Journos

Plumbing the Depths of the Teenage Mind w/Denis Barron, MFT

In this episode, Stephen (who, by the way, used to be a high school teacher) strikes off on his own to discover what went wrong during his wayward teenage years. Well, not really. But he does track down San Francisco-based therapist Denis Barron, MFT to learn more about what makes young minds tick. 
Barron has spent his career working with adolescents, and has some great insights on everything from the reasons teens do the crazy shit they do, to the apparent evolutionary benefits of ADHD. He also gives some great advice on what developmental milestones are most important for adolescent kids these days, along with ideas about what we can do to support teenagers in this weird, modern world. 
Oh! And if you missed our appearance on The J.V. Club with Janet Varney, in which we share some of what we learned in this interview, you can check that out here. (And if you didn't hear our episode talking to Janet, why, scroll back through the feed a few episodes.)
JOURNOS is produced by Dave Coates

Pay No Attention to the Story About that Blown-Up Russian Gas Pipeline!

In this episode, we ask: Must a story be told? What happens if it isn't? Could we be better off?
Brandon & Stephen are somewhat boggled by the existence of a story that seems out of journalism's primordial past. Not a "man bites dog" story, but an even more ancient piece of news: "dog bites man." We consider a story about how, when dogs attack mail carriers, sometimes whole neighborhoods lose delivery service. It seems that, indeed, everything must be made into news eventually.
But — apparently not everything. From postal pith helmets, we look at a story that didn't show up in the Times, the Post, or even the cable-news networks. It's a story about how the U.S. sabotaged a Russian pipeline providing natural gas to Western Europe. Or maybe it didn't? 
What's the saying? "Disinformation is better than no information at all"? (That's not a saying.)
In early February, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published a post on Substack that set this whole thing in motion. Hersh has broken huge stories in the past — about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, about torture at Abu Ghraib — so it's just ... weird that the legacy media didn't pick it up, if only to refute it.
That's what we wrestle with in this episode: Hersh's story, why it was ignored, and how we citizens should think about and respond to stories in which we aren't sure about any of it. Turns out, it's an act of faith, and a little something we like to call ...
... brave ignorance.
Put on your pith helmet and some long socks, and let's deliver some answers to that ancient question: How do we know what's safe if we don't even know who bit whom?
JOURNOS is produced by Dave Coates
NOTES
Seymour Hersh talks about his journalism philosophy and responds to the controversy over his latest story
Reuters dutifully relays the government's response to Hersh's story and explains who Hersh is, while the administration digs into denials
Not surprisingly, Russia thinks Hersh is onto something
Here's Hersh's 2004 New Yorker story about torture at Abu Ghraib
Here's Hersh talking Bin Laden on CNN in 2015
Another journalism veteran puts Hersh into perspective in a 2018 NYT review of Hersh's memoir, "Reporter"
For the curious, here are some critiques of Hersh's reporting over the years from Slate, Snopes, Vox, and a sort-of one from NYT Magazine
Hersh's reporting of the last decade is carried by the London Review of Books — controversial in part because the stories are built on only a few, anonymous, sources
CNS News uses the pipeline story to go after NYT ... and shill a Mediterranean cruise with Rick Santorum!
Clips you heard in this episode:
Biden's February 2022 press conference where he says he’d take action against Nord Stream if Russia invades Ukraine (C-SPAN)
A 2022 CNN report on the pipeline explosion
CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviews Hersh about Abu Ghraib in 2004
Hersh on CNN in 2013 to talk about the Syria poison gas attacks
A November 1969 ABC News story on the My Lai massacre
The February 2023 Democracy Now! interview with Hersh
Ding and wave sound FX from InspectorJ under a Creative Commons license

Suddenly, Everyone Pretends to Care About Reindeer Penis

In this episode, Brandon has an idea with multimillion-dollar potential: 
Lowercase numbers!
We, humans of the 21st century, are the proud consumers of such a huge variety of products and experiences that it would make a cornucopia blush. And yet ... we're all just resigned to one single way to write numbers. What's the deal? 
So, yeah, we blow our horn of plenty a bit about the creative and financial opportunities for this new invention ... before Brandon drops the inconvenient truth.
But that gets us thinking about the way cultural innovations come in and out of style, which leads us, naturally, to the announced closure of "the world's best restaurant," Noma.
Where will foodies get their reindeer penis now? ask some of the wags in the media, who wouldn't know a good fricasseed reindeer penis if it came served in a hollowed-out antler enrobed in fermented goji berries. 
News of the closure did allow for some soul-searching: Is this the death of fine dining? No ... but really? Like — fine dining? 
A lot of the hoohah revolved around labor conditions at Noma and elsewhere. But the more existential question lurking under all these stories, and in our own heads: Does it really matter?
Tuck in your locally foraged napkin and sit down for a mental meal with us. When the check comes, don't freak out about the price, but think about how much more interesting those numbers could be.
NOTES
FOX News always has the best comments section // Bon Appetit talks "unsustainability" // Euronews on Noma // A bit from Hulu's "The Bear"

Is There a Right Way to Grow Up? with Janet Varney

(When you finish this episode, listen to us solving the mystery of "teenagers" over at The JV Club!)
Few have plumbed the depths of the teenage experience more deeply than Janet Varney. For 11 years, she's interviewed actors, artists, comedians, scientists, and other creative types for her podcast, The JV Club. She's amassed quite a lot of research on such things as when "a late bloomer" is just "a bloomer," and how exactly one goes about becoming an artist (pro-tip: the wandering path may be the best path, or at least the most typical one).
In this episode, we talk to Janet about how The JV Club dominated the market for the journalism of "awkward teen years" and then embark on our latest Journos-as-a-Service mission ...
... answering the age-old question: What, exactly, is a teenager?
Join us at The JV Club as we delve into that sweaty mystery, with hair sprouting in all sorts of strange places.
And! If you have your own question that needs answering, we'd love to do some journalism at you! Hit us up: journos@journos.net.

Fridays: America’s Dumping Ground for Bad News, Nachos

Before you head off into your weekend, do you pull loved ones aside and tell them you've accidentally polluted a rainforest, or defrauded retirees, or contributed to a massacre? If so, you might be a popular corporation or politician!
In this episode, we're talking about a venerable American institution: the news dump. If you absolutely have to tell the whole nation that you screwed up, why not do it right before everyone's off for the weekend? We're Americans! We love to grill out and forget! By Monday, we're totally refreshed and entirely ignorant of whatever bad thing you did. It's a rebirth for us, and a second chance for you.
To keep you vigilant, even on Saturdays, we look at why the news dump became a thing and how news media on the right and left like to point out when politicians on the other side try to dump their news.
We also ask a big question: how has the news dump changed in the internet age, when the news isn't limited by the publishing cycle anymore and everyone's Very Online?
To get us going, Brandon and Stephen consider the strange case of the man who drove his family off a California cliff, and why everyone was obsessed with pointing out he was driving a Tesla.
Listen in as we explain why TGIF really means "That Goof Is Forgotten."
And: Dammit, don't forget we've launched Journos-as-a-Service! Reach out with your mysteries and questions: journos@journos.net.
 
NOTES
Some takes on the "Tesla driver" story from NBC News, Newsweek, FOX News, and the LA Times
The California Highway Patrol's press release on the incident and another one for comparison
An example of how the headline doesn't usually contain the make/model of the vehicle
The twist! The Tesla may have saved their lives!
Want some walk-n-talks? Here's The West Wing on news dumps, AKA "Take Out the Trash Day."
How Meta tries to bury its news amid other news
A subreddit on Friday news dumps
The Associated Press on a Saudi mass execution
And, the heartwarming story of how a volcano was only trying to create more of Los Angeles
 

Civil F***ing Discourse, feat. Mark Gagliardi & Hal Lublin of We Got This!

(After you listen to this episode, make sure you listen to the second part, over at We Got This!)
How hard is it to have a conversation these days? When it comes to politics, it is very, very hard. It ranks just below "Talking about your grandparents' sex life," according to an official totally made-up Journos survey we just conducted.
So! We need to have a conversation ... about how to have a conversation. The kind that advances civilization rather than one that ends with tears and sharpened sticks. (This is even hard for people who are supposed to be on the same side!)
To talk about civil discourse, we invited Mark Gagliardi & Hal Lublin onto the show. These two are the debate professionals of We Got This! with Mark and Hal, who for more than 400 episodes have settled eternal queries like: what is the best mustard? or who is the best MCU character?
We talk to them about what makes a good debate, confronting your biases, and how to be morally serious while joking around.
AND! In this episode, we launch a new initiative:
Journos-as-a-Service!
What is it? We're offering our journalistic services to podcasts and civilians alike! Got a question that needs answering? a mystery that needs investigating? 
We can help. We're like a detective agency that turns the search into a good story.
Got something for us? Email us: journos@journos.net.
Let the sleuthing begin!

From Stone Carving to ChatGPT: 11,000 Years of Content

It’s the last episode of 2022, and in the spirit of auld lang syne, we’re taking it all the way back to the 9th millennium BCE, to a region found in modern-day Turkey. That’s because it’s there we find what archeologists and artsy types are calling the “oldest known depiction of a narrative scene.” 
But watch out — this neolithic masterpiece is a bit NSFW! Carved into a stone bench in an area likely used for rituals of some kind, cheeky enthusiasts can gaze upon a composition consisting of “a squatting male figure holding a rattle or a snake against a bull, while the right shows a male figure in high relief holding its phallus as leopards approach from both sides,” per ARTnews. It’s a tense and steamy scene that's likely meant to reflect the changing view of our place in the world as we transitioned from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more sedentary one defined by agriculture, and eventually, what starts to look like modern-day civilization. 
But oh, how far we’ve come. The year 2022 has also seen its fair share of advances in content creation, perhaps most emblematically defined by the rise of software that produces AI-generated images, narratives, corporate copy, B-minus level code, and soon, 3D objects. So, as the year comes to a close, we decided to take a look at what this watershed technological moment might mean for the year 2023 and beyond. 
It’s hard not to wonder how that plucky stone-carver 11,000 years ago would react to a bonkers hellscape generated by DALL·E 2 in a matter of seconds. Perhaps he’d worry about his job security as a humble stone carver, as many of today’s copywriters think that they’ll soon be replaced by ChatGPT. Or maybe he’d just shrug, take his union-mandated 10-minute break, and get back to the important business of etching phalluses into benches that will one day be enjoyed by archaeologists, art critics, and tourists alike.
Happy New Year, from all of us at JOURNOS.
JOURNOS is produced by Brandon R. Reynolds and Stephen Jackson. Music by Nathan Readey.

”Killer Robots!” w/ Will Jarrett

As stories go, it was pure, uncut catnip to news media around the world: San Francisco, that bastion of liberal values, was giving police the go-ahead to use KILLER ROBOTS on its enlightened middle-class citizenry of young moms, tech bros, recent immigrants, and people who like to drink coffee on steep hills.
There was hand-wringing on the left and hand-wringing about the left on the right. The majority of stories we saw were about as deep and nuanced as a 1950s sci-fi movie. "Robots! The chrome menace strikes!"
But: What about the rest of the military-grade weapons the police have access to? What about the law that made the whole story public in the first place? What about local journalism?
To dig into these issues, we turned to Will Jarrett, a data reporter for SF nonprofit news outlet Mission Local. Will reported on the Killer Robot Thing when it was only a twinkle in a policy draft, through the blow-by-blow of the Board of Supervisors vote, on up to when it all petered out (for now!), as supervisors balked at the public uproar.
It's a great conversation: We talk about public interest vs. officer safety, transparency laws, the difference between a robot and a drone, and whether the whole circus was, in fact, a success for democracy.
Curl up with your loved ones by the fire and listen to a story about how the true meaning of the holidays may well be ... The Chrome Menace!
Comments? Story ideas? Want to say hi? Email us at journos@journos.net. 
NOTES
Check out all the SFPD's loot! // What's this big police noisemaker? // Some examples of basically identical coverage in The Guardian, FOX NEWS, NY Post // TechCrunch goes down the robot hole 

What’s the Best Way to Brew Meat?

Innovation is weird. One moment, you’re an early human spending half the day chewing raw, possibly tainted meat. The next, you’re sending your prehistoric carp back to the waiter because it “just wasn’t the same as last time.” Let’s talk about technological breakthroughs, and let’s do it through the lens of two stories that dropped, seemingly in sync, the other week. 
Big news in the world of archaeological geochemistry: Scientists in Israel recently discovered evidence that humans have been cooking food for at least 780,000 years. Pretty cool, given that we previously believed we’ve been doing so for a measly 170,000 years. And make no mistake, at the time this discovery was no less high-tech than mapping the genome or — and of equal importance — the invention of the scratch and sniff sticker.
But that was then, and this is now. Just the other day, the FDA gave the FDA-OK to the folks over at Upside Foods, a startup in the business of making lab-grown meat. If you’re not familiar, this is crazy stuff, all enabled by a process in which scientists brew actual animal meat cells in a lab for human consumption. If it all works out, this could be a “learn-to-cook-fish” moment for the species, as proponents of the stuff boast that it can help with everything from saving our air to preventing the next pandemic. 
And don’t get us started on what happens when the 3D-printing technicians start trading notes with the lab-grown meat scientists…
JOURNOS is produced by Brandon R. Reynolds and Stephen Jackson.

The Dirty Truth About Clickbait

We awaken from troubled naps into the existential horror of clickbait. Two stories in particular caught our attention recently: the sad tale of the "World's Dirtiest Man" who lived and died in Iran, and a restaurant for dogs in San Francisco.
Like angry media-addicted teenagers, Brandon & Stephen ask: why were these stories even born? Is it just good old "churnalism" — press releases reformatted into news articles by overworked reporters? Or is there something more sinister at stake, like trying to distract from revolution in the streets?
We all think we know from clickbait, but do we really know clickbait? In this episode, we drill down into the deeper (lack of) meaning in fluff pieces, celebrity news, and human interest stories, and ask why even high-class dogs have to pay top dollar for flavorless food.
Take a quick transitional shower and click through for amazing deals.
Comments? Story ideas? Email us: journos@journos.net
NOTES
Identical takes on the "World's Dirtiest Man" from Yahoo, The Guardian, and Fox News. Plus, Breitbart's hot take on a dog restaurant.
Also, Iranian protests clips from CBC News, DW News, and Sky News.
Audio FX:
"Shower, A.wav" by InspectorJ of Freesound.org
"Fanfare" by bone666138