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On the Media

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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s a bird, it’s a plane… no, it’s a spy balloon. On this week’s On the Media, how to grasp a news event that’s equal parts concerning and absurd. Plus, the hunt for who poisoned the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, and re-reading classic Russian novels in the shadow of the Ukraine war.

1. Jon Allsop [@Jon_Allsop], freelance journalist and author of the Columbia Journalism Review's newsletter The Media Today, on how to understand polarizing reactions to the Chinese spy balloon. Listen.

2. Christo Grozev [@christogrozev], lead Russia investigator at Bellingcat, and Daniel Roher [@DanielRoher], director of the documentary "Navalny," on investigating, and filming, Alexei Navalny's search for the truth behind his own poisoning. Listen.

3. Elif Batuman [@BananaKarenina], novelist and staff writer at The New Yorker, on revisiting classic Russian literature in times of war. Listen.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week, the Chinese spy balloon was still flying across the news feeds.
0:04.6	But how to comprehend a spectacle that's both worrying?
0:08.3	Quite frankly, I'll just tell you, I don't want to damn balloon more across the United States.
0:12.8	And totally absurd?
0:14.0	Everyone's being surveilled constantly, but it's always shoot the balloon and never unplug Alexa.
0:21.0	From WNYC in New York, this is on the media on Brook Gladstone.
0:25.4	Also, when investigative reporter Christo Grosef got a lead on who poisoned Alexa and Evalny,
0:31.9	he took it straight to the source.
0:33.7	Christo just sent him a direct message on Twitter.
0:35.7	He DMed him.
0:36.6	He did, he slid into the DMs of the leader of the Russian opposition.
0:41.4	That's right.
0:42.1	Plus, rereading the Russian classics in a time of war.
0:46.5	What I came to realize in my late 30s is that, of course, nothing is free from ideology,
0:52.7	that these novels are products of a time and place in history.
0:56.4	It's all coming up after this.
1:01.1	From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.
1:04.4	I'm for Gladstone.
1:06.1	Many reports this week on the intelligence gathering capabilities of the headline
1:11.1	grabbing Chinese balloon, apparently part of a fleet.
1:14.9	On Thursday afternoon, House of Representatives gathered at the Capitol
1:19.0	to vote to condemn the Chinese Communist Party for flying it over U.S. soil.
	...

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