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Get Out Your Dossiers

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Light news week, not much to talk about. Let's see, we've got Troy Senik sitting in for Rob Long. We've got The Washington Examiner's Byron York guiding guys through the confirmation hearings, Trump's battles with the media. We've got some marriage advice for Ricochet member @Josh. And we've got Lileks on sentient machines and Apple's descent into irrelevancy. Ho hum.

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Music from this week’s podcast: From Russia With Love by Matt Monro

The ALL NEW opening sequence for the Ricochet Podcast was composed and produced by James Lileks.

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Shower the people, @EJHill

Hosts:
James LileksPeter RobinsonTroy Senik
Guest:
BYByron York

Discussion (14)

  • NancyB@NancyB
    Regarding Apple's new office building, this was covered by C. Northcote Parkinson as one of his laws: when an organization finally has time to build its perfect headquarters, it is on the downward slope. Perfection is finality and finality is death. He cited the British Navy. They made do with offices scattered around London when Britannia ruled the waves, and built their final proper headquarters building when the service was just a ghost of its former self.
  • Mark Wilson@MarkWilson
    Wow, the intro music with the low-brassy three tone ending has been restored to its previous glory. For some reason, for a long time there was a cheesier, cheaper sounding version that had air gaps between the notes that killed the momentum. Glad to hear the old one again.
  • Aaron Miller@AaronMiller

    I just started listening, but let me ask y'all this in response to Peter's point about trusting the intel agencies: What makes intelligence officers more trustworthy than journalists? Are the incentives — both for good reporting and for misinformation — the same?

    News media's audience rewards sensationalism. Is an intel worker more likely to be recognized for reporting humdrum or for providing shocking information? Does security intel rely any less or more on the filtering of data for relevance or quality before it is shared for interpretation? How does the intellectual diversity compare?

    In other words, remove current political trends as factors. What is true always and anywhere of intelligence agencies and of news media? Do the different methods by which information is acquired or the different consumers of that information result in different reliability of information providers?

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