This Is Propaganda Podcast: Fine-Tuning Our Bulls**T Detectors

PLUS...RIP Current debuts about two assassination attempts on President Ford.

Propaganda is a word used with monotonous regularity during the Cold War era. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, it was the Communist Soviet Union that was the wellspring of almost all propaganda. When propaganda was successful, we called those victims "brainwashed."

While the word propaganda has fallen from favor, current society has crafted new descriptive terms for it. Spin, marketing, influencer, brand awareness, personal branding, deepfakes, and even misinformation have replaced the P word.

In this new Webby Award-winning narrative podcast by Brink Media, This Is Propaganda, co-hosts Josh & Malcolm from BRINK media group challenge the marketing profession’s delusions about the origins, techniques, and cultural impact of the propaganda all around us and how it continues to profoundly shape our culture today.
The first season investigates how propaganda became the foundation of all consumer marketing, its omnipresence and evolution across generations of media, and the consequences we face today.

What's the show about? The show details describe and autopsies the numerous methods used by governments, businesses, and powerful groups to influence how we think and how we behave. 

For example, in the first episode, the co-hosts discuss Edward Bernays, the self-proclaimed “Father of Public Relations,” who realized a fundamental truth of effective PR: People are more likely to believe your story if it is told by someone else.

In the episode, the co-hosts reveal how Bernays essentially dreamed up the need for women to smoke cigarettes to grow the demand for tobacco. Rather than simply marketing cigarettes conventionally, Bernays wrapped women's smoking into a tapestry of women's equal rights and suffrage. Bernays' genius was that he constructed a marketplace for cigarette smoking in a cloak of socially admirable goals. 

 
In another episode, the co-hosts investigated the dissonance between Donald Trump's brand authenticity with his followers and his constant stream of lies, which even some of his followers acknowledge.

The show is well-constructed. There's an intro with a clip of significance before the music comes in, and the intro music is appropriately dire in tone. The two co-hosts are thoughtful, articulate, impassioned narrators who are capable of distilling complexity into digestible concepts.

Co-host Josh has 20 years on the job as a Writer / Planner / Designer / Coder / Director. His bio states that he "Thinks feelings and feels thoughts. Likes: new wave, old houses. Dislikes: small talk, big emotions. Hasn't figured it out yet, but is closer than ever."

Co-host Malcolm is a starving artist who finally got hungry enough to become a professional creative.

His bio states: "Likes: BBQ, creative brainstorms, live news bloopers. Dislikes: push notifications, camp as an aesthetic concept, the military-industrial complex. Wishes he was a magician (either kind)."

 The show is produced by BRINK, an entertainment media group apparently powered by a creative agency. The company says, "We build brands and produce and distribute attention-worthy media such as films, shorts, and podcasts."

I have two minor quibbles. First, the show notes are abysmal, and, second, while both co-hosts excel in their roles, their voice inflections are so similar I struggle to identify which co-host is speaking.

This is Propaganda is an ear-worthy podcast because of the show's narrative dexterity, incisiveness, and its ability to communicate cultural complexity into understandable concepts.
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RIP Current Podcast Premieres: Two Women Who Tried To Kill President Ford

iHeartPodcasts has announced the debut of Rip Current, a new podcast series about the only two times in nearly 250 years of U.S. history that a woman has tried to assassinate the sitting president – and the attempts happened 17 days apart in September 1975.

The first attempt was by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a protégé of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. She pulled a gun on Ford as he walked to the state capital building in Sacramento, CA, but hadn’t chambered a bullet, and the gun did not fire. 

17 days later, Sara Jane Moore, a middle-aged housewife, aspiring radical, and undercover FBI informant, shot at Ford as he emerged from the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco but missed and was wrestled to the ground by a bystander.  Fromme and Moore had never met.

Sara Jane Moore had been evaluated by the Secret Service earlier in 1975, but agents had concluded that she posed no danger to the president. The 45-year-old was detained by police on an illegal handgun charge the day before the assassination attempt but was released. The police confiscated her .44-caliber Charter Arms Bulldog revolver and 113 rounds of ammunition.  Moore pleaded guilty to charges of attempted assassination on December 12, 1975. The following month, on January 15, 1976, she was sentenced to life in prison. On December 31, 2007, at the age of 77, Moore was released on parole.

Oliver Sipple was commended at the scene by the Secret Service and the San Francisco Police for his actions; the media portrayed him as a national hero. However, all the media publicity about him was not without controversy, however. Upon realizing that Sipple was gay, the media began broadcasting this information. After learning about his sexual orientation, much of his family, including his parents, disowned him and were subsequently estranged from him, but later were reconciled. Sipple died in 1989.

 This season of “Rip Current” examines how these two women were caught up in the furthest reaches of the radical movements that had emerged from the ‘60s. It asks: What caused them to take to try to kill the president? Why President Gerald Ford? Why California? Why 1975? Why this time and these places? The new series will provide a nuanced look at the tumultuous political climate at the time, their motives, and the impact of these random acts of violence.

 In telling their stories, the season will also explore:

 • The Manson cult and what happened after Charles Manson was imprisoned for life;

• California’s radical prison movement;

• The violent radical underground in San Francisco and the Bay Area;

• The kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

  Rip Current is hosted by Toby Ball, the creator and host of iHeartPodcasts’ “Strange Arrivals,” a look at the psychological, social, and scientific issues of UFOs and exterritorial lore. He is also a panelist on “Crime Writers On...The Original True Crime Review,” and the author of the critically acclaimed crime novels “The Vaults,” “Scorch City” and “Invisible Streets.”

The first episode of “Rip Current” is available, with new episodes every Thursday.