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throwaway2016a

I love NPR. My wife makes fun of me because sometimes I sit in the car with the battery / radio on after I park just to hear a story finish.

New Hampshire Public radio has a lot of local news and features too, which I can't hear anywhere else. I'm sure other markets are the same.

You can get it on Alexa too because most of the shows are also podcasts which is also great.

I've also heard a lot from my conservative friends that NPR is too liberal but to be honest, I haven't seen that at all. The more entertainment like programs like "Wait Wait" do sometimes have liberal jokes but I think anyone who can take a joke would laugh at them even if they are conservative.[1]

[1] I'm a Libertarian and thus social liberal and economically conservative which puts me in the great position of being able to laugh at jokes at the expense of either of the two major parties.

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This subthread went full generic-ideological so we detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15068327 and marked it off-topic.

> I'm a Libertarian and thus social conservative and economically liberally

That's fascinating; I've been called Libertarian because I'm the opposite. I'm socially progressive yet fiscally conservative, and from what I've read, there are branches of Libertarianism that can embrace either extreme or a mixture.

I've listened to NPR since I was a teenager in the early 90s, and while I don't always agree with the commentators, I usually find the subjects fascinating and the content entertaining. Here in Atlanta the "Second Cup Concert" classical music show kept me motivated at work, and Lois Reitzes' voice was as soothing as listening to Bob Ross talk about his paintings.

It was a mistake (see bellow - I edited my post). It's late at night and I'm tired. I in fact meant the opposite.

I am most definitely not socially conservative or economically liberal.

A whole flamewar erupted over defending a typo :)

you should add that you edited the post haha. I was very confused by the next comment.

There's liberal as in "tolerate how other people choose to live" and there's liberal as in "spend a lot of money on big government solutions to social problems" and nobody can claim to be libertarian and be liberal in the latter sense.

Why?

One could argue that the goal of a libertarian is to maximize individual liberty, and plausibly argue that the loss of liberty via taxation is both a faux loss (eg, actually a charge for externalities, not an "extra" cost imposed by others) and liberty maximizing (eg, freedom from concern of unemployment ruining your life is more freeing than the loss of freedom to not pay taxes).

Why? For he simple reason that the more money funnels through the government, the less choice an individual has in how to use it. It’s about power, and in our world, money is power.

Does that argument extend to courts and police?

If not, why not? Do the same reasons not apply to healthcare?

Healthcare costs a hundred times more. That makes it almost incomparable. And has knock-on effects like different people wanting different styles of coverage with very different price schedules.

Courts/police are relatively straightforward and cheap, and act as an enabler for contracts and personal choice.

It's about 10x more if you count just police and fire; about 2x more if you count defense spending along with policing, using UK numbers. (Nowhere near 100x!)

Of course, many more people spread colds, cause accidents, etc than commit crimes, so it makes sense that the cost of controlling their externalities is more than those of criminals.

But your choice seems arbitrary: you couch it in pragmatic terms, because you're not categorically against government programs, but then avoid actual cost-benefit analysis, rendering your opinion nothing more than whim.

That's what it always seems to come down to with "libertarians": unprincipled bullshit that aligns with their whims (such as yes police, no NHS).

I would definitely not categorize defense spending as police.

Healthcare doesn't stop people from spreading colds. You're not actually reducing externalities with most categories of care. And if there were no police you would see a lot more theft.

Anyway, you can put it in cost-benefit terms, but you have to include a strong freedom factor. A government that takes 2% of GDP to keep public order is far better than not doing that. But taking a very large fraction of income to provide health care? That is an enormous cost to both spending and freedom, and reasonable people can see those costs as higher or lower than the benefits.

> Healthcare doesn't stop people from spreading colds.

If it includes vaccinations then yes, it very much does.

They don't have cold vaccines. And vaccines are part of the reason I said "most categories". Note also that vaccines are pretty cheap. They're far removed from expensive surgery and drugs.

It does apply to healthcare because healthcare costs are only inflated due to artificial influences. Health insurance, removal of choice of health insurance from the marketplace, government influence on that arrangement due to tax deductibility of employer sponsored insurance but not personally purchased insurance, and finally the expansion of "insurance" to mean a payment system in all transactions and not just the serious items (home owners insurance doesn't pay for minor things).

Government influence is what inflated healthcare costs in the first place by removing all aspects from true consumer choice (aka - the market).

Yet in the UK government activity keeps healthcare costs very low by removing consumer choice.

And without the government, insurance companies can refuse to provide insurance to people with preexisting conditions.

What other product that people need can people not buy no matter how much money they have?

>For he simple reason that the more money funnels through the government, the less choice an individual has in how to use it.

Well, if the money funnels in billionaires and overseas corporate accounts, an individual has even less choice in how to use it (unless he is the owner of said company or the billionaire).

Whereas with the government at least the individual gets a vote on how those money should be used.

>It’s about power, and in our world, money is power.

So better than the government, where we have some say, have that money, than billionaires and mega-corps, which we don't control.

> Well, if the money funnels in billionaires and overseas corporate accounts, an individual has even less choice in how to use it

Billionaires buy things, travel, and hire people to work for them. They don't hold onto their money forever. And if they do hold on to, it lowers the supply of money in circulation, thus increasing the value of the dollars YOU hold. A rising tide lifts all ships. So I fail to see the problems. Besides, it's their money, what right does anyone else have to it? If you want their money, find something to sell to them. Maybe start a billionaire vacation resort on the moon. That will create tons of jobs.

> Whereas with the government at least the individual gets a vote on how those money should be used.

Voting is just a small piece, the bigger part is the full-time lobby groups and interest. They have a much more control than the individual gets 1 vote out of 200+ million. And just because 51+% of voters think it's ok to steal someones income, doesn't make it right.

>Billionaires buy things, travel, and hire people to work for them. They don't hold onto their money forever.

Their living and partying costs are so tiny compared to their wealth, we can just as well say that they are "holding onto their money forever".

>Besides, it's their money, what right does anyone else have to it?

I don't believe in the concept of "their money" above a certain degree. After a point such gains are so much part of systemic faults and imbalances that it should be "everybody's money" but its just hoarded.

>And just because 51+% of voters think it's ok to steal someones income, doesn't make it right.

Absent a god, it's only what people think that makes something right or wrong.

It's not a zero-sum game. Money is just a symbolic representation of value. Value is created by people working and innovating. It's not about sharing a finite size pie. It's a planet full of people innovating and making pies.

There can be billionaires and average people all prospering at the same time. It doesn't bother me when billionaires have hordes of money and private jets. I have an average income, but my life is very comfortable especially compared to human history. I don't have to work on a farm, I have air conditioning, time for entertainment, cheap plane tickets to travel thousands of miles in a single day. I think ancient kings would be jealous of what the average person has access to now.

I am super grateful for all the "selfish ba$#@rds" like Henry Ford who brought cars to the masses and made them selves massively wealthy in the process. Communists, Italian Fascists and Nazis all tried to provide the "peoples car" and every time they failed. Capitalism benefits the common man the most! Even when capitalism doesn't work right, it's still far better then centralized systems.

Another "selfish ba$#@rd" is Steve Jobs. Thank him for helping bring the computing power to the common mans home!

> it's only what people think that makes something right or wrong

To be logically consistent, you must admit there is no moral basis to say what the Nazis did was wrong. Or the nice friendly communists who believe in sharing "everybody's money" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_... I'll take my chances with the Rockefellers :)

I believe you're describing classical liberalism, freedom with governmental safety nets. Libertarianism would have no safety nets and very minimum police and military. If you can't afford food or health care, that's on you.

I'm a libertarian who believes that in a modern industrialized world, you can't not have SOME sort of safety net - the days of the yeoman farmer are long gone (subsistence farming isn't possible in the city) - I'd rather it be in the form of a GMI which would enhance personal freedom of choice, over the existing patchwork of expensive, discriminatory programs and wage controls.

Give people money, give them mandatory financial literacy training before they get said money, let them figure out how best to live their lives, remove the minimum wage in the process. I'm also strongly opposed to malum prohibitum laws as well - the government does a poor job of respecting peoples civil liberties out of the misguided concept that any and all evils are preventable - the truth is, sometimes bad things happen, and not every potential bad thing is worth the collateral costs to prevent it.

I guess those seeking your brand of liberty should just get thrown in prison. There you're "free" to not worry about having to feed yourself, "free" from having to pay for healthcare, and rent. Way to completely invert the definition of freedom.

not in the American sense, but "libertarianism" has long usage in Europe as well, where it's usually associated with 'left libertarian' thinkers such as Orwell, Kropotkin and so forth. Chomsky would be a contemporary example.

Many European anarchists describe themselves as libertarian, in the US the terminology is just not common, so people might be talking past each other here.

Bookchin has spoken about this, but I can't find the lecture at the moment. When I use "libertarian" to describe myself, it's in the Socialist/anarchist sense, rather than what I view as antithetical to libertarian (i.e concerned with the freedom of people) philosophy; I think I would rather call "libertarians" as "propertytarians", as they are so much more concerned with the ownership of property rather than individual freedom, but the name won't catch on.

Edit: Found it, it's a short speech, but it's from a larger one about freedom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnj3dObd6do

> nobody can claim to be libertarian and be liberal in the latter sense.

To be fair it's not a blanket black and white thing. You can be both, one in one area and one in another. I think we worry too much about labels.

While arguing over definitions is usually a waste of time, the libertarian platform is basically defined by its anti government stance.

Not anti-government. Some are as anti all government as anarchist. A lot are for governments to be limited.

What to limit it to is what differentiate different liberal (the original definition, not what your parties have done to it) movements. Some will want nothing, others include only the police, army and diplomacy. Some will include basic infrastructure. Most think contracts enforcement is the responsibility of the government. You even have libertarians who are for a universal basic income.

But using a huge brush of "hurr durr libertarians, tea party, Ayn Rand" to paint libertarians is an error. Which a lot of so-called libertarians do too, like far left people who will parrot concepts while they never read -and certainly not studied- Marx books.

As a side note if the only knowledge you have from the libertarians points come from media (old and new) you should reflect on how they report on tech things you know about and how maybe they report all subjects as badly.

> the libertarian platform is basically defined by its anti government stance

See, this is why I think arguing about labels is a complete waste of time. The majority of libertarians that I personally know are for smaller government in some areas. That doesn't always meant anti government. Sure you'll find plenty of libertarians that are anti government but you're going to find a lot of people with a lot of views calling themselves all sorts of different things that, ultimately, do not fit very well.

For example after reading multiple websites regarding my own political views it would seem some places labeled me as a Libertarian Socialist, others a Liberal and one other a Fiscal Conservative Liberal. I'm not even convinced these labels make complete sense and really only capture some of my viewpoints in a pretty inarticulate way.

Ultimately I just think all of these labels are a complete waste of time. People are imperfect and you'll never bucket them well. Even when you have finally come up with the perfect buckets for people you'll be lucky if half of the people put themselves in the correct bucket either due to a misunderstanding or some other reason.

I consider myself to be a "bleeding heart libertarian". I'm against the drug war, believe in a strong separation of church an state, live and let live, etc. But I don't mind paying taxes for the government to help people help themselves and to help people who can't help themselves.

That just sounds like a standard progressive liberal (and there's nothing wrong with that). What viewpoints do you consider specifically libertarian?

I haven't heard liberals talk too much about legalizing all drugs. Clinton in the 90s started the whole tough on crime, 3 strikes you're out, crusade. I am against the minimum wage - I think it skews supply and demand and contorts the free market -- but I do believe in the basic income for people who work in the form of an expansion of the earned income tax credit.

I don't believe Clinton is a progressive liberal, but most progressives support these policies, as far as I know.

Come to Ohio, it's the main plank of the liberal platform here.

Small, localized governance. True representative government (no career politicians like the sleaze John McCain and Nancy Pelosi). Strong adherence to property rights. Government not picking winners and losers. Government not accepting bribes (campaign contributions via big-money lobbyists). No corporate welfare--if a bank fucks up, they go out of business and shitbirds like Jamie Dimon get to live under a bridge the rest of their lives and (hopefully) die drunk while OD'ing on heroin.

ETA: End to the drug war, non-interventionist foreign policy.

I still mind paying taxes and always will--anyone who doesn't is a doormat. It's just that I also no that a certain amount of expropriation is going to happen no matter what. I still don't support in collectivism or collectivist solutions, though. I think those things are the big lie told to people--that no other system can do what government does. The US government is mainly involved in theft from the middle class via taxation and inflation.

> I still mind paying taxes and always will

Fair enough.

> anyone who doesn't is a doormat.

Don't be ridiculous. Can you really not imagine any other reason for a rational person to approve of government programs, at least in principle?

It's not that no other system can do what government does, it's that there is no other system. Government is a local monopoly on violence. Getting rid of violent (coercive) government does not remove the ability of men to be violent. Because violence is the birthright of man, we develop these agreements about when it's okay to be violent. These are called 'governments'.

Libertarianism is an idealist philosophy which elevates individual rights over that of the collective. This is not a logically inconsistent position, but the real world is not required to conform to what you think is logical. In the real world, rights don't exist if they're not enforced, and you'll note how that word is also inseparable from violence. It would be nice if we lived in a world where libertarianism were possible, or communism too for that matter. Unfortunately such is not the case.

I'm not super familiar with American politics. What do you mean by 'fiscally conservative'? You want the Government to lower taxes and lower benefits and such, is that right? Because that sort of 'the market is right, we don't need no government spending in our economy' view.. well.. that just is the same as being economically liberal.

But then again Americans seem to use 'liberal' to mean 'left-wing', is that right? Because that's pretty insane IMO, that's not really what it means anywhere else..

That's an interesting point I hadn't noticed before.

Everyone downvoting the comment should read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism

It's because the US is slightly messed up in the sense that there's a group of people people who say that they care about "free market" and "less government spending and regulations". At the same time, these people also support protectionism, closed borders and government regulation on things they don't agree with.

On the other side, there's a group that is often called liberal, who support open borders and (often) free international trade, but don't tend to agree with capitalism because they think it increases inequality.

There don't seem to be any true liberals (if you look at the two groups that the US is always talking about) in the full sense of 'economic liberalism'.

You are in error.

There's a major political party which has been saying "free market", "less spending and regulations", and only turned protectionist as of the last election (Republicans) with the election of a populist president. This change hasn't pleased everyone associated with the party. You can read many editorials inveighing against Trump's economic policies in the Wall Street Journal, for instance - whilst also finding plenty of disdain for his erstwhile political opponent Hillary Clinton.

(Concerns about their desire to regulate other things are not addressed by this comment.)

There's also the Libertarians, certainly a minor party, but one which has been consistently against protectionism for longer than I've been alive, and is likely to remain that way until I'm dead.

> There's a major political party which has been saying "free market", "less spending and regulations", and only turned protectionist as of the last election (Republicans

I've noticed republicans and (so-called) libertarians being protectionist long before last election, so I think that's a bit of a non-point.

All parties are hypocritical in practise, so I'll take your point. For the Trump election, they really sold the protectionism in a way they hadn't before, though. Full-on "Down with NAFTA!" etc.

I don't think so, these groups exist, you're just assuming I'm talking about the parties. But the weird thing in the US is that Democrat and Republican are becoming more and more an identity instead of a political representation of its followers. Trump, who was despised within the party in the primaries, won because the voters wanted a person like him. At the same time, many democrats despised Clinton, but the party wanted her as the candidate and worked against Sanders.

Much of this is caused by a two party system fuelled by hate for the other party. Now I realize that I'm generalizing here, but as an outsider, this is what it looks like.

Here in the Netherlands, one of the two biggest parties of the elections 4 years ago, practically disappeared because its voters disagreed with what they did during the last 4 years. So they all moved to parties that seemed to better represent their viewpoints. Something like this is just impossible in the US and moving between the two parties is often as difficult as dropping a religion, since many people are tied to their parties through friends and family. I've experienced all of this while living in the US and am still seeing this on Facebook.

The simple fact is, people really aren't that principled, at least not in the binary Dem vs Rep "two party" system we have. People are interested in one thing. That is, them selves. And they really don't care (read: aren't willing to take action) unless the issue directly effect their back yard.

The idea that America and Americans are principled is a myth. Note: That's not a judgement. Simply an analysis of the historial facts.

> What do you mean by 'fiscally conservative'? You want the Government to lower taxes and lower benefits and such, is that right?

Not quite. I do want lower taxes and less government in people's lives, as long as that benefits the people. I have less of a problem with welfare than people might think, though I believe we'd benefit more overall from a universal basic income as long as it's funded wholly from dismantling existing welfare programs rather than as an addition to them. That eliminates tons of bureaucracy, overspending, and politicians mooching off loopholes in the existing system. I concede though, that at this stage it's nothing more than a pipe dream.

>What do you mean by 'fiscally conservative'? You want the Government to lower taxes and lower benefits and such, is that right?

To me it means balancing the budget and actually working off debt. Right now, that means higher taxes. Being responsible with the treasury rather than borrowing with no intent to pay it back. Spending responsibly and ensuring the spending is not wasteful or kickbacks to political cronies, etc.

Why is paying off debt so important when long-term interest rates are so low? For example, the yield on 30-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities is currently 0.92%. If the government sold these bonds to invest in long-term infrastructure projects, wouldn't that boost the economy enough to outweigh the increase in debt?

https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds/government-bon...

Government debt is a burden on the next generation - in that light, some consider it immoral.

Cool, so let's pull out of all wars and use that money to repay the debt. Win/win, right?

I'm fine with that and not policing the world. Money wasted.

Is it necessarily a burden to have debt if it is coupled with infrastructure assets? Don't you need to quantify the debt relative to the assets in order to say whether it's a burden or benefit?

Fiscally conservative means holding back on public spending and not seeing the government as the best user of societies money. So they favor lower taxes i.e. less state involvement.

Liberal means a lot of different things based on the context.

Liberal can mean a lot of different things depending on the context. The classical usage though is more individual freedom less state (from the enlightenment) the US version is more like Social Liberalism (vs. Social Conservatism).

In general it's about story selection. 80% of the "stories of the day" are related to minority rights, empathy stories and a bunch of others. Rural white people are rarely mentioned except in the context of an environmental disaster. I like the stories myself but I definitely feel like the average conservative doesn't feel like they're included in any of the coverage.

Maybe it's my bias, but I feel like I actually hear a lot of stories about rural white people. Especially since the election, every outlet keeps wanting to do think pieces on their plight.

I'd agree with taurath that if bias is there it's in the story framing or selection. And also sometimes interviewee: the various shows seem to like "Here's an archetype (e.g. soldier) who you would expect to be conservative, but actually has liberal views."

If you summarize every story, you end up with a lot more "affirming a liberal view of the world" ones than "affirming a conservative view."

That said, I still believe the content of the stories presented hews far closer to objective fact and truth than what I've seen from conservative media. So I wouldn't say it's nearly that biased.

I think a lot of sources generally treated as liberal have swerved in their coverage over the last ~year, since Trump began to look credible. I'd argue that stretch is non-representative compared to, say, 2014, but I'd also argue you can still see a distinctive outlook when they do cover those topics.

A source like Vox covers urban/coastal issues from the 'inside', treating first-hand sources as credible and writing like the reader is included in the topic. There's also a significant assumption that readers inherently care.

It writes rural white plight stories as 'explainers', approaching them the way you would approach some international crisis your readers are unlikely to know about. One big human-interest frame example to make your readers care, lots of background and statistics, first-hand interviews that add flavor, but are aggressively contextualized by talking to professors and experts who aren't part of the community. And, of course, a necessity to say "which maybe caused Trump" or otherwise justify why such stories are relevant to their readers.

Basically, I think NPR/Vox/etc have started covering rural plight stuff far more, but they're still explaining those people to their readers.

You hit the nail on the head - and nothing really turns off a viewership than being "taught" about yourself. 90% of conservative talk radio is "teaching" about how liberals think.

Yes, that's a much more succinct way of putting it! A source feels biased to me any time it's talking to one side, but 'teaching' about another side - no matter how the mechanisms of that bias vary.

Polsplaining has a nice ring to it!

NPR before the 2016 election cycle, I'd absolutely agree with you - they've at least started to cover the depravities of the opioid crisis in rural areas now, its a nice change - but I'd agree with you, outside of ATC (All Things Considered) the programming has a huge urban liberal bias.

Is it possible that you would consider any story that isn't about a white heterosexual man one of those? I'm really wondering, because I could see myself keeping a running tally like this once I thought I noticed a trend–kinda like noticing how they put pumpkin into everything in the fall.

But of course, 80% is actually pretty close to the number of Americans that are not white heterosexual men. We may just have gotten used to an overrepresentation in movies, politics, and our social life.

I don't think there's much of an overrepresentation - I haven't heard a human interest piece on a rural/conservative person on there that didn't deal with the opioid crisis in the last 6 months - and I listen every day. I look back to where I grew up which was a much more conservative rural area and frequently think about how I'd never feel like any of the stories on NPR would apply to me.

>In general it's about story selection. 80% of the "stories of the day" are related to minority rights, empathy stories and a bunch of others. Rural white people are rarely mentioned except in the context of an environmental disaster.

I think the problem is you're lumping all minorities into one, and treating rural whites as a separate category.

Pick any particular minority group, and you could make the same statement:

"80% of the stories of the day are related to non-X group. Group X is rarely mentioned"

It took me a long time listening to NPR to realize this, though I'm sure a rural conservative would pick it up in a day.

It's common to watch for bias on a per-story level, looking for either bad facts or heavy spin. That's the level where liberals insist conservative media is biased and other media isn't. NPR is generally great on that level - if they run a piece, it'll be factually accurate and told from some basically reasonable viewpoint.

But it's also worth talking about multi-story bias - what will you come away believing if you hear 100 (factually accurate) stories from this source? That's the usual level where conservatives complain about liberal media bias. (They're not wrong, though conservative sources do plenty of the same.) NPR looks way less good on that level; the scheduled programs (e.g. Fresh Air) lean very liberal/cosmopolitan, while the news reports are prone to a focus on political, coastal, and international issues without so much awareness of the 'interior'.

It's still a vastly better source than most news for learning about any single event, I generally prefer it to NYT coverage even, but it's not exactly comprehensive.

If I ever had to move a lot of Make America Great Again merchandise, I would license clips from "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me."

I have two main difficulties with NPR. First, as a baby boomer, I wonder whether my generation will let go. WAMU still plays old Car Talk shows on Saturday morning, a couple of years after one of the brothers died. Garrison Keillor did, finally, let go, but it took him a while.

Second, so much of it seems to me the self-esteem of the college-bred classes. After a while, I wonder whether it isn't as restrictive to the listeners' viewpoint as the private school. (I suppose that this doesn't apply to truckers so much.)

"being able to laugh at jokes at the expense of either of the two major parties". Shouldn't one be able to laugh at jokes that are funny in general?

[edit: added missing comma]

>WAMU still plays old Car Talk shows on Saturday morning, a couple of years after one of the brothers died.

I occasionally listen to the syndicated podcast. I know next to nothing about cars. Minus the 'forwards from grandma' style jokes that occasionally pop up in the beginning it's a quality program.

Ask Me Another is a newish humorous public radio quiz show hosted by Gen. Xer Ophira Eisenberg with Jonathan Colton (also Gen. X).

My impression is public radio quiz shows don't depend on a college education but reward the accumulation of knowledge and attention paid to current events. The college-educated are more likely to to appreciate those rewards. I'm sure there's also the occasional joke or comment that assumes a shared experience found in college but I expect that's rare enough to not completely put off someone who can't relate to that experience (sometimes they'll say it knowingly, making a joke out of assuming everyone has the same background, especially whiteness).

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/ask-me-another

> I've also heard a lot from my conservative friends that NPR is too liberal but to be honest, I haven't seen that at all.

As with the media more general, the “NPR is liberal” line is a decades old part of the effort to pressure coverage to move further to the right that generations of conservatives have been indoctrinated into as an article of faith; its been quite successful, and if it was ever true in any sense other than maybe the coverage not being as far right as the (rightward moving) center of mass of the Republican Party, it hasn't been for a long time.

> You can get it on Alexa too because most of the shows are also podcasts which is also great.

"Alexa, play NPR" also works. It will use the ZIP code from your Amazon account and play the local NPR affiliate from either TuneIn or iHeartRadio.

This is how I listen to it at home - one Echo Dot (connected to a Tivoli Audio Model One) in the "office", and another using its built-in speaker, in the bedroom.

Do you know if you can get it to play out-of-state NPR stations? I'm not a fan of my local affiliate.

By going to https://alexa.amazon.com, "music, video and books", tunein, picking the Dot I wanted to play through, and then I searched for KGOU (Oklahoma City NPR), I was able to play that station.

You might be able to say "Alexa, play KGOU" (or whatever station you want).

We've only had our Echos since Prime Day and it is simultaneously great and awful.

We connected it to our light dimmer and ceiling fan and it was harder than it should be to make it work. We would say "Alexa, turn the lights on" and it would reply with something like "I don't know about a device named lights". So, the natural next question is "Alexa, what devices do you know about?" That should work, but it doesn't.

In a quiet room, the microphones are amazing. But as soon as I turn on the fan over our stove, the white noise makes the Echo practically deaf.

Other things like turning on drop-in was an exercise in frustration. Why can't I just say "Alexa, turn on drop-in for the household?" Instead I had to go to the app, give it access to my contacts, turn on drop in on our contact card, then turn on drop in on both devices.

Frankly, I don't think there should even be a phone app. Go all in on the voice interface.

I'm Australian, I understand how the affiliate stations work but can you explain what you mean when you say you don't like your local station?

I'm assuming it's the same as wanting to listen to ABC Melbourne when you live in Sydney - but that means missing out on the local news or particular presenters.

Public radio stations across the US carry different programs.

After asking the question I thought about it more and I think I just need to fully commit to podcasts. I've pretty much stopped watching live TV (except for sports) and the same should probably be true for radio.

In addition to the other comment, there's simply a huge amount of format variation between local affiliates. Some are mostly music, often classical or jazz, with nothing else except daily news. Others are almost all in-depth news and programming like quiz shows and interview channels.

So there are places where the local station carries almost no NPR content.

Check out ABC Radio National.

http://abc.net.au/rn

They do some awesome shows also available as podcast.

Bonus: Aussie accent is a barrel of laughs (I say that as an Australian!)

> Libertarian and thus social conservative and economically liberal

Isn't that the opposite of a libertarian?

_Probably_ just a typo, imo.

Then again, I've never found two libertarians who could agree on what being libertarian actually means, so maybe not.

You're absolutely right. It is late at night here but regardless I have no excuse. I have no clue why I typed it that way (fixed the original post since it was within the edit window)

He's using conservative and liberal in their classical senses, whereby conservative connotes restraint in legislating social issues and liberal connotes freedom of the marketplace.

I know you got down-voted and you are wrong about my intentions (it was just a typo) but I up-voted you because I do appreciate that the definitions of liberal and conservative have not always been the same.

Hello from Amherst/Nashua. Email me if you want to get a beer sometime.

I used to listen to NHPR a lot when I had a long commute one summer and would occasionally tune in. My biggest complaint isn't that NPR is too liberal, only that it is very surface-thought in its discussion of topics. Too often a story will raise what seem to be obvious and interesting (but maybe difficult) questions and the journalist or interviewer will just move on.

I dimly have one example in mind, a government agency (port authority?) in Oregon had millions in carbon credits (tax offsets) that it couldn't use, so it sold them to some other Oregon company for cheap to some corporation. Imagine its $5m tax credits that it sold for $1m. The company could then offset $5m of taxes. This was billed as a good deal for the port authority.

Of course as described it's really the state of Oregon losing $4m by selling the credit on the cheap, which seems totally insane. This was never discussed. I gave up after that story.

> My biggest complaint isn't that NPR is too liberal, only that it is very surface-thought in its discussion of topics. Too often a story will raise what seem to be obvious and interesting (but maybe difficult) questions and the journalist or interviewer will just move on.

Tom Ashbrook (On Point) does this especially egregiously. Some of his simplistic (or biased) "So what you're saying is..." moments make me cringe.

I realize it's a call in show, but jesus, there isn't anyone out there with a less obvious liberal bias / more technical background who's interested in the job?

Let callers or interviewees make their points fairly, then debate them. Rhetorically dancing around the topics with the advantage of being the host just makes me feel like I'm listening to Bill O'Reilly. (Ugh)

You should both check out WNYC'S "On The Media." It's NPR style, but every interview you hear is a 40-60-120 minute interview that's been boiled down to 8-10 min for the show. It's truly bespoke radio in that way, so they get to cover the issues at the core of something. It's my favorite show week to week.

On The Media is fantastic. It's really hard to find succinct sources that don't totally misrepresent their subject, and they do an impressive job of it.

In GA, we've got Political Rewind, which is similar and also fantastic.

It's also a simple formula: find an expert in the field who's also a halfway decent host, then invite guests who work in the professional and balance their biases against each other.

Yeah, this gets exhausting with some of their shows. The ones where the interviews are interviewee-focused like Fresh Air are good, but some shows just get infuriating.

Diane Rehm, for all her awards, has an awful tendency to cut people off in ways that destroy clarity. Things like letting someone give "on one hand..." and cutting them off as they say "but on the other hand...", so that only half their opinion gets aired.

On the "more technical" side, Science Friday really needs a host who understands something about science. Flatow's digested 'restatements' tend to be flatly wrong, and he's often two or three laps behind what an interested layman would pick up. I can understand going slowly in the name of accessibility, but he sort of forfeits that right by arriving at completely inaccurate final summaries.

It's not bad overall, but there's an aggravating tendency for the interviewers to 'participate' when they're not really qualified to have a dialogue instead of simply offering prompts.

This is called a "driveway moment" in NPR lingo. They even made a series about it!

http://www.npr.org/series/700000/driveway-moments

>I'm a Libertarian

As a libertarian, don't you find the economic news reports from NPS cringeworthy though?

Economics is such a small portion of what NPR covers. And most of the time it is things like what the market did today which are fact based.

Do I disagree with stuff they say sometimes? Absolutely. But not enough to change the station.

Then again, I am more tolerant or opposing views than most, unfortunately.

> I am more tolerant or opposing views than most, unfortunately.

Why do you say "unfortunately"? I would say it is a strength if you can tolerate opposing views without necessarily accepting them.

There are two ways that he could be just as tolerant...

He is saying it is unfortunate that others are not as tolerant of opposing views.

D'oh! Of course.

Marketplace with Kai Ryssdal? Cringeworthy?

Edit: Or Planet Money?

I dont remember the program name.

OMG Kai Ryssdal is insufferable. I can't decide which I loathe more: his nails-on-chalkboard exaggeratedly-saccharine voice or his habit of filling in between stories with stupid rhetorical questions the "answers" to which are based entirely on his own banal idiosyncratic bourgeois politics.

Marketplace is extremely cringe worthy. Planet Money seems to do better though.

Nevertheless hey are both good sources of facts if you look past the naïve understanding of economics.

Kai Ryssdal is horrible. Fluff piece after fluff piece and he prefaces all stories containing data with an extremely patronizing "dumb this down for you" speech.

Hey hey, another New Hampshire native!

It also helps that, depending on where you live, NHPR is the most entertaining programming available. The Exchange is a very high quality current events show, and the host is incredibly good at her job. I would listen to that when traveling up to PSU for school during my senior year.

If you find yourself north of Tilton, NH, you're not going to have much choice in radio programming. Unless, that is, you enjoy country or Christian radio.

Or, you know, the three NHPR signals, the multiple VPR state border blasters, Maine Public Radio, most of the tilton stations, or the Canadian border blasters we get.

>I've also heard a lot from my conservative friends that NPR is too liberal but to be honest, I haven't seen that at all.

The reason conservatives think NPR is wildly liberal is they don't listen to it. They only listen to conservative media, and it tells them NPR is 100% pro-communism and also is pro-Sharia law. Which anyone who actually listens to it knows is utter nonsense.

The lesson here is you should listen directly to both sides, and not just listen to one side and take for granted it is telling you the truth about the other side.

NPR is itself is pretty good here. It regularly has conservatives presenting their views. But I also subscribe to a conservative magazine, just to make sure I am getting the whole story.

In my own experience driving for a little while around the Four Corners area in the desert, there were more than a few spots where the only option was NPR, because all other stations on the dial were glassy-eyed christian proselytising, especially driving Utah -> Colorado. I mean, the kind of radio that even normal christians would be uncomfortable listening to. I like NPR's content anyway, but if you lived in some of those areas, it's the only option that isn't cult-ish.

Unfortunately many of these Christian stations have poorly maintained transmitters that broadcast not only on their assigned frequencies but also all over the adjacent NPR stations. Only Christian stations seem to get away with this.

Shouldn't a libertarian be against NPR because it's funded by the Federal government? I get confused sometimes.

Yes but we also have to live in the real world. It's on the air so you might as well take advantage of that.

Gets some funding from the federal government != funded by the federal government.

> I've also heard a lot from my conservative friends that NPR is too liberal but to be honest, I haven't seen that at all.

Are you being facetious? NPR is extremely liberal.

> [1] I'm a Libertarian and thus social liberal and economically conservative which puts me in the great position of being able to laugh at jokes at the expense of either of the two major parties.

I'm moderate independent so I too laugh at both sides.

I also don't listen to NPR or watch foxnews as they are a terrible waste of time.

NPR's newsroom is very liberal. But, I find their lifestyle pieces or non-news series to be extremely rich.

> I also don't listen to NPR or watch foxnews as they are a terrible waste of time.

You seem to have a lot to say about something you never listen to because it's a "terrible waste of time".

> You seem to have a lot to say about something you never listen to because it's a "terrible waste of time".

Did I say I never listened to them? I used to as a teen and young adult. I was a big fan of NPR. Even was a supporting member and have their tote bag somewhere( WNYC is my station )...

I also used to watched a bit of foxnews, but that was only at work when they had it on.

But the past few years, I grew up. I will still listen to radio lab once in a while if they have an interesting topic and maybe catch wait wait don't tell me ( especially if they have an interesting guest ).

But for the most part, it's gotten old and boring. But that's my opinion. I'm sure yours is different.

It's gotten so dumbed down it's painful to listen to. There are highlights such as Michael Krazny for us locals. But mostly too stupid to bother with. And though I don't watch tv, from what I gather of the Jim Lehrer Newshour on YouTube, PBS seems to be headed in the same direction. I guess it's a reflection of American culture and intellect in general. Sad.

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