'Code Switch' From NPR Is Apple's Podcast of the Year (engadget.com) 48
Apple has picked "Code Switch" as the best audio show of the year, marking the first time the company has recognized a single podcast in this way. Engadget reports: Code Switch is NPR's weekly discussion on race. While the series has been on the air for the better part of seven years, it became significantly more popular over the summer as people across the US took to protest the death of George Floyd and other instances of racial injustice.
As in past years, the company also shared a selection of the most popular audio shows people listened to through Apple Podcasts. Few surprises here as old favorites like Stuff You Should Know, This American Life and The Daily came out as the most popular shows in the US. When it comes to shows new to 2020, Unlocking Us, Nice White Parents and CounterClock made the top three for the year. Apple's editorial team had their say as well. They picked California Love, Canary by the Washington Post and Dying for Sex as their favorites of 2020. If you're looking for something new to listen to, all three lists are a good place to start.
As in past years, the company also shared a selection of the most popular audio shows people listened to through Apple Podcasts. Few surprises here as old favorites like Stuff You Should Know, This American Life and The Daily came out as the most popular shows in the US. When it comes to shows new to 2020, Unlocking Us, Nice White Parents and CounterClock made the top three for the year. Apple's editorial team had their say as well. They picked California Love, Canary by the Washington Post and Dying for Sex as their favorites of 2020. If you're looking for something new to listen to, all three lists are a good place to start.
Apple, politics and race. (Score:5, Insightful)
Any chance we can discuss putting fans on R-PIs instead?
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Excellent. And as a bonus it sounds like it would certainly pass the wife test. Anyone else with some "cool" R-PI fan tips?
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Any chance we can discuss putting fans on R-PIs instead?
Sure!
Go to this thread:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
Knock yourself out! No, really...
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I don't get why so many nerds are turned off politics. As an engineer I see everything as a system that can be understood and influenced.
It's just like physics or electronics or coding.
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I don't get why so many nerds are turned off politics.
It's exhausting. Exasperating. It seems to relentlessly permeate every facet of our lives; personal relationships, professional relationships, hobbies. It's everywhere, and some people are just tired of it. I get that politics is certainly "stuff that matters" but I also get that some nerds might simply be looking for a 10 minute escape from "politics" more than they are "turned off" by it. Besides, has anyone on the internet ever changed their view because of something they read on a discussion forum like
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Physics!
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Turned off politics?
Are you kidding??
Please look at all the topics that have had the highest number of posts on Slashdot (especially over the last four years); you'll find that they are usually political.
I personally prefer to give such topics a hard pass, as they're usually people agreeing with each other, or people shouting past each other, with few insights to be gained.
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Politics is like reading an engineering spec, where a particular circuit connection needs 5v, while there is an other spec for the same device tells you it should be ground. While in reality it needs 2.5v.
Non of the sources of the spec will state that, they will be fervent that it is either 5v or ground. The group who support 5v will say those who use Ground are lying, because the design of the chip clearly shows it needs voltage to work, while the group who supports ground says the 5v group is lying, be
Linguistics? (Score:2)
I was all excited that a podcast about linguistics was the Podcast of the Year until I read the summary. I shouldn't have read the summary.
If my local NPR station airs this show, it's not during my commute hours.
Wow, had no idea... (Score:3)
Code Switch is NPR's weekly discussion on race
Well that is a surprise, I had no idea Apple leaders were so into Nascar!
Post your favorite podcasts (Score:3)
My list (in no particular order):
Lex Fridman Podcast https://lexfridman.com/podcast... [lexfridman.com] This pod was formerly called Artificial Intelligence, the host is an AI researcher and most topics revolve around that but also include topics like physics and psychology. Long form interviews with great guests (example Donald Knuth).
Conversations with Tyler https://conversationswithtyler... [conversati...htyler.com] Another long form interview pod. Interesting to note here is that Tyler is a right wing economists (views I don't agree with) but he is a good host, very well read and always with a battery of informed questions. Topics of conversation is heavily slanted towards art and democracy, example guest, Audrey Tang.
Prognosis https://www.bloomberg.com/prog... [bloomberg.com] A Bloomberg podcast that's now completely about covid. If you want to know what the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, vaccine producers, public officials, economists and industry leaders has to say (rather than the latest non peer reviewed paper) this is for you.
Bloomberg law https://www.bloomberg.com/podc... [bloomberg.com] and Cases and Controversies https://pro.bloomberglaw.com/p... [bloomberglaw.com] The latter is also a Bloomberg podcast and only covers the US Supreme Court.
Code Switch: In defense of looting (Score:5, Informative)
Code Switch brought us "In defense of looting" back in September, defending looting and rioting as "non-violent' protests.
https://www.npr.org/sections/c... [npr.org]
In the author's own words, "When I use the word looting, I mean the mass expropriation of property, mass shoplifting during a moment of upheaval or riot. That's the thing I'm defending."
After significant backlash from other liberal and conservative news outlets, Code Switch revised the story, taking out some of the more controversial parts of the interview.
https://www.theatlantic.com/id... [theatlantic.com]
https://www.newsweek.com/npr-n... [newsweek.com]
https://fee.org/articles/debun... [fee.org]
So this is the kind of stuff Apple thinks is worth highlighting?
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Just a guess, but I think we can cross out any discussion of racial disproportionality in violent criminal behavior, or anything at all having to do with intelligence. You really have to live in a well of self-loathing to listen to NPR with enjoyment.
Re:Code Switch: In defense of looting (Score:4, Insightful)
I like podcasts that bring up a variety of viewpoints and even invite controversial speakers. But the interviewer should challenge the guest's train of thought at every turn, not just ask a couple of "hard" questions like in this Code Switch interview. The interviewer should listen to the response and pick that apart as well with follow-ups, not just move on to the next scripted question. These NPR podcasts (and many like it) are not nearly critical enough.
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They certainly would have challenged the viewpoints of a conservative author. But then, they wouldn't have interviewed a conservative author in the first place.
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Ah Slashdot, where suggesting you might want to consider alternative viewpoints is considered flamebait. Group think or no think, right?
Re: Code Switch: In defense of looting (Score:1)
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I highly doubt you'd support giving equal time to anyone who wanted to remove all of the non-white people or something similarly heinous. That's certainly a controversial viewpoint and it certainly runs counter to my existing beliefs. Does that make it worth highlighting?
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As I said, I don't agree with everything in the article, but the issue is that politicians have got very good at ignoring protests, the media doesn't publicize them much, and they end up having little effect.
Once the looting started people took notice and some actual progress was made. Obviously looting is not a good way to solve problems but it was apparently necessary. Or maybe it wasn't, feel free to debate this point.
And maybe after having reflected on this you might want to find more ways to address th
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some viewpoints are fucking nuts, because the premise is that some immoral act is actually good.
Tell that to the Bostoners of 1773. I'm sure the British and the British East India Company were furious over the willful destruction of property by a mob that felt they were being treated unfairly. If that immoral act makes your skin crawl just wait till you hear what happened in 1775!
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Re:Code Switch: In defense of looting (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you think I'm conservative? The rebuttals to this podcast came from both liberal and conservative publications, as you would learn by clicking the links in my post. Is it now a conservative idea that stealing is wrong? Is it now a conservative idea that destruction of someone else's property is wrong? These concepts go well beyond political differences. If you think there is merit to the idea that looting is justified, you're not showing yourself as conservative or liberal, but anarchist.
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Re: Code Switch: In defense of looting (Score:2)
Is there any specific progress youâ(TM)d call out that justified the deaths and the destruction of homes and livelihoods?
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Some murderous cops are being charged, some genuine reforms are happening that might prevent future murders.
I wouldn't say those things justify deaths, I would say that at some point things get so bad this is what happens and it's a tragedy and a failure to address real, serious problems. It's like a war, you don't want one but at some point it becomes impossible to avoid and some good can come out of all the bad.
Re: Code Switch: In defense of looting (Score:2)
So based on the number of deaths, when do you expect weâ(TM)ll break even on this?
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Impossible to say how many future deaths were prevented, or put a value on the increased quality of life and opportunity for people of colour.
Re: Code Switch: In defense of looting (Score:1)
Hey hey, there are nice people on both sides right? C-SPAN has some real whackos on to fairly represent "both sides" all the time, it doesn't mean it's an endorsement. I've heard Joe Rogan does the same.
Plus Rush Limbaugh got a Presidential Medal of Freedom, so fuck it, YOLO. What the hell does anything matter anymore.
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So you consider this viewpoint one of the "two" sides? You think liberal philosophy endorses (or should endorse) looting?
Imagine the tough questions Code Switch would have asked a guest author who presented a "conservative" point of view. It wouldn't have been softball questions like those in the Code Switch article. But then, they would never have interviewed a conservative in the first place.
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Wowzers. This is the kind of utter bullshit that makes a liberal like me furious --- identity politics, critical race theory, woke culture, etc. have taken over the left and turned into an incredibly authoritarian and extremely narrow-minded movement.
Before those on the 'other side' say 'liberals have always been this way', no, they haven't. If you see how the left has turned on itself, attacking allies who are not woke enough [sic] or extreme enough, you'd realize it's at a different level. I see the same
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I feel your pain, and I don't think liberals have "always" been this way. Nor have conservatives always been Trumpists. Trump's ideology is nothing like Reagan conservatism, which espoused free trade, free immigration, and working with other countries for the common good.
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This podcast is not necessarily bad because it exposes people to viewpoints that are different than yours.
Differences in opinions on things like this aren't rooted in logic -- although sloppy thinking abounds all around. They are rooted in different beliefs about how the world works, which in turn come out of different life experiences. It's quite possible you could construct a world view for these people that would work better for them than the one they've constructed for themselves, but you can't do unt
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I don't disagree about exposing different viewpoints. But that doesn't mean giving nut-job authors a free pass and failing to ask hard questions. Imagine a Code Switch interview with a conservative author. Do you think the interview would have been full of softball questions? No way! But then, Code Switch would never have interviewed a conservative author in the first place.
So as long as the viewpoint isn't conservative, we should expose people to different viewpoints, right?
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Well, you seem to have had no problem applying a critical viewpoint to the opinions expressed.
As for conservative vs. liberal viewpoints -- I think political viewpoints of *all* kinds are a bad thing in social media, where algorithms are designed to increase engagement. This means while diverse viewpoints may be expressed on the social medium site altogether, they don't make it into user's feeds, which become impervious bubbles of confirmation bias.
Social media is a great place to keep track of your old c
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I'm not sure how social media became part of this conversation. Code Switch isn't a social media platform.
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Well, you brought up the issue of discriminating against conservative viewpoints, and social media is where most of that debate has centered recently.
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Nope, my suggestion was that organizations like Code Switch do the discrimination, not individual consumers of podcasts.
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Sure. But is it a problem for an organization to have, or to focus on one point of view?
The real problem is what's missing -- something that takes the place of what newspapers used to be. Newspapers had editorial points of view, but the cost of putting out a daily paper meant you needed a broad audience that included a big slice of the center. So you could count on liberal newspapers reporting news favorable to a conservative viewpoint and vice versa.
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Since we can't tag stories anymore: (Score:2)
Of course they would (Score:2)
One of the last chances to virtue signal on race before this amazing year draws to a close.