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This story might be helpful to those tearing their hair out about the news lately:
I grew up believing that following the news makes you a better citizen. Eight years after having quit, that idea now seems ridiculous—that consuming a particularly unimaginative information product on a daily basis somehow makes you thoughtful and informed in a way that benefits society.
But I still encounter people who balk at the possibility of a smart, engaged adult quitting the daily news.
...
A few things you might notice, if you take a break:1) You feel better
A common symptom of quitting the news is an improvement in mood. News junkies will say it's because you've stuck your head in the sand.
But that assumes the news is the equivalent of having your head out in the fresh, clear air. They don't realize that what you can glean about the world from the news isn't even close to a representative sample of what is happening in the world.
...
2) You were never actually accomplishing anything by watching the newsIf you ask someone what they accomplish by watching the news, you'll hear vague notions like, "It's our civic duty to stay informed!" or "I need to know what's going on in the world," or "We can't just ignore these issues," none of which answer the question.
...
A month after you've quit the news, it's hard to name anything useful that's been lost. It becomes clear that those years of news-watching amounted to virtually nothing in terms of improvement to your quality of life, lasting knowledge, or your ability to help others. And that's to say nothing of the opportunity cost. Imagine if you spent that time learning a language, or reading books and essays about some of the issues they mention on the news.
Read on for the rest of the list.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 13 2016, @06:30PM
On a side tangent a BBC show like "In Our Time" is kinda like a civilized 1700s version of a Sunday morning political talk show. Not specifically 1700 but generally historical. I donno maybe a quarter of the show topics are tangentially inspired by something in the news, on a very long term average?
Garibaldi and Risorgimento ... OK its a biiiiiiig stretch to go from recent votes in Italy to the unification in the 1800s but its kinda sorta in the news, sort of?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday December 13 2016, @06:38PM
Whoops forgot to mention "In Our Time" is well educated mainstream liberal arts classical education discussion, which has two effects: to meet diversity reqs they don't put the best on but they do have a village people theme playing so almost every episode has the token mandatory minority lesbian female Muslim academic, and you'll note the lack of STEM being mentioned in anyones qualifications because whenever they talk anything even vaguely STEM its agonizingly bad to listen to. Be sure to skip anything "quantum" or physics is general. Listening to them talk about math is rare but a mix of hilarious and annoyingly wrong.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Tuesday December 13 2016, @09:34PM
I'll check it out. Thanks.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 13 2016, @09:57PM
I made fun of it, but it is about 95% good. Its a "BBC Radio 4" production if that helps you find it. The URL appears to be:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/downloads.rss [bbc.co.uk]
Warning its a large feed, contains every episode going back to 2009. Hopefully whatever you use as a podcast fetcher won't try to grab thousands of episodes.
I haven't used itunes in perhaps 5 years but from what I remember its searchable so just knowing "bbc radio 4 in our time" is probably quite adequate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @10:52PM
Some science netcasts:
This Week In Virology (there is also microbiology, parasitology, and evolution from the microbe.tv site) - http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/ [microbe.tv]
Radiolab (not always science, but lots of interesting shows) - http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts/ [radiolab.org]
Naked Scientists (very general science) - http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/naked-scientists/ [thenakedscientists.com]