Aftershocks Online

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2023

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The people of Turkey, Syria and Lebanon are still recovering from the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people and injured thousands more. Two weeks later, another earthquake shook the region.

Ben and producer Quincy Walters talk about ways the disaster is being chronicled on social media — from a Twitter user predicting a catastrophic earthquake just days before the actual earthquake happened, to mysterious lights in the sky that can help geologists better forecast earthquakes.

Transcript

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0:00.0	WBR Podcasts, Boston.
0:17.3	Hey listeners, this is producer Quincy Walters. Last week our host Ben Brock Johnson and
0:23.4	I recorded a conversation we had about the devastation of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake
0:30.4	that killed nearly 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria earlier this month. And in the
0:36.9	time since we've recorded that, while people try to recover and bury their loved ones,
0:45.2	get another earthquake as hit the region. A 6.3 on the Richter scale this time. And 8 people
0:52.7	have died and nearly 300 people have been injured as a result.
1:06.1	Hello Quincy. Hey Ben. I hope you're doing okay. I think where it's been a weird time.
1:12.9	The world seems to be in a lot of trouble. Yeah, every day I can't even keep up with it.
1:21.9	Yeah, how are you doing with all that? I'm doing okay. I guess I'm just slightly processing
1:30.7	things slower than the news cycle is how about you? Kind of the same. It's a tough moment.
1:38.9	I hope people are doing okay. I think you and I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about
1:43.3	what's happening in Turkey and Syria, right? Right. Yeah. It was kind of earlier this
1:50.3	week kind of just hit me that at that point the death toll was 33,000. And now today it's
2:00.8	over 40,000. So around 40,000. It just seems like it just kind of I don't want to say
2:09.8	immeasurable loss of life, but that kind of feels like the right phrase for it. Even though
2:16.2	there's a number on it, there's just, you know, an unfathomable amount of people who are
2:23.2	dead. Yeah. Yeah, it's really sad. I think it's hard to know what to do in this moment.
2:29.2	And if it's okay, I want to talk to you about kind of the way that I experienced this news
2:35.7	happening. And also some, you know, interesting ways in which I think Reddit is reacting.
2:44.2	So I basically found out about this news on Reddit because people had started posting about
2:50.2	it within an hour of the earthquake happening. News outlets were reporting on this very quickly
	...

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