 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Chris Leiden, who is in India and One of the first to start podcasts, if not the first. We say the first. With another guy who is doing the thinking You know, you know what is different in the US in here Do you think it's because that in some sense the alternate voices in the US tend to be like the real news Democracy now derailed news all of this tend to be just video while you have just text the kind of platforms We talked about which is just text, but you don't get a mix of these two. Is that what you think is a difference? It's very complicated. I think it's some I mean the New York Times for example is doing a lot of mixed media now and multimedia television I mean video and and they have blogs and Podcasts too But it's all to the side. Do you think they're missing that in the US? I think it's a question of Independence and the New York Times is such an institution by now, and I worked in the New York Times for covered presidential politics Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan that whole period in the 70s into the 80s They it's hard to describe their interest, but they have one and it's I suppose it comes down basically to Being the most respected voice. They had no voice at all in in electing Donald Trump I think that's their main there are many reasons to to be angry about Difficult to understand why they become the voice of war, which is what they're rooting for right now That's a tricky one they're married to the Cold War for sure They also They have particular Interest in Israel I would say They have a particular interest in In Wall Street the center of American investment. They come out of the Rockefeller world Which is very worldwide global? oil petrochemical industries and They managed to point the finger at everybody else They they want to remain the center they get caught way off balance in the Trump era Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump came out of New York. They were New York political figures turned out They didn't had no idea Where Trump was coming from they didn't know him but in any event I To me the interesting thing it's hard to put your finger on precisely is but there is a test going on here of the American Empire after fashion in a kind of crisis we have We have been so far astray from our own ideals since Vietnam and that burden is so hard to talk about but two Million Vietnamese peasants killed by American weapons and soldiers is a horrible record I think of 50 years since I've been out of college It's been a deeply inglorious time not only wins and losses, but for The the moral Implications of of these wars and now a kind of permanent war around the Middle East How did I get to that the New York Times is stuck with this Imperial voice? It sticks itself with this Imperial place And we've almost entirely blotted out Popular conversation Tony Jutt an American writer who died maybe 10 years ago Wrote a marvelous last book. He was dying as he as he spoke it ill fares the land But he said the great majority of the American people are not part of any important conversation and they know it We have to restore a popular American tone to our media. I love to do it. I mean I I'm convinced That the human voice does it best does it better even than writing does it better than video video is so distracting When when when you're looking at a football game our football people are crashing into each other all over the place It's impossible to carry on a conversation, but take the pictures away Focus the conversation in human voices and we're very very sensitive to the implications of the human voice I think that's the way to get it You think podcast therefore restores the balance in some sense between not Distracting the mind too much with the images exactly yet brings emotional content Into what you are good you are saying unlike the dispassionate printed word as it were Well, this is this is the sweet spot for at least the serious thinking is that what you would say? Well, you say it very well, and we haven't rehearsed this I mean you say a sweet spot the voice is so laden with feeling I Know from your voice roughly how old you are male female maybe Indian maybe Italian accent in the United States and It registers emotion it communicates something of feeling That doesn't come through almost any other way and when you think about it Back to you know primitive man In the plains of East Africa you had to be listening all the time danger help Friendship love it's all conveyed through the ear Studs Turkle who was a great Radio genius in the city of Chicago for many many years He called it that fabulous instrument Vox Humana the human voice it is so trustworthy I sort of know a phony when I hear the voice. I know a worried person. I know Learned a person you don't have to see the person often times We think it's distracting to see that you start noticing his hair or as you know His missing teeth or his big ears or whatever it is or hers Radio is a Almost indestructible medium I think for the first or radios are cheap anybody can do it and now the podcast and the internet is Virtually anybody with a with a laptop now This is another this is the other part that it democratizes Communications also in a way because you don't require a lot of equipment, right? It's very light So the data charges for poorer people are much less compared to what it would be if you have to so video And I do realize that a news click probably we are missing the fact that we haven't started Podcasts and this discussion is very good for me because I think that's something that we are going to move in very quickly But in the last point I would like to raise with you You talked about the God giving us internet of course as a joke But internet had the promise that will democratize education But with the platforms emerging the good what we call the digital monopolies the Googles in the face books of the world They're also capturing the net in a way Yeah, this is an enclosure movement if we will that it is trying to enclose our voices and make them hurt only through then And now you have the algorithms which they will decide what goes through and what is fake news, right? So just as you may have right-wing Infowars being taken off or being considered fake news your voice and my voice tomorrow is also in the category of fake news according to shall we say the test of New York Times because that's the kind of test They're willing to talk about that we'll get certain set twelve fifteen Respected voices with which we'll test what is news or not news which means You have shall we say a different kind of censorship which will come into the algorithms and that even more difficult to fight because you Can't fight it legally Yeah, we haven't figured this out yet, and we've gone in the States I would say we've gone in 15 years from a kind of Insane ecstatic utopia a digital utopia to a Real awareness that this is much more complicated that first of all as you say incredibly concentrated People have I mean Mark Zuckerberg has he's going to be worth two hundred billion dollars any day now, and and of course they're controlling it and of course they're forming groups and excluding others That maximize the advertising value all of these nightmares it's and and Particularly, you know, they don't pay much taxes on what they're getting either Amazon is basically destroying retail America Stomping India as well. Yeah, and and we didn't see these things coming and it's gonna have to be fine, too in Europe Seems to be more aggressive about Regulating these new monopolies and and maybe the monopolies simply have to be grown broken up I mean the United States has a record for breaking up monopolies phone monopoly IBM. There were there were even in those Battle days good old days We understand that monopoly is bad and it may have to be undone but When you have easy access inexpensive access for any voice pocket of voices The changes will be made. I think that's I mean, I'm still optimistic about the possibility, you know Literally, it's 50 years ago. There was a there was a Catholic priest Pierre tear de Chardin I don't know if you've heard that name. He was a paleontologist But he wrote a book in which he predicted everything was going through a kind of electronic Unity of the world something like the I always think it was something like them, you know there's a market in yen or dollars or pound that runs around the world 24-hour 7 Ever it's it's just going it's a kind of conversation about what's your yen worth? What's my dollar worth or whatever? and he foresaw the day when we would have Really he called it the noosphere no us being the Greek word for mind We would have a mind sphere running continually around the world of conversation discovery Literature science you name it And we're almost there now and he said it was a His intuition was that it was one of the historic Steps in evolution of the human species and he's speaking as a Catholic priest I mean he's speaking of the old orthodoxy, but he saw it coming. It's still early. We don't know how to Quite yet how to do it to keep it open Make it extend the human capacity rather than diminish it Make peace as well as you know hostility, but let me toss it back to you in a different way We believe in voice we believe in human equality. We believe in including everybody in theory I keep trying to think and I don't know enough about India Pakistan But can you imagine that a whole variety of conversations people at home people on the street people at work? venting on These issues going back to partition going back to self-rule Could open up a conversation in which there are embedded interests. There's a lot of history there commercial interests military interests political interests, can you imagine? a an amateur conversation through podcasting that would sort of Help help open it up. I think in the United States I mean the question would be could we is there is there a way to address our racial differences differences of income wealth history privilege The slavery history which is very much alive again in American people's minds could Podcasting by which I mean a kind of everybody conversation when you want to when you want to add something But in India's situation, can you imagine? podcasting podcast being a help You know, this is the fundamental promise of what the internet used to be that you will have Multicasting will be able to talk to each other what tends to happen that you amplify what you want What you already want to believe and you talk to the people that you agree with so what it does It seems to amplify what could be called what I've been called filter bubbles that you talk to line like minded And instead of a public discourse what you get is a kind of strong Centres forming which don't talk to each other and therefore instead of having a Discussion across this bubbles you tend to even concentrate opinion even more so you get heterogeneity But the heterogeneity is really of strong homogeneous groups So conversation across groups seems to in fact diminish in in the internet space Because when you're face-to-face with each other, you don't normally abuse each other you try to be civil There is a human response by which if you don't see somebody you can actually be much more vitriolic So what I'm telling you is interesting is this this fractures of our public discourse into strong Shall we say drift away from each other? So I'm not sure that by Technology overcome that so it's like mobilization and counter mobilization of the real world also tend to happen in this world as well So I think technology has to be married to movements on the ground to be able to transcend These so-called bubbles that are forming and I don't think alone Technology is ever going to be a solution. Yes, it has always potential for both Amplification as well as destruction and amplification could lead to the peace being amplified better You know struggles for humanity to be amplified, but it is also the possibility of hatred being amplified Don't forget mass media Fascist Italy it was Mussolini who used radio. Yeah, don't forget the famous Films that came out of Germany and the United States Europe birth of a nation Of course on the other hand to victory. What was it the famous fascist with Nazi film? Which which came out which shows on Europe on that huge stage Hitler standing Those are all actually a lady rifle style the basically the construction of the fascist image Which is what a lot of people then said mass media is dangerous to democracy So, you know what I'm saying is I'm not going to take that position. I'm saying that both potentials exist and how we do it but podcasting Thank God is not mass media and I think there are people who feel it cannot be monopolized or controlled the way the way Facebook For example sort of took over blogging it you know instead of writing your blog you are you but and then We haven't even spoken the trivialization of the conversation. I mean when you're putting pictures of your cats and your dogs and your babies that's another way it goes wrong, but I Like the notion I don't really understand it that the human voice and the live and spontaneous open quality of it Makes it very very hard to control or to buy I think podcasters, and I think you and I are like this. We're not in it I'd enough to make money Or get elected Let's Chris. Let's sort of get this part right That internet is an individual experience, but it's a mass media The fact that the 70,000 people can listen to the podcast Individually it still is mass media just as the videos on YouTube are consumed individually, but they're really used They are really a mass platform Yes, the centralization doesn't take place because it's a equivalent to a website So that if you have net neutrality, which in the US is not there anymore You would then get into the position that some of the sites may be completely frozen out India we still accept net neutrality. I think so does your large parts of Europe So all websites have equal access. Okay, so access is it cannot be monopolized But nevertheless it is still though individually consumed all of these are really to be mass media Yes, it's not being synchronous so that you who solely speaks the whole nation listens That's been what happened But the fact that you you have you're reaching 50,000 100,000 people if you do to a podcast Can actually two questions and these are technical and you're much more adept technically than I How can you build a podcast that lets listeners respond in their voices? and the second question is how do you assemble a Variety of podcasts that are not all being edited by the same person that retain individuality but can sort of promote each other be friendly together Represents build build a complex Complex audience that's bigger than you know all the individual voices put together So the second is an easier one to answer because essentially what it means is create a website Which are multiple people can have their own podcasts in it Give them the tools to do it so that they they can podcast whenever they want and that could then be put put To they could publish it very easily. So I think that's a relatively a simple issue to solve for example I'm thinking of how do we have a science Channel in effect on a podcast and also a Book Channel also a musical channel also maybe I don't know So there are two approaches to it Chris you could call it a portal and each one could be accessed through a common Shall we say interface and you go to essentially individual sites or you could have it? They go to individual subspaces, but the navigation of all the spaces are relatively simple simple or similar So that people don't have to discover each of the idiosyncrasies of each of the pages separately So that's a technically a relatively simple task the question that you asked how do you have feedback live live? Podcast and then I'll have to think over but I think yes You could you could announce that this time this could be a live podcast and that you could tune in You can listen like we have live Facebook live You can have YouTube live it is possible to do live from any website as well So I think that's also a solvable problem But how people access you back through voice easily do you give them a sort of telephone interface? When they can ring in and you play the voices in real time those are the technical questions We have to answer but I think there's a very interesting questions And I think for me the take away from this discussion is how do you do it? And I would really love to partner you in doing it together So we saw let's do it. Let's do it. I found so I mean I think of I've been undone, but also Sidharth Brother Rajan, who I knew somewhat in the states briefly and such an impressive man at the wire also scroll also the BBC's work India has something going here in putting really a sound interesting open Not universal expert, but but informed Impassioned voices on the air for everybody to get in on and I want to I want to go there with you And I hope you have good opinion about news click as well. I'm just joking Thank you, it's good to be at news click good to be on news quick Thank you Chris for being with us. Thank you. This has been an incredibly Exciting week for me and I'm gonna be back Whether you want me or not Thank you very much. Thank you. This is all the time We have today do tune into news click do watch us on our website as well as on the YouTube channel Listen to the audio portion too and listen to the audio in future after this discussion We'll have to come with the podcasts as well. Thank you