On the Media: “This is Fine”

WYNC’s On the Media is one of my all-time favorite podcasts. I don’t listen to every episode, but their best episodes stick with me long after I listen.

Their recent episode (“This is Fine”) pairs timely commentary with long-term perspective (the latter being especially rare in journalism, probably by design). I was particularly struck by their exploration of how easy it is for people to muddle through things and ignore incremental change, both good and bad:

BOB GARFIELD We have spent this whole conversation discussing the human ability, evidently, the product of evolutionary adaptation to be blind to the threat right in front of us. Is there any part of that psychology that also makes us blind to progress?

DAVID ROBERTS Yes, in the exact same way, incremental moves in a positive direction also get kind of ignored and incorporated. In just as big losses don’t strike us as big losses, often big wins don’t strike us as big wins. So, for instance, you know, you look at the number of women and girls in the developing world who are getting an education. For the last decade or two, that number has been rising and rising, but it just rises slowly enough that no one ever stops and thinks of that as a giant and notable victory. It’s incremental in the exact same way, so…

BOB GARFIELD …infant mortality, per capita income.

DAVID ROBERTS Yeah, there’s a lot of social indicators that are moving in the right direction, but we’re not chalking them up as giant victories for the same reason; we’re just sort of incorporating them. Also, one of the things I think leadership and good media can do, in addition to making us aware of these long term threats, it can also make us aware that it is possible to move in the other direction. So if we draw more attention to those victories, I think it can help people conceive of winning against these dire threats.