Do you know what a lepton is? A muon? A quark? A boson? Bob can’t even grasp the Facebook terms of service, but he found a particle physicist who both understands the nature of matter and was willing to explain it to him. Or try, anyway. Joining Bob for the first of a two-part conversation is Steven Goldfarb, a physicist at the University of Melbourne working on the ATLAS Experiment at CERN — the European particle physics consortium that operates the world’s biggest particle accelerator near Gen...
Oct 29, 2021•33 min
Bob has rethought his First Amendment absolutism, and challenges a legal scholar to do the same. Listen as Dean Lyrissa Lidsky of the University of Missouri School of Law somehow fails to bend to Bob’s will. Get full access to Bully Pulpit at bullypulpit.substack.com/subscribe
Oct 22, 2021•35 min
Bob thinks the repeated chicanery, misrepresentation and outright lies of the self-proclaimed “news” channel might offer an opportunity for prosecution or litigation under RICO — a.k.a. the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. After saying so on social media, and being ridiculed for his naïveté, Bob takes the question to experts. Get full access to Bully Pulpit at bullypulpit.substack.com/subscribe...
Oct 15, 2021•35 min
In this unholy amalgamation of interview and free-form kibbitz between two cranky former employees of WNYC, Bob Garfield and Alec Baldwin discuss life, acting, and the great Stockton Briggle. Plus, find out more about Bob’s split with “On the Media.” TRANSCRIPT: TEDDY ROOSEVELT: Surely there never was a fight better worth making than the one which we are in. BOB GARFIELD: Welcome to Bully Pulpit. That was Teddy Roosevelt. I’m Bob Garfield with Episode 12: Alec Baldwin Is Everywhere (Including He...
Oct 08, 2021•28 min
Bob stumbles on a controversy about a media personality’s enchilada recipe — and learns about truth, celebrity and Mexican food. TEDDY ROOSEVELT: Surely there never was a fight better worth making than the one which we are in. BOB GARFIELD: Welcome to Bully Pulpit. That was Teddy Roosevelt. I’m Bob Garfield with Episode 11: The Tortilla Scandal. Gotta tell you, this one is hard. Look, I think it’s fair to say that in 44 years of journalism, I haven’t shied away from difficult subjects — because ...
Oct 01, 2021•11 min
In the ongoing drama surrounding the murder of Gabrielle Petito, Bob realized that the media are telling us everything under the sun, except for what matters most. TEDDY ROOSEVELT: Surely there never was a fight better worth making than the one which we are in. GARFIELD: Welcome to Bully Pulpit. That was Teddy Roosevelt. I’m Bob Garfield with Episode 10: Airing Dirty Laundrie. GABRIELLE PETITO: Hello, hello, and good morning. It is really nice and sunny today. It’s only ten o’clock in the mornin...
Sep 24, 2021•14 min
Bob looks at how the so-called “religious exemption” for COVID-19 mandates is the latest assault on secular law and a grave risk to the nation. Get full access to Bully Pulpit at bullypulpit.substack.com/subscribe
Sep 17, 2021•18 min
Bob speaks with “The Outsider” co-director Steve Rosenbaum about his film documenting the fraught creation of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum TEDDY ROOSEVELT: Surely there never was a fight better worth making than the one which we are in. GARFIELD: Welcome to Bully Pulpit. That was Teddy Roosevelt, I'm Bob Garfield. Episode 8: The Outsider. It has been twenty years since the bloody horrors of September 11th, 2001 scarred lower Manhattan and the American psyche. Within three year...
Sep 10, 2021•32 min
Bob speaks with author and scholar Lawrence Weschler, who shares astonishment that The Machine Stops could — from very few data points — extrapolate our present, so paradoxically connected and detached. * FULL TRANSCRIPT * TEDDY ROOSEVELT: Surely there never was a fight better worth making than the one which we are in. GARFIELD: Welcome to Bully Pulpit. That was Teddy Roosevelt, I’m Bob Garfield. This is Episode 7: Back to the Future. It’s a special episode, featuring not an essay or an intervie...
Sep 03, 2021•41 min
Allan M. Brandt is a professor of the history of science at Harvard and author of The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America . He discusses the tobacco industry’s 20th-century campaign to make its addictive and deadly product somehow acceptable — and its 21st-century campaign to do it all again. * FULL TRANSCRIPT * GARFIELD: Welcome to Bully Pulpit. That was Teddy Roosevelt, I’m Bob Garfield with Episode 6: Crime of the Century. OLCZAK : The...
Aug 27, 2021•34 min
The 174-year-old tobacco company spent much of its life blowing a cloud of deceit around the deadly effects of its signature product. Now eager for a do-over, PMI’s highly advertised “Unsmoke the World” initiative seems strangely noble, until you start asking questions. * FULL TRANSCRIPT * TEDDY ROOSEVELT : Surely there never was a fight better worth making than the one which we are in. BOB GARFIELD: Welcome to Bully Pulpit. That was Teddy Roosevelt, I’m Bob Garfield. This is episode five: Where...
Aug 20, 2021•26 min
Bob talks with Princeton scholar Orestis Papakyriakopoulos about the social media titan’s latest assault on transparency, and the all-too-familiar blame-shifting that followed it. That has become standard operating procedure from a company Bob describes as “amoral, except when it’s immoral.” TEDDY ROOSEVELT: Surely there never was a fight better worth making than the one which we are in. BOB GARFIELD : Welcome to Bully Pulpit. That was Teddy Roosevelt, I'm Bob Garfield. Episode 4: It Wasn't Me, ...
Aug 13, 2021•27 min
Owned by half the human race yet often shrouded in shame, secrets and lies, the (mostly) female sexual anatomy finally gets the scrutiny and plain talk it deserves. Author Zoe Mendelson discusses the heroic, misunderstood pussy. * FULL TRANSCRIPT * TEDDY ROOSEVELT: Surely there never was a fight better worth making than the one which we are in. BOB GARFIELD : Welcome to Bully Pulpit. That was Teddy Roosevelt, I'm Bob Garfield. Once there was the encyclopedia. The digital age gave us Wikipedia an...
Aug 06, 2021•24 min
During moments of rhetorical generosity, politicians will give lip-service to bipartisanship or working across the aisle. Another favored metaphor of both Democrats and Republicans is “bridging the divide,” which, once upon a time, would actually happen on major legislation. With the Biden administration now calling for cooperation on infrastructure and other bills, Bob reflects on the fact that not all bridges are well built. Sometimes they collapse. * FULL TRANSCRIPT * TEDDY ROOSEVELT : Surely...
Jul 30, 2021•10 min
Here we are. After all kinds of Sturm und Drang , my new foray into the interview/commentary form is here. Bully Pulpit is a podcast about politics, media, culture and society based on four simple principles: observation, argument, narrative and honesty. It should also go without saying that the interviews, essays and pieces will hinge on evidence — as opposed to the asinine and dangerous political currents that favor sentiments and full-on delusions over facts. Indeed, I don’t invoke Sturm und ...
Jul 23, 2021•8 min
Bully Pulpit is a wry and pointed take on politics, media and society from longtime public radio personality Bob Garfield. His astute cultural criticism, infused with wit and humor, has earned him many prestigious journalism awards, as well as praise such as “very brave” and “national treasure.” For more than 20 years, Bob Garfield was co-host of public radio’s weekly, Peabody Award-winning On the Media , following 12 years as a roving correspondent for NPR’s All Things Considered. He currently ...
Jul 20, 2021•3 min
