Let's talk about the culture of fear and how media outlets leave people with

misimpressions about what's truly dangerous in the world. But first, a short story about the magic of

podcasts. Yes, welcome to this week's reliable sources podcast. I'm your host

Brian Stelter in this weekly podcast in between our Sunday

television program is a way to go more in depth with media leaders and

newsmakers talking about how the news gets made.

Let me tell you about how I was able to meet one of my favorite authors.

Again, this is the magic of podcasts. I think it was almost 20 years ago that I first

read the book The Culture of Fear by author Barry Glassner.

This is a book that has been reissued several times in the past couple of decades

for a number of reasons that we will get into.

But I had never talked to Barry, never heard from him until I was recently on a podcast, I think

it was Ezra Klein's podcast, when Ezra asked me for a few books that I would recommend.

So I mentioned the culture of fear, somehow Glassner heard about it, sent me an email,

and I said, hey, you should come on this podcast this is the the magic of

podcasting but something went a little awry when we had our conversation we

started taping this conversation we started taping the podcast,

glassing her out on the West Coast, to meet here on the East Coast. We were

having a wonderful conversation, but my wife was texting me. She was at the doctor, nine months pregnant, and she had some news for me.

We were actually recording on this, here's what happened.

A lot of pushback on this

a lot of pushback on this sometimes but on the podcast I'm doing

...