'Nope' and the history of Black horror; plus, when to say 'no' to the news

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2022

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

These days, following the news can be utterly demoralizing. How do we deal? Guest host Anna Sale talks to Amanda Ripley, journalist and anchor of the Slate podcast How To!, about strategies for staying informed without stressing out (too much).

Then, Anna chats with author, educator and producer Tananarive Due about the history of the Black horror genre ahead of the release of Jordan Peele's Nope. They talk about how horror can be a way to process trauma, how marginalized creators can — but don't always — reclaim old movie tropes and where Black horror is today.

Finally, Anna plays Who Said That with It's Been a Minute guest hosts pf the past, present and future: Julia Furlan, executive producer of the podcast Death, Sex & Money, and WNYC's Tracie Hunte.

— Read Amanda Ripley's opinion piece: "I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?"

You can follow us on Twitter @NPRItsBeenAMin and email us at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, I'm Anna's longtime friend and now neighbor Jim Colgan. On today's show,
0:06.3	her to stay informed when the news seems just so bad. All right, let's start the show.
0:15.5	Hey y'all, you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm your guest host Anna Sail.
0:22.0	There is a lot going on in the world right now. Hearts of Europe and North America have had record
0:27.0	breaking heat waves. COVID infections are on the rise again. As is inflation. And all of it
0:33.5	seems so dire. Heavy, unrelenting. Maybe you're wishing you could just ignore it all. Turn away
0:41.2	from the news. My first guest understands this feeling. It happened to her too. You know, it kind
0:47.0	of crept up on me because I'm so accustomed to relishing the news. That is Amanda Ripley. She's a
0:55.6	journalist and author and host of the Slate podcast How To. And for Amanda, cutting back on her
1:01.6	news consumption was a big change. I was one of those people we'd go on vacation and I would like
1:06.0	spend all this time trying to find an actual newspaper wherever we were. I felt like reading the
1:12.4	news made me more curious. I felt like I was part of a conversation. It was interesting. But in 2016,
1:19.3	during the campaign season before Donald Trump was elected president, she started to find
1:24.0	news coverage really draining. It was leaving me worse off sometimes, not better off. And I just
1:31.4	felt really ashamed of it because I want to be informed. And I want to stick my head in the sand.
1:35.9	You know, I want to be someone who cares what's going on in the world and who knows what's going
1:41.2	on in the world. Amanda wrote about this recently in an opinion piece in the Washington Post.
1:47.1	It's titled I've stopped reading the news. Is the problem me or the product? She says,
1:53.2	even if the news is bad, maybe the way journalists cover the news ought to change.
2:00.3	What do you think changed in 2016 and how the news was framed? Do you think it was framed in a
2:06.5	different way before then? Or do you think it was the volume? Or the news itself?
2:11.6	Yeah, we know. Right, that's a really good question. I'm curious what you think too. I mean,
	...

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