Bits and Pieces: Weekly Recommendations
The Exiles (podcast edition)
Dear readers,
As a follow-up to the series on scapegoating and cancelation, and to offer more regular, and briefer posts, The Third Ear recommends a few favorites from the recently-canceled or self-exiled. Including voices from mainstream media who’ve discovered Substack to be a healthy supplement to dialogue.
Since (as various proponents of the new audio medium have opined) podcasting has distinct parallels to the democratizing effect of early A.M. radio (Border Blasters, Pirate Radio, Alan Freed, Dewey Phillips, desegregation and rock ‘n’ roll, etc), this edition features only podcasts. But the producers below are all writers as well, and there are many more examples to come, from practitioners of the written word.
I’ll still publish longer digressions on culture, travel and history, beginning with the music of Andalusia next month. But consider this your weekly digest.
Hopefully readers will discover something new.
(Overdue shoutout to Sam Orive for the new Third Ear logos.)
The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling
Megan Phelps-Roper
A revealing history of early social media wars that contributed to the divisiveness of the Trump era, and bipartisan extremism aimed at author J.K Rowling. Featuring extended interviews with Rowling, and her detractors. Produced by The Free Press and Andy Mills, New York Times exiles both. Hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper, a reformed journalist born and raised in, then ‘canceled’ by, the Westboro Baptist Church:
Megan left a life of religious extremism in 2012. She has spent the past decade using her experiences to work with schools on anti-bullying campaigns, with law enforcement organizations investigating deradicalization, and with tech companies on the intersection of safety, free speech, and the value of dialogue across ideological divides. Her journey has been chronicled in The New Yorker, a trio of BBC documentaries, a TED talk, and her memoir Unfollow.
Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em
Nancy Rommelmann and Sara Hepola
Podcast co-hosted by Rommelmann, the NYC (formerly Portland) based journalist profiled in “#witchhunts,” and Dallas-based author and journalist Sara Hepola. The selections below are designed to showcase still more publishers, from a variety of perspectives, in alternative media (that’s how this ecosystem, or counter-culture thrives):
Conversation with Atlantic columnist, and producer of the BBC’s The New Gurus podcast Helen Lewis, about, well, “the new gurus”—the mega influencers of the internet era, and the pitfalls of true belief.
Discussion with the podcast producer of The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, The Daily and Radiolab, and now Reflector, Andy Mills.
Interview with the host of the BBC’s Things Fell Apart—a superb series about the ripple-effects of the early culture wars (beginning with the unlikely inception of the anti-abortion movement in the 1970s), and how we got to 2020. Jonson’s title is (presumably) a nod to 1970s chronicler of cultural chaos Joan Didion, in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (and by extension, an allusion to W.B. Yeats’ poetic meditation on chaos in “The Second Coming”—where “the best lack all conviction, while the worst./Are full of passionate intensity”). I wrote about some of the mind-warping news stories and events reported in and around Portland, OR during the summer of 2020, and whether or not I could trust my own eyes and ears at the time (here); Jonson’s in-depth reporting proves many of these events to be true.
“Dan Savage Gives the World's Best Valentine’s Advice, Then Picks Bone With Nancy”
Back-and-forth with “Savage Love” columnist Dan Savage—the man who coined the term “pegging.” Savage, whose sex-and-LGBTQ-positive advice column for the Seattle Stranger has been syndicated for decades in almost every alt-weekly, and newspapers worldwide, was accused of transphobia, and almost canceled for defending the journalists behind…
Blocked and Reported
Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal
Katie Herzog (formerly of Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger, canceled by her Emerald City LGBTQ community for following the stories of several detransitioners, while also covering the Portland cancelation of Nancy Rommelmann) chronicles some of the wildest, and weirdest, tales from the world of self-publishing and niche online communities—many of which are prone to canceling their own, and imitating subaltern identities and afflictions. Along with cohost Jesse Singal (New York Times columnist and author of The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills)—another cancelee, notorious for objective deep dives on youth gender medicine. The first two selections feature one-on-one interviews with representative guests, but the pair are at their comedic best commenting on Herzog’s bizarre scoops as a team. The final selection (“Keep Autism Weird”) is indicative of something I mentioned in part II of the #witchhunts series:
It is not hard to find examples of online communities imitating the symptoms of mental or physical illness, swallowing foreign objects, self-harming, making or confessing to accusations of impurity, or professing impossible beliefs. To say nothing of mimicking outrageous behavior, or scapegoating. And it tends to be the same demographics reflected in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds—attention-seeking adults, and impressionable youth
“Why Liberal Elites Have Unraveled So Spectacularly (with Musa Al-Gharbi)”
Interview with self-professed “liberal elite” Musa Al-Gharbi—sociologist (Columbia), professor of journalism (Stony Brook), columnist for The Guardian, whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Al Jazeera—who explains his much-anticipated book We Have Never Been Woke to Jesse Singal. Al-Gharbi’s title is a nod to Bruno LaTour’s We Have Never Been Modern—whose 1993 book, “an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith” (Harvard University Press). Al-Gharbi, once a favorite scapegoat of the right for his work with Al Jazeera, realized he could effect more change on Middle East policy through dialogue.
“Making a Martyr (with Nancy Rommelmann): Plus, Portland”
This episode showcases what Rommelmann does best—getting to the messy truth behind a narrative that’s been manipulated for political purposes—but I find it most interesting for the cancelation sagas of two journalists from the Pacific Northwest, and their recollections of my adoptive hometown, Portland, OR.
“The Fifth Column”
Michael Moynihan, Kmele Foster and Matt Welch
“Your weekly rhetorical assault on the news cycle, the people who make it, and occasionally ourselves,” from Michael Moynihan (The Free Press, Vice), Kmele Foster (Fox Business Insider), and Matt Welch (L.A. Times, Reason Magazine)—the latter is not to be confused with right-wing provocateur and filmmaker Matt Walsh.
Michael Moynihan wasn’t exactly canceled from his previous job at Vice, but the magazine stuck him in a basement sometime after 2020, where they keep old covers of this once-freewheeling news outlet deemed too offensive to Vice’s new breed of activist journalists (you can read about that here, or listen to the podcast below, here.)
It’s a popular aphorism that regardless of your politics, Libertarians are the funnest people to hang out with at a party, and this trio seems to fall into that category (though they’d probably deny it). I value all the podcasts above for their non-ideological meta-coverage of news stories as stories, and their insider perspectives on the rot, and remaining virtues, of current mainstream media. But this one is the most irreverent, and often features long, knowledgeable detours into music history from two of its cohosts. On that note, I’m recommending a side hustle by Kmele Foster, the cohost least versed in (white) music history, who somehow conducted one of the most probing interviews ever recorded with the late, great producer Steve Albini.
“Steve Albini on Music, Meaning, and the Cosmos (Special Dispatch)”
Have a great weekend. Hope you find something to enjoy, or disagree with.
