Comment by imgabe
2 years ago
Reading through the descriptions of the episodes of this podcast it seems a lot like they start with a conclusion and then confirmation bias themselves (and everyone else who already agrees with them). Maybe not the most objective source.
Asking half rethorically, how would these descriptions be different if they were fully objective and the guy was a really horrible person ?
In general a podcast series will be started after the hosts have researched the subject, and decided they have an angle to present it to their public. Following them while doing their research could be interesting at small doses, but the number of absolute non stories or boring conclusions would be staggering and they'd need to be crazy entertaining by themselves to keep a whole podcast going on that pace.
It's harsh to fault them for having an opinion on the subject they dug to the end, and a conclusion already made at the time they start recording the series.
>In general a podcast series will be started after the hosts have researched the subject, and decided they have an angle to present it to their public. Following them while doing their research could be interesting at small doses, but the number of absolute non stories or boring conclusions would be staggering and they'd need to be crazy entertaining by themselves to keep a whole podcast going on that pace.
This is false. Age of Napoleon is quite good at presenting the factual history of its topic and then weighing dual interpretations of events. He highlights that something is his opinion when he gives it. The result is a wildly engaging podcast.
Hell, he's an avowed Marxist, which is a belief system I find repugnant. However, other than one or two clearly labeled bonus interview episodes, his views are AFAICT, totally absent from his presentation of history. He strives very hard to not tell you what to think.
It is disheartening that you believe information must be presented with an agenda.
I never heard of the Age of Napoleon podcast, seems to be a series by a Texas resident revisiting Napoleon's history after getting fascinated by the subject.
There's a ton of distance between the author and the subject, it's about something they deeply enjoy and decided to dedicate more than a hundred episode to, and I'm not sure how much being Marxists matters here, when Marx started becoming famous after Napoleon died.
That's a lot different from discussing a politician of your own country who's still alive and untried at the time you do your podcast series.
Be that as it may -- and I haven't listened to the podcast -- but there's very compelling evidence of his responsibility, or at least complicity for war crimes throughout southeast Asia during the Nixon administration amounting to civilian deaths numbering in the tens of thousands, conservatively.
The greatest irony here is that he managed to make it to 100.
> The greatest irony here is that he managed to make it to 100.
"Only the good die young, only evil seems to live forever". Iron Maiden
I always joked that the devil wouldn't take him and he's not allowed in heaven.
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As the classical saying goes "Those whom the gods love die young".
Tom Lehrer retired when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, because he said satire was dead at that point[1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jul/31/artsfeatures...
You might listen to the podcasts. They are good and they are well researched. Listen: I met Kissinger a few times and spent a few decades of my life working with foriegn policy wonks. He was a monster beyond compare.
And I'll just add this in. When I was 24 I got a job at the New York Times working on the tech team that would launch nytimes.com. The "web editor" was one Bernard Gwertzman. Look him up. He was the foreign desk editor of the paper of record for decades. He made his name reporting on the Vietnam war. Would you like to know who his best friend was in 1996 when I met him? Henry Kissinger. He had lunch with him every wednesday at the Harvard Club. Having read Manufacturing Consent more than once I was flabbergasted. If Chomsky had known this... Anyway, he and I were the first ones to show up for a meeting one time and I asked him how he and Henry K had met. He leaned over and said (with a literal wink) "while I was reporting on Vietnam, but don't tell anyone!"... said the man who among many other things 1. reported that we were not bombing Cambodia, 2. Supported Pinochet and 3. didn't report on the East Timor genocide. All policies that were 100% Kissinger.
Rest in piss. Both of them.
Do you think the NYT's war coverage (Ukraine & Israel) is still so slanted, or have they improved?
I do not know about Israel, but I can read both Russian and Ukrainian. And there is a pretty objective test: read a Russian president’s statement - see how it is reported, read a Ukrainian president’s statement - see how it is reported.
Note: I can’t verify facts in the field, but I can read the statement and see how it is reported. So, samples:
1. After pro-Russian forces achieved a major victory in August 2014, the Russian president issued a rather consolation-seeking statement, between other thing “asking” pro-Russian forces to release prisoners.
This was reported as a belligerent statement.
2. At approximately the same time the Ukrainian president issued a statement basically justifying war crimes as means to win the war, on the lines: “our children will go to schools, and separatists’ children will be hiding in basements - that’s how we will win this war”.
This was not reported at all.
Again, these things are easy to check - just read / listen to the original. Still, the media are lying about them. What do you think they are doing reporting things that are not that easy to check?
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Think how they reported Iraq and you have your answer.
If Chomsky had known this...
Chomsky have denied genocide that Kissinger helped perpetrate, so he could have known.
Rest in piss indeed! Good riddance!
Does it have to be objective? Also, perhaps the glowing eulogies are the biased ones--objective means a fact-based honest look at his terrible legacy, not erasing it.
You're expecting a podcast titled "Behind the Bastards" to be an objective source?
Funny! But your question did get me thinking. I don't know anything about this podcast nor much about Kissenger, but a podcast dedicated to bad people could be objective, I think, if they were to pick their subjects based on objective criteria.
Their criteria is definitely “was this person/organization a bastard?” That said, the host does a lot of research and does attempt to provide as full a picture as possible about his subjects. There is some editorializing, and also there’s a healthy amount of “this is the best information that I could find”. A number of times I’ve heard him say things like “we don’t have a direct source for Thing X, so take this with a grain of salt”.
Well worth a listen imo, I ended up binging every episode over the course of a year or two.
I listened to it once based on some redditor's enthusiastic recommendation, and it was as bad (i.e. blatantly unapologetically biased) as you might expect.
It's entertainment podcast first and history second but the sources are always listed and it's usually pretty well researched.
That's a great podcast and the person you replied to is foolish - any opinion piece knows where it is going when it is published.
The podcast, no. But if a comment is going to offer a link with the conceit of “consume this to fully understand who this person was” it would be good if the source were not something with the explicitly stated thesis of “hey, this guy’s a bastard”. I mean, you don’t even need to listen to it to know what the conclusion is going to be.
I don't know anything about the podcast beyond the name, but I could see a podcast called "Beyond the Bastards" not having a forgone conclusion about their subject, but being more about why someone is believed to be awful and then going "beyond" to see if that were fair. I'm going to give the podcast a chance.
On some topics there is no such thing as a rational centrist view.
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A podcast like this is not "spontaneous", they will have a rough script
Nobody is doing this kind of podcast "on the fly"
in my experience, this is basically how all podcasts and documentaries seem to be made.
Which makes it such a shame that people throw them around like they are an authoritative source of anything. It’s literally just some guy who read a book and has a microphone. It’s as good as whatever book they read.
Podcasts, in general, are not made to cater to bonafide genius intellectuals.
Maybe every so often a conversation within a podcast episode contains some extraordinary analytical insight not found elsewhere, but to expect an entire series of episodes to average out to anything close to that is too high of an expectation.
That being said, it is probably correct to ignore most of them.
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It’s an easy and entertaining consumption method and the sources are linked right there…
Or books, in this case. Multiple primary sources.
Try Age of Napoleon.
Mentioned the reasons in my last post.
I mean, it’s not science, it’s politics. The podcast isn’t trying to present an argument, but rather convey facts to an already trusting audience. This feels off the mark
Try listening to it
It’s co-hosted by the guys from The Dollop, who I’ve listened to quite a lot. They’re funny and entertaining, but they’re comedians not historians. Their whole schtick is just reading some book and incredulously saying “holy shit” about whatever it says, without any critical analysis.
Edit: and there’s nothing wrong with that! Just recognize when something is entertainment vs. trying to be objective.
No, they are guests. They are not the people who did the research! Robert Evans is an excellent journalist.
What exactly would an “objective” source look like?
'attempted objectivity' is better. It would include: - narrator reveals his convictions at the start - focuses on things that physically happened - weigh dual/multiple interpretations and views of said events from relevant factions, attempting the greatest charity with the one(s) opposed to the initially revealed convictions.
You're judging a book by its cover, more or less.
That’s why they put all those pictures and descriptions on book covers.