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Reading through the descriptions of the episodes of this podcast it seems a lot like they start with a conclusion and then confirmation bias themselves (and eve
by imgabe 3y ago
Reading through the descriptions of the episodes of this podcast it seems a lot like they start with a conclusion and then confirmation bias themselves (and everyone else who already agrees with them). Maybe not the most objective source.
- buildbot 3y agoTry listening to it
- imgabe 3y agoIt’s co-hosted by the guys from The Dollop, who I’ve listened to quite a lot. They’re funny and entertaining, but they’re comedians not historians. Their whole schtick is just reading some book and incredulously saying “holy shit” about whatever it says, without any critical analysis. Edit: and there’s nothing wrong with that! Just recognize when something is entertainment vs. trying to be objective.
- buildbot 3y agoNo, they are guests. They are not the people who did the research! Robert Evans is an excellent journalist.
- jjeaff 3y agoin my experience, this is basically how all podcasts and documentaries seem to be made.
- boppo1 3y agoTry Age of Napoleon. Mentioned the reasons in my last post.
- imgabe 3y agoWhich makes it such a shame that people throw them around like they are an authoritative source of anything. It’s literally just some guy who read a book and has a microphone. It’s as good as whatever book they read.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoPodcasts, in general, are not made to cater to bonafide genius intellectuals. Maybe every so often a conversation within a podcast episode contains some extraordinary analytical insight not found elsewhere, but to expect an entire series of episodes to average out to anything close to that is too high of an expectation. That being said, it is probably correct to ignore most of them.
- mostly_lurks 3y ago> Maybe every so often a conversation within a podcast episode contains some extraordinary analytical insight not found elsewhere Much like comments written on the internet. > That being said, it is probably correct to ignore most of them. See above.
- AYBABTME 3y agoPodcasts, like live news, radio talk shows, and other scheduled throughput based media, have to fill time with content. If there's nothing intelligent to say, they say stuff anyways.
- whycome 3y agoNah. Podcasts are one of the few mediums that don’t have set lengths. The one here goes to 6 parts because of the volume of material. And often I’ve heard podcasts do multiple episodes in one. There’s no time they’re trying to achieve as there’s no standard.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoThat's mostly true, except for the big ones that have signed deals, but even then a lot of filler sentences, filler talk, etc., happens regularly in the podcast episodes I've heard.
- jjeaff 3y agoThe huge advantage of podcasts over most other forms of media is that they don't have to cut things down into tiny bite sized pieces. Many podcasts will get down into the nitty gritty details of things that the news never will. I think it's much closer to long form journalism than television news. Although, obviously, podcasts can take any form and some are geared toward that latter rather than former. But the ones I am most drawn to are those where actual experts pour over the data in great detail. This Week in Virology was my go to during the pandemic, hosted by a virologist, and immunologist, and an infectious disease doctor. You'll notice that many if not most of the loudest "expert" voices during the pandemic were speaking outside their area of expertise. With the exception of Fauci, of course.
- verandaguy 3y agoBe that as it may -- and I haven't listened to the podcast -- but there's very compelling evidence of his responsibility, or at least complicity for war crimes throughout southeast Asia during the Nixon administration amounting to civilian deaths numbering in the tens of thousands, conservatively. The greatest irony here is that he managed to make it to 100.
- seanhunter 3y agoAs the classical saying goes "Those whom the gods love die young". Tom Lehrer retired when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, because he said satire was dead at that point[1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jul/31/artsfeatures1 https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jul/31/artsfeatures...
- hulitu 3y ago> The greatest irony here is that he managed to make it to 100. "Only the good die young, only evil seems to live forever". Iron Maiden
- seanhunter 3y agoYou're expecting a podcast titled "Behind the Bastards" to be an objective source?
- imgabe 3y agoThe podcast, no. But if a comment is going to offer a link with the conceit of “consume this to fully understand who this person was” it would be good if the source were not something with the explicitly stated thesis of “hey, this guy’s a bastard”. I mean, you don’t even need to listen to it to know what the conclusion is going to be.
- shadowgovt 3y agoOn some topics there is no such thing as a rational centrist view.
- imgabe 3y agoThere is always a rational view, whether it falls as centrist on the political ideology spectrum of the times is immaterial.
- shadowgovt 3y agoIndeed, which is to say, it is possible the rational view here is the man who facilitated the rise of the Khmer Rouge by testing an entire country as collateral damage is, well, a bastard.
- imgabe 3y agoMaybe. Maybe the alternatives available at the time were believed to result in something 10x worse than the Khmer Rouge. Would he still be a bastard then? Or someone who had to make a hard choice among terrible options? I don't know, for the record. I'm just pointing out that it doesn't sound like a reasoned consideration of the evidence taking into account the historical context. It sounds like someone who thought "I bet Henry Kissinger was a bastard", then found a book that says "Henry Kissinger was a bastard!" and then made a podcast saying "See? I knew it!"
- nielsbot 3y agoDoes it have to be objective? Also, perhaps the glowing eulogies are the biased ones--objective means a fact-based honest look at his terrible legacy, not erasing it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 3y agoA podcast like this is not "spontaneous", they will have a rough script Nobody is doing this kind of podcast "on the fly"
- bbor 3y agoI mean, it’s not science, it’s politics. The podcast isn’t trying to present an argument, but rather convey facts to an already trusting audience. This feels off the mark
- makeitdouble 3y agoAsking half rethorically, how would these descriptions be different if they were fully objective and the guy was a really horrible person ? In general a podcast series will be started after the hosts have researched the subject, and decided they have an angle to present it to their public. Following them while doing their research could be interesting at small doses, but the number of absolute non stories or boring conclusions would be staggering and they'd need to be crazy entertaining by themselves to keep a whole podcast going on that pace. It's harsh to fault them for having an opinion on the subject they dug to the end, and a conclusion already made at the time they start recording the series.
- boppo1 3y ago>In general a podcast series will be started after the hosts have researched the subject, and decided they have an angle to present it to their public. Following them while doing their research could be interesting at small doses, but the number of absolute non stories or boring conclusions would be staggering and they'd need to be crazy entertaining by themselves to keep a whole podcast going on that pace. This is false. Age of Napoleon is quite good at presenting the factual history of its topic and then weighing dual interpretations of events. He highlights that something is his opinion when he gives it. The result is a wildly engaging podcast. Hell, he's an avowed Marxist, which is a belief system I find repugnant. However, other than one or two clearly labeled bonus interview episodes, his views are AFAICT, totally absent from his presentation of history. He strives very hard to not tell you what to think. It is disheartening that you believe information must be presented with an agenda.
- makeitdouble 3y agoI never heard of the Age of Napoleon podcast, seems to be a series by a Texas resident revisiting Napoleon's history after getting fascinated by the subject. There's a ton of distance between the author and the subject, it's about something they deeply enjoy and decided to dedicate more than a hundred episode to, and I'm not sure how much being Marxists matters here, when Marx started becoming famous after Napoleon died. That's a lot different from discussing a politician of your own country who's still alive and untried at the time you do your podcast series.
- n9 3y agoYou might listen to the podcasts. They are good and they are well researched. Listen: I met Kissinger a few times and spent a few decades of my life working with foriegn policy wonks. He was a monster beyond compare. And I'll just add this in. When I was 24 I got a job at the New York Times working on the tech team that would launch nytimes.com. The "web editor" was one Bernard Gwertzman. Look him up. He was the foreign desk editor of the paper of record for decades. He made his name reporting on the Vietnam war. Would you like to know who his best friend was in 1996 when I met him? Henry Kissinger. He had lunch with him every wednesday at the Harvard Club. Having read Manufacturing Consent more than once I was flabbergasted. If Chomsky had known this... Anyway, he and I were the first ones to show up for a meeting one time and I asked him how he and Henry K had met. He leaned over and said (with a literal wink) "while I was reporting on Vietnam, but don't tell anyone!"... said the man who among many other things 1. reported that we were not bombing Cambodia, 2. Supported Pinochet and 3. didn't report on the East Timor genocide. All policies that were 100% Kissinger. Rest in piss. Both of them.
- xkekjrktllss 3y agoRest in piss indeed! Good riddance!
- varjag 3y agoIf Chomsky had known this... Chomsky have denied genocide that Kissinger helped perpetrate, so he could have known.
- boppo1 3y agoDo you think the NYT's war coverage (Ukraine & Israel) is still so slanted, or have they improved?
- jules-jules 3y agoThink how they reported Iraq and you have your answer.
- MikePlacid 3y agoI do not know about Israel, but I can read both Russian and Ukrainian. And there is a pretty objective test: read a Russian president’s statement - see how it is reported, read a Ukrainian president’s statement - see how it is reported. Note: I can’t verify facts in the field, but I can read the statement and see how it is reported. So, samples: 1. After pro-Russian forces achieved a major victory in August 2014, the Russian president issued a rather consolation-seeking statement, between other thing “asking” pro-Russian forces to release prisoners. This was reported as a belligerent statement. 2. At approximately the same time the Ukrainian president issued a statement basically justifying war crimes as means to win the war, on the lines: “our children will go to schools, and separatists’ children will be hiding in basements - that’s how we will win this war”. This was not reported at all. Again, these things are easy to check - just read / listen to the original. Still, the media are lying about them. What do you think they are doing reporting things that are not that easy to check?
- nyc_data_geek1 3y agoYou're judging a book by its cover, more or less.
- imgabe 3y agoThat’s why they put all those pictures and descriptions on book covers.
- truculent 3y agoWhat exactly would an “objective” source look like?
- boppo1 3y ago'attempted objectivity' is better. It would include: - narrator reveals his convictions at the start - focuses on things that physically happened - weigh dual/multiple interpretations and views of said events from relevant factions, attempting the greatest charity with the one(s) opposed to the initially revealed convictions.