that in this case that what happened basically was that she got sick and that, you know, in more or less any circumstance there would have been questions raised about, you know, physical fitness, that the Clinton partisans were very aggressively pushing for Bernie Sanders health records at one point during the primary campaign. It's just a thing that is, I think, an irreducible part of the fact that there is a person running for president, a physical person, and not just a party or an idea.

[Evan Osnos]

And part of this is that when we talk about Clinton, often, what we focus on, and rightly, I think legitimately, are the problems in the message, quote, unquote, the sort of political technology of how she's reaching out to people, the fact that she has used these euphemisms and has always kept herself at a remove. But I think that in a sense, our focus on the message, which after all, is the part that we consume, we miss something which is even more basic, which is the plain sociological fact that the country is just vastly more divided than it was in 2008. So I sometimes think that the focus on messages can distract us from what is a deeper and in some ways much harder problem to solve.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Margaret this then brings us back to Bernie Sanders, who miraculously captured the youth vote. How is Clinton going to go about capturing some of those voters who are still resistant to the whole idea of Hillary Clinton?

[Margaret Talbot]

Bernie is going to appear for her. He actually did one appearance, I think the first since the convention in New Hampshire on Labor Day. And then both he and Elizabeth Warren are going to be in Ohio this coming weekend. And so I think we'll probably see more of him out on the trail. He apparently spent the month of August writing a book which is going to be coming out after the election. And, you know, he did have some influence on pushing her to the left, getting her to adopt certain positions. And one of the ones he worked on with her is one that has specific appeal for younger people, which has to do with college affordability. And apparently the Hillary people have released some statistics showing that, you know, a vast majority of families in Ohio would qualify for that. So he's going to talk about that. So I think it'll be that kind of appeal to those kind of issues. And I think the tuition issue was actually a really big poll for younger voters. So, you know, I think that we'll be hearing a lot about that from him.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Trump went on TV. He chose to speak with Dr. Oz. They were sort of a well matched television pair. Tell us a little bit about what he has released about his own health and whether that will continue to be enough.

[Evan Osnos]

Well, Donald Trump, as we know, would be the oldest first term president ever elected. He would be seven months older than Ronald Reagan was when he was inaugurated in 1981. And Trump has for months avoided giving any kind of serious description of his health. He produced at one point, as we all know now, a doctor's note that was just widely panned. It was mocked. It was pretty clear that either it had been written by the campaign and signed by the doctor, or it had been generated in the sort of carnival barker language.

[Margaret Talbot]

Yeah. What did it say? Astonishingly, he was a man in astonishingly excellent health.

[Evan Osnos]

Just wasn't a medical document in any real way. And so then he figured out a way here in the final stretch of the campaign to release some health information on his own terms. And he went on to the Dr. Oz Show. And on the show they did this kind of performance where Trump produced his medical results and then the doctor read and responded to what he described as sort of indications of excellent health. This is not a substitute for what has been the precedent in modern presidential elections, which is that the American public deserve to understand who it is that they're electing and what kind of health that person has. So we're sort of at a point now in the campaign when something has shifted. You know, one of the things that we've been thinking about is let's stop pretending that Donald Trump is not going to be the president that he says he's going to be. One of the things that comes through very clearly when you look at the polls about Donald Trump is that even among his supporters, they believe that he would not do a lot of the things that he says he would do. So, for instance, even after more than a year of talking about building a wall, only about 40% of Republicans believe that he would do so. But what you find is that if you, in fact, look over the course of presidencies, historically, presidents do an overwhelming majority of the things that they say they would do on the campaign trail. They do more than 70% of the things that they promised. And I think this is where the responsibility of the press comes in to begin to get away from the questions about the message and whether it's connecting and to really grill these candidates on their basic command of the facts of policy and the facts of the world that they would inhabit. And what we've discovered is that whenever Donald Trump is questioned about the most elementary details of being president, it turns out that Donald Trump is not, in effect, prepared. And that's the most basic responsibility for the media, and that's the thing we haven't been doing.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And what about releasing his taxes?

[Evan Osnos]

I would have thought months ago that this would have eventually produced his taxes. And at the same time, the American public has not so far lost interest in Donald Trump because of that. And it puts the responsibility on journalists to say it doesn't matter, that the public doesn't seem to care all that much. This is a basic requirement of running for president, and it needs to be at every moment when he is put in front of the press. It has to be raised, and he has to be asked over and over and over and over again.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Ben, one issue that has been surprisingly undercover is global warming, which is arguably the biggest issue confronting all of us. Would Clinton approach this any differently than Obama?

[Ben Wallace Wells]

I don't think so. I think it's right in her sweet spot. I think she likes to see herself as pushing a kind of consensus expert agenda, and she likes to see herself as a diplomat, as sort of finding, you know, international solutions. And that's sort of right where the climate change debate is right now. I think it's a good issue for her to be strong on. But again, there's been a, you know, somewhat little explication of her views. One thing I would say about why this issue and others like it haven't received more focus and attention is that there is, within the media, I think, a kind of complexity of roles. The media does play a civic role in sort of interrogating people who are running for office and trying to figure out what they're about and what they would do in office. But there's also a kind of anthropological role. One thing that's happened in this election is that the country looks a lot different than we thought it did. Not just in the media, but everybody. There are very few people who are not surprised at how much his sort of anger, his nativism, his naked racism at points has caught on. And so one of the big lines of inquiry that all of us in the press have been pursuing, you know, is that it's who are the Trump voters and what are they about, and why are they responding to him? And in a way, that has sort of sucked a lot of the oxygen away from the other roles that the press plays. And then one last thing I'd say about this is that a lot of the role we expect to be played in scrutinizing, checking, understanding that a person is serious, understanding what they believe, making sure they're not being sued for fraud, we sort of expect primary voters to do some of that. If we knew everything that reporters have been uncovered about Donald Trump, if we knew all of that, we would have thought there's no way he will be the nominee. And yet he was. And so that was interesting, and that produced a kind of anthropological interest that maybe, you know, overshadowed or drowned out the specific one.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Margaret, the first presidential debate is less than two weeks away. Do you have a question that you would ask one of the candidates that could really pin him or her down?

[Margaret Talbot]

Well, yeah, because I just wanted to say, as an addendum to what Ben was saying, that besides the sort of media perhaps failing to hold Trump's feet to the fire early on in the way they should have, we have to remember that the other Republican candidates were, during all of the primary debates and during all of the primary season, were basically taking the attitude that Trump was going to be a flash in the pan, but they didn't want to alienate his voters, so they were going to pretty much give him a free ride, and they did. So there are lots of things that he was not asked then that I hope he will be asked in these debates. And I mean, one of them is just anything to do with the Constitution of the United States or how the government works, anything that asks him to actually answer those questions, and there could be a variety of them. Another one I'd like to hear from him is just answer the question of what specific era he's talking about when he says, make America great again. When was it great, and why? And another is to walk him through everything he's ever said about birtherism, because he still has not completely backed off of it. And he is now in a statement, attributing it to Hillary Clinton. So I think he just needs to be taken through each step of that. And so I think verbatim reading back of his statements is a really useful thing to do. Megyn Kelly was one of the most effective questioners when she listed off those things he said about women, fat pigs, et cetera. And for Hillary, I guess, because I feel like we have gone endlessly over the damn emails. And, you know, not that it isn't an issue, not that it wasn't worth discussing, but I would actually like to hear more about her specific vision for some of these important issues that we're talking about, her specific plans, including climate change.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Thank you all so much. Evan Osnos, Margaret Talbot, and Ben Wallace Wells are staff writers. This has been the Political Scene from the New Yorker. You can find more political analysis and commentary on new yorker.com or on the New Yorker Apps available at no extra charge from the App Store and Google Play. And you can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app. The Political Scene is produced by Alex Barron and Jill Duboff. For newyorker.com I'm Dorothy Wickenden.

[Katie Drummond]

What the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global Editorial Director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.

[Evan Osnos]

I want a shark that that eats.

[Katie Drummond]

The Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.

[Evan Osnos]

So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.

[Katie Drummond]

Week we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False.

[Margaret Talbot]

Tell me more.

[Katie Drummond]

Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

From.

[Margaret Talbot]

PRX.