From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

Bob Garfield is away this week.

I'm Brooke Gladstone, and behold the shepherd tone.

A sound illusion, always sliding upward or downward, yet never quite disappearing,

like the red and blue stripes on a barber's pole. As this sonic mass

moves up and up and up, the tension rises also until nothing. No resolution, no catharsis.

Here comes another rising line, and another after that. Around the office here, we've come to see this up and up and up of the Trump era,

especially when it comes to Russia and the Mueller investigation,

as its own shepherd tone.

Some slip of the tongue or unsealed indictment seems to herald a resolution that never arrives.

As Saturday Night Live memorably spoofed after Trump casually confessed to obstruction of justice

on network TV.

Wait, so did I get him?

Is this all over?

Oh, no, I didn't. Nothing matters. Absolutely nothing matters anymore.

A hundred years ago, by which I mean Monday, the soundtrack of the American media was the

shepherd tone, the sound of dissolution and possibly deliverance on an infinitely receding horizon.

You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president

at a summit in front of a Russian leader, it's only that I've ever seen.

We are living in a national emergency.

We may not have known it 24 hours ago.

We do now.

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