On the Media

Last Friday, the Washington state Attorney General sued Kalshi, the prediction market platform where users can place bets on real world events, such as the number of deportations this year or the winner of Survivor 50. Washington’s civil lawsuit is now one of twenty waged against Kalshi, and follows on the heels of Arizona’s Attorney General filing criminal charges against the platform earlier this month. Prediction markets generated almost $64 billion in trading volume last year, up 400% from 2024. And when the US and Israel initiated strikes on Iran in early February, Kalshi users took to the platform in droves, spending $54 million on “Ali Khamenei out as Supreme Leader?” during the first week of the war. 

Prediction markets are just an intensification of a process that’s been slowly transforming our relationship to our bodies, our careers, our hobbies, our lives – everything is now saturated with numbers, and we can’t stop counting them and tracking them and comparing them. But what do we lose out on when we become obsessed with numbers or lines moving up or down on a graph, when we turn aspects of real life into games? Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen turned to actual games, like Twister and The Mind, to root out the answer in his latest book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. For the midweek pod, host Micah Loewinger speaks to him about the dangers of scoring systems and metrics in the context of real life, why those same scoring systems are so freeing in games, and what the philosophy of games can reveal about the meaning of life.

 

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A judge ruled that the Pentagon’s recent restrictions on the press are unconstitutional. On this week’s On the Media, hear how Pete Hegseth’s ever-changing media policies have made it harder to cover military actions abroad. Plus, how a tenacious journalist used access to the Pentagon building to expose war crimes during the Vietnam War. 

[01:00] Host Micah Loewinger sits down with Dan Lamothe, who covers the US military and Pentagon for the Washington Post, to talk about leaving the Pentagon press corps alongside reporters from major news outlets in October of last year, after refusing to sign onto stringent new rules on how they could do their reporting.  

[09:45] Micah talks with Anna Merlan, senior reporter at Mother Jones, on the cast of right wing influencers and conspiracists now staffing the Pentagon press corps. Plus, Micah interviews content creator Cam Higby, a member of the new press corps, about why he agreed to the Pentagon’s restrictions on access.

[33:23] Micah speaks with Laura Poitras, a journalist and filmmaker whose past works include CitizenFour, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, and Risk, to discuss her latest documentary, Cover-Up, which chronicles the life of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh and his ferocious drive to uncover government wrongdoing, and what today’s press corps can learn from him.

 Further reading / watching:

“Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all,” by Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima

“‘Signalgate’ report contradicts Hegseth’s claim of ‘total exoneration’,”by Dan Lamothe

“Meet the New Pentagon Press Corps,” by Anna Merlan

Cover-Up, directed and produced by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

This week, the Idaho Senate is considering a bill that would block transgender people from using public bathrooms that conform with their gender identity, escalating the state’s preexisting trans bathroom ban in public schools. A first offense could land someone in prison for a year. This bill is just the latest in a devastating cascade of legal actions stripping away trans rights. For the midweek pod, host Brooke Gladstone speaks with Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney and a Clinical Instructor at Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, about why she's been looking toward a legal framework invented in the wake of Nazi Germany called "the dual state" to better understand this moment. 

 

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President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are demanding “more patriotic” coverage of the widening war in Iran. On this week’s On the Media, hear how the Pentagon is cracking down on its publication, Stars and Stripes. Plus, fake AI images of the Iran war are proliferating, and they're getting more convincing.

[01:00] Host Micah Loewinger breaks down the calls from the Trump administration for the media to produce “patriotic” coverage of the war in Iran. Plus, a closer look at the reporting by legacy outlets with journalist Minnah Arshad.  Arshad analyzed The New York Times’ early coverage of the war, and found that Iranian victims were underrepresented. Next, Micah sits down with scholar Mahsa Alimardani to discuss fake AI images of the Iran conflict, and how AI detection tools are being used to discredit authentic footage.

[22:30] Micah speaks with Samantha Gross, the director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution, to dissect the developing energy crisis being caused by the disruption of oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz.

[37:54] Host Brooke Gladstone talks to Erik Slavin, Editor-in-Chief of Stars and Stripes, the independent, award-winning newspaper that has served the military for roughly a century, about the Pentagon’s plan to crack down on their reporting and refocus their content away from “woke distractions.”

 Further reading / watching:

“First Draft: How the Media Manufactures Consent for War,” by Minnah Arshad and Andrew Perez

“How AI Content Detection is Being Weaponized in the Iran War,” by Shirin Anlen and Mahsa Alimardani

“The Fake Images of a Real Strike on a School,” by Mahsa Alimardani

“Why Iran’s disruption of the Strait of Hormuz matters,” by Samantha Gross, Caitlin Talmadge, and Melanie W. Sisson

“Pentagon says it will ‘refocus’ Stars and Stripes content,” by Corey Dickstein

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Brooke Gladstone talks with Pasha Talankin, star and co-creator of the new documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin. Pasha is a high school teacher who made an incredibly vivid and detailed account of Putin’s efforts to indoctrinate schoolchildren in Russia. 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].