The Examined Year: 2021
Dec 26, 2021What happened over the past 12 months that challenged our assumptions and made us think about things in new ways?
As Senior Producer, every once in a while I like to step out from behind the mixing board to give a behind-the-scenes look at some aspect of the program—especially when the Philosophers themselves are off on their holiday breaks. For this week's annual end-of-year special, "The Examined Year" (because theun-examined year is not worth reviewing!), we tried something a bit different, though not unprecedented.
As a modular episode featuring three different conversations, it's often a challenge to come up with a "Roving Philosophical Report" that satisfyingly captures the sounds and stories of the year that was. So a few years ago, as we were working onThe Examined Year: 2015,我们让我们的流动记者制作了三个简短的故事,为这一集中的每个对话做铺垫。Of course producing three pieces of sound-rich narrative journalism under two minutes each proved to be its own challenge (we tried it again forThe Examined Year: 2016but reverted to the traditional RPR the following year). But when schedules and such were becoming complicated earlier this month, I proposed that we produce a brief audio montage as a setup to each segment. The result was a rare episode with no Roving Philosophical Report but a tad more work for yours truly.
With the news hooks for the discussions in this year's program being the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the new Space Race among private citizens, and the return of some forms of on-site work, I started with the low-hanging fuit and built the montage for "The Year in Space Tourism" around William Shatner (aka Captain James T. Kirk) becoming the oldest person to travel into space. I wanted to be careful not to glamorize Jeff Bezos and the other billionaires leading the ethically-questionable private-sector charge into space; Elon Musk appears only indirectly through the people aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule, but it proved tough to entirely ignore the media-savvy Richard Branson.
Next up was the challenge of illustrating what returning to on-site work (for those whose jobs allowed them to work from home in the first place, of course)soundedlike. A typical Zoom meeting certainly featured a host of different-sounding interactional dynamics, but notonly had we "been there, done that" in 2020, the whole point this year was the tentative steps we were taking back to semi-normality. I was honestly at a bit of a loss as to how to depict the post-pandemic workplace in sound, until a friend pointed me to the folks who had taken to TikTok to work through some of their concerns and experiences.
That left the least savory of the segments to tackle, the Year in Political Insurrection. It was certainly easy to think of sounds associated with the January 6 attack; we had seen and heard them on the day and repeated throughout the year. The most disturbing, of course, were those associated with the violence itself, which for better or worse would likely lose their power on the radio. But I was loath to listen to the unedited tape of speakers at the rally that preceded the riot, or to listen to politicians and others downplaying it as the year wore on. In the end it was Rep. Jamie Raskin's presentation at the ensuing impeachment trial, along with a small set of media clips from the day itself, that provided me with the necessary material.
What happened over the past 12 months that challenged our assumptions and made us think about things in new ways?
2020年美国大选以及随后发生的惊人事件表明,美国的两极分化一如既往。不仅有根本的分歧……
The United States prides itself on being “the world’s greatest democracy,” which adheres to the principle, “one person, one vote.
The Year in Pandemic Ethics with Karen Stohr from Georgetown University, Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute o...
In just months the world changed radically, and we have all had to adjust our lifestyles to stop the spread of Covid-19.
火星或宇宙其他地方可能存在或曾经存在生命的消息让许多人兴奋不已。但我们真的应该为这个消息感到高兴吗?
What happened over the past 12 months that challenged our assumptions and made us think about things in new ways?
2020年美国大选以及随后发生的惊人事件表明,美国的两极分化一如既往。不仅有根本的分歧……
The United States prides itself on being “the world’s greatest democracy,” which adheres to the principle, “one person, one vote.
The Year in Pandemic Ethics with Karen Stohr from Georgetown University, Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute o...
In just months the world changed radically, and we have all had to adjust our lifestyles to stop the spread of Covid-19.
火星或宇宙其他地方可能存在或曾经存在生命的消息让许多人兴奋不已。但我们真的应该为这个消息感到高兴吗?
Comments(1)
Tim Smith
Sunday, December 26, 2021 -- 2:29 PM
I'm not going to do the work,I'm not going to do the work, but I think this is the first-ever Philoso?hy Talk blog without one question mark. NTTAWWT. The endemic questions to the show are equalling built into the blog—especially the WFH aspect, which has changed and highlighted the Covid19 issues and inequities in particular. There is no going back to work the same way as pre-2021, but that is true of any year. Even when we regress, we progress in some other way or notion.
谢谢,德文郡!感谢你促成了这场演出。你定下基调,讨论你的工作和选择。在这些讨论中,幕布背后的人在我们的心理中扮演着重要的角色。我希望你在接下来的一年里关注今天的问题,与去年的节目和重复的节目有类似的关注。世界杯赛程2022赛程表欧洲区