Category: media

Stop Romanticizing Stories of Overcoming Adversity Due to Societal Dysfunction

“We all should be striving to succeed but if you find yourself cheering for a success story that could have been avoided in the first place had there been a stable safety net and to have prevented the problem from arising in the first place, that is where more of our attention should be focused on as people.”

Look, I love a feel-good story as much as the next guy. I like it when someone can pull themselves out of poverty or difficult circumstances to achieve wild success for themselves and their next of kin. This is the kind of positive story that is often reported on in American media and popular culture. We love the story of the underdog rising above challenges to achieve something great. It seems to be practically embedded in our national DNA. However, the Achilles heel that we often refuse to acknowledge or focus on as a nation is how dysfunctional it can be to rise above a broken or fractured safety net to escape poverty, homelessness, or even medical debt. We all should be striving to succeed but if you find yourself cheering for a success story that could have been avoided in the first place had there been a stable safety net and to have prevented the problem from arising in the first place, that is where more of our attention should be focused on as people.

 I bring this issue up as this has been the kind of a ‘feel-good yet kind of messed up’ story that garners sympathy and appreciation from the average person throughout my life. For example, I was watching a nationally televised baseball game recently as I like to do sometimes and heard the television commentators for this game focus on the rags-to-riches story of one of the players on the field who has become wildly successful after going through tough times that involved both him and his family.

The baseball player in question had a newborn son arrive around the time of the COVID pandemic’s outbreak, who suffered from a series of seizures, which required a lengthy hospital stay and weekly checkups from the doctors there. The player himself could not play baseball due to cancellation of the MLB season at the time in 2020 and lost his health insurance at the same time his newborn son’s seizures started occurring. Because health insurance is tied to employment in America, the baseball player lost his health insurance at the worst possible time. They did not have enough money left over for housing after paying out of pocket costs for the medical care for their son. As a result, the baseball player and his family were rendered homeless for a while, living out of their family car in a Wal-Mart parking lot at one point in central Florida.

Luckily, even in this case of the dysfunctional health care system failing both this player and his family, having been left in the dust for a while, professional baseball, being the national pastime resumed a few months later in 2020, the baseball player regained his medical insurance and was able to pay off the medical debt due to his success in Major League Baseball over the past few years. I admire this player and his family’s resilience in the face of adversity and am glad his son is doing well now. The player is now a naturalized U.S. citizen also and visits children’s hospitals in the area where he plays to support families going through similar ordeals.

While this story in America had a happy ending after much sadness and anxiety for the family in question, I can’t help but think of the TV commentators’ from this baseball game’s lack of awareness about the societal dysfunction that leads to a whole family living out of their car in a Wal-Mart in central Florida with no safety net to speak of because one of them lost their job, through absolutely no fault of their own, which was tied to their health insurance coverage. It bothered me a great deal personally to not hear from the TV commentary to not mention at all the lack of universal health care in this country or the fact that you can incur thousands of dollars or more of medical debt so a son or daughter can get the treatments or surgeries needed to overcome seizures or other major medical issues.

While this story had a happy ending due to the player’s evolving skillset and MLB’s massive popularity, there are millions of Americans suffering out there currently due to a lack of a durable safety net to fill in the gaps in health and education. Come back stories to break through adversity are great and make for nice commentary but not everyone has had such luck and success navigating the American health care system.

Whether it’s GoFundMe or another online platform, many families have to rely on the kindness of strangers to help them pay down massive medical, educational, or other debt, which is never an enviable position to be in. We should not have to rely on complete strangers to fund necessary medical procedures or to get life-saving medications paid for in the United States. No one should have to forgo their home or apartment to go homeless to pay for medical bills either and be forced to live with their family in a car or on the street. I’m all for people striving to make the best of their abilities in their chosen profession but layoffs, firings, or other unfortunate events can happen leaving us jobless and without health insurance directly as a result.

I’m not going to discuss which kind of system to have regarding how insurance or how higher education can run in America but I do know that you shouldn’t have to rely on having a job at all times to get affordable health care and if you don’t have insurance when a procedure is needed, you should never go bankrupt trying to pay off your medical bills. We can argue forever about the size, scope, and scale of how a universal health care system can support the country while everybody pays their fair share into its functionality, but we should never reach the point where a platform like GoFundMe is needed to fill in the gap when it comes to someone’s health care coverage. The point of this article is not to discuss how such a new system would work or how it can be implemented but rather to address how this current dysfunctional system (or lack thereof) has been allowed to fester and continue without any solutions or improvements recently.

Lastly, feel-good stories are a good way for average people to relate to one another regardless of if you’re a professional baseball player or a janitor, but we should be taking the right lessons from these stories. We should be applauding the person and family’s resilience and their success in navigating the massive challenge, but we should also question on how we could let such dysfunction run a key part of our society or how we can allow this system to continue given that it bankrupts average people because they lost their job through no fault of their own.

Sometimes, in life, you must ask hard questions and those can include how we fix societal dysfunction and how we can be part of the solution in our own way as citizens. Asking these kinds of questions, holding our political leaders accountable, and focusing on the ‘why it happened?’ rather than the ‘how it happened?’ will help to cause some real change to happen and for these stories to become rarities in American society rather than sadly, all too common place, that we hear almost every day here.

Be Wary of Bread and Circuses

“There’s nothing wrong with distractions and wanting to enjoy an event, a spectacle, or indulge a bit but in the times that we’re living in, it’s important to realize that focusing only on ‘bread and circuses’ is something we can no longer afford to do.”

Who doesn’t enjoy sports or entertainment or both? People since the dawn of time have enjoyed being entertained or have been spectators or participants in games, sports, or other spectacles. At best, it is a thrilling adrenaline rush to be part of it to the roar of hundreds or thousands of people. At worse, it is a pleasant distraction from the humdrum of our daily life and our routines. There’s nothing wrong with distractions and wanting to enjoy an event, a spectacle, or indulge a bit but in the times that we’re living in, it’s important to realize that focusing only on ‘bread and circuses’ is something we can no longer afford to do.

The concept and phrasing of “bread and circuses or in Latin known as, “panem et circenses”, comes from the Roman Empire and belongs to the Roman poet Juvenal. Juvenal criticized how the Roman leadership would use free food such as bread and grant entertainment such as the gladiator events and other spectacles of the coliseum to distract the citizenry from societal and economic decay. While the Roman empire declined and fell as all empires do, today, in our modern world, we have major sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup and the NFL Super Bowl. Reality Television shows remain quite popular, and the media spends hours on celebrity scandals and gossip rather than focus on systemic issues affecting each of us daily.

Why is this an issue today as it was almost 200 years ago? I would argue that we are living through an era of upheaval including political instability, economic inequality, the effects of climate change, and the rise of authoritarianism. Distraction such as ‘bread and circuses’ help to keep people distracted from these ongoing issues and is a powerful tool to be utilized by those holding power. While sports and entertainment can be healthy outlets, it does not go well for a society when it is all-consuming, and people are overly reliant on it each day for fulfillment or pleasure. An active citizenry must remain focused on issues that affect them and their families as if they are paying attention and are engaged, positive change is more likely to occur as a result.

Political leaders can use major sporting events to help push their agendas forward as the times surrounding such events are the easiest to enact policies that are controversial but in which public attention is directed elsewhere. Politicians and leaders can also engage in controversies surrounding sporting events and how it related to ‘culture wars’ and ‘celebrity feuds’ to divert from ongoing political scandals or economic problems. Major sporting events are also used to stir national pride in a country and can be used to distract from real issues that the country is facing as well.

Sports and entertainment are big money for corporations and for wealthy individuals. Sports can reflect ongoing economic inequalities especially when multimillion-dollar commercials are paid for by a company rather than in investing in their own workforce’s compensation. Money spent in the billions of dollars each year on sports betting, gambling, or on tickets could have been funneled towards programs focusing on social well-being in health care, education, or infrastructure.

Celebrities and athletes should be compensated well for the work they do but there is an issue when ordinary workers who help make events, games, and other spectacles run smoothly are not paid a living wage. Thousands of workers are making decent pay, but it pales in comparison to what the ‘stars’ are making especially when they are the one preparing their food, keeping them safe with security measures, and helping stock the shelves and sell the merchandise.

There is also the ongoing debate in society about taxpayer money funding massive students and events that are not benefiting the surrounding community or the city itself. A lot of that money gets funneled to corporations in the ‘naming rights’ and to the ‘billionaires’ who see their net worth grow up as the sports franchise becomes more valuable over the years. A society where income inequality is high and is rising will be reflected in sports and entertainment as well. While there are some economic benefits to be made by the average person in these industries, a large sum of the gains to go to the wealthiest owners, players, and stars while the wealth does not ‘trickle down’ much, if at all.

While some of these issues do get coverage in the media although increasingly sparingly, I would argue that general news media, especially in recent years, has become sensationalistic and has focused on ‘click bait’ content rather than on serious investigative journalism. News outlets have prioritized celebrity feuds, sports gossip, and other trivial controversies that pale in comparison in terms of importance compared to real issues going on with the wider society. Viral content gets more clicks and eyeballs, especially on social media, and that’s where the focus has turned especially in recent years. Too much information at one time also presents most people from being able to decipher of what’s real vs. what’s fake and what to pay attention to because ‘information overload’ makes it hard to pinpoint what is likely to affect them the most and is worth paying attention to.

Similarly to the issues I’ve mentioned that ‘bread and circuses’ distract from each day, one issue that is the most immediate and wide scale in terms of ongoing effects is the accelerating climate crisis. Major sports and entertainment events all have an environmental cost and leave a sizable carbon footprint. When you tally up, the travel emissions, energy consumption because of the game or event, and the waste involved from having thousands of people in attendance, communities who support the events or games must deal with the aftermath, including both the financial and environmental costs.

While these massive events like the Super Bowl, the FIFA World Cup, and the Olympics due to pledge to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly, many companies do not end up footing the bill for the carbon emitted or the energy used. They can do so because the companies help sponsor the events and contribute enough money to them, so they aren’t as liable to help with the environmental aftereffects. Looking at two recent examples with the 2016 Rio Olympics and the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qarar, these two events led to increased carbon emissions (FIFA) and environmental aftereffects. (Olympics)

While I am supportive of sports and entertainment and have been a fan of both, I still recognize the need to tone it back these days because excessive consumption of either will not help our society and our world be better. Sports and reality TV may seem as important as real issues, but they are not and never will be. People must stay engaged in what’s going on in their community, their country, and their world. As consumers of news, we also have the individual and collective power to choose which news outlets we give our time and our money to as well. If frivolities and ‘bread and circuses’ is all a news organization is offering, then it’s not a real news organization to begin with.

 Advocating for solutions to real issues, being a reliable voter, and volunteering in your community consistently can help keep the ‘bread and circuses’ to a more tolerable level. We all want to experience gratification and rewards in our lives and sports, or entertainment do both in providing that kind of dopamine hit but it’s a cheap one, and it’s not something we do ourselves. Political activism, working for social change, and developing our problem-solving abilities is real gratification in whatever issue you want to work on in our world. It’s not as instant and far from being easy but improving anything in society will take effort, discomfort, patience, and a lot of perseverance. Make sure you advocate for what you care about because celebrities and sports figures may not do the same, if at all.

You should stay focused on what’s important in the news, be civically engaged and encourage others in your life to do so. Remember to balance your consumption of entertainment and sports along with awareness of the issues and problems affecting you, your families, and your communities. Watching the Super Bowl is fine and I just did so recently as I have most years of my life, but if we continue to ignore political scandals, economic problems, and societal injustices, there won’t be much to celebrate in our society beyond that one day of the calendar year, where two teams of millionaires play a game that you can’t even be part of or even afford to go to.

The Woeful Encouragement of Slothful Behavior

“There’s always been the drive to encourage people to gamble, to smoke, to drink, to eat (and quite a lot of eating), or for prescription pills, but I don’t remember a time in my life where it was so present or in your face.”

It seems as if lately popular advertising and commercials are geared towards encouraging ‘slothful’ or lazy behavior. How many times have you seen marketing focused on satiating one’s appetite whether that’s for sports betting, general gambling, fast food, alcohol, or other forms of indulgence?

Instant gratification seems to rule the day in terms of today’s popular media and advertising, which didn’t use to be case as much in past years. There’s always been the drive to encourage people to gamble, to smoke, to drink, to eat (and quite a lot of eating), or for prescription pills, but I don’t remember a time in my life where it was so present or in your face.

Now, I have nothing against people indulging here and there especially as responsible adults and I do think moderation rather than total abstention or condemnation of legal indulgences should be preferred in terms of popular messaging. However, I don’t believe it should be as prominent as it is today or as how much it is in our faces today without any serious acknowledgement of how addictive or abusive these behaviors can be.

For example, sports betting and gambling used to be quite limited to in person casinos or only certain areas or jurisdictions where it’s legal, but now it’s widespread and being actively encouraged through big business and even with live updates on betting possibilities during many sporting events. Yes, there is messaging about gambling or betting addictions but those kinds of preventative messages about the dangers of that kind of addiction are heavily outweighed by how easy it’s become to place a bet or multiple bets, and how openly encouraged it has become by the mass media. It used to be much harder to bet or to gamble especially on sports and it required a real effort or at least something you had to do in a physical location or area, but now it’s captured the digital world and can take milliseconds to make a bet or place a wager.

I do think it is a morally troubling area in our society now, where sporting venues, companies, or sports TV channels are encouraging sports betting and gambling and while it’s legal, I do think many young people, especially young men, are being taken advantage of as a result. While I encourage legal pursuits of pleasure and sustenance for food, drink, or gambling, what I do not like is how pervasive it has become and how it can become predatory with the amount of advertising, marketing, commercials, and societal pressure that is being put on people to indulge as much as possible and as often as possible.

There is a clear difference in my view between making something legal to do and making it overtly available and powerful as a lobby or industry. With addictive behaviors around food, drink, gambling, or other pleasures, there must be stricter regulations involved especially surrounding how big business these areas are and how much advertising and marketing can be done for them and in which venue(s) or place(s). There has to be a much better job done with enforcing limits, regulations, and where the advertising can be done. I also think the dangers of addiction need to have more airtime or attention as a result if these behaviors are to be marketed freely.

Similarly to smoking, restricting where you can smoke, increasing the price for smoking cigarettes, cigars, or vapes, and then placing strong notices about the physical harms of smoking has helped regulate that kind of industry successfully in my view without making it entirely illegal or condemning it fully. People can still smoke responsibly but they know today more than ever the dangers involved and the risks to one’s health as well as it being an addictive habit. You also don’t see as many commercials or advertisements for smoking as you did twenty or thirty years ago. You still do have the advertising to some degree, but I think it’s an area of our society where the regulations, awareness of the risks and dangers, and the potential side effects are quite clear compared to other vice industries today.

Additionally, if it can be done for what was a titanic industry like smoking cigarettes and other tobacco products, there is no reason why those same regulations and rules can’t be brought in for advertising of gambling, sports betting, prescription drugs, unhealthy foods, or alcohol. There has been a lax recently for those industries especially for prescription drugs, which the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world, which allows TV and radio advertisements for prescription drugs. Many of these drugs may be approved by a regulatory agency but the actual side effects and risks are not clearly stated in public advertising and the risks are also not known to potential customers as much as they should be. Like those prescription drugs being advertised freely with the side effects and risks being shortchanged in advertising, that is where we are today with legal sports betting and gambling.

I do think there has to be more action taken to regulating these growing vice or pleasure industries with less advertising out in the open, more acknowledgement by those companies selling these services on the clearly known risks and addictions and making sure that the sports teams or venues themselves and the TV / radio partners cannot market these companies either. Fast food, alcohol, and increasingly legal marijuana are also areas of vice that could do a much better job of highlighting their risks of addiction, abuse, or the dangers of too much use to one’s health.

Lastly, with better regulation of vice industries, there should be a countermovement in my view of encouraging healthy forms of behavior in our popular media and advertising. Yes, you have some advertisements for the gym or health clubs, but rarely do you see healthy foods being advertised or how to be mentally fit in difficult times, or how to have use better judgment in our financial lives, our relationships and friendships. These kinds of messages may need more public service announcements (PSAs) rather than your typical free market advertisements, but companies and especially the popular media should be encouraging people to both be healthier mentally and physically overindulging in vices that when not moderated, can encourage slothful behavior.

Where we are today as a society in our popular media is not healthy. Instead of openly encouraging these vices, we should be prioritizing healthier behaviors and more productive uses of our time. I’m not using against these legal vices, but I think their presence has been too much, too soon, and there needs to be more regulation of them in popular media and advertising going forward.

While these vices are fun for people to indulge in responsibly, the messages corporations and individuals are sending us are too much in terms of encouragement of these vices without equally talking about potentials risks, harms, or negative consequences of possible abuse if not carefully used. I hope we can start to encourage more positive forms of media and advertising with regards to keeping people healthier, fitter, and with better behaviors in how they both spend their time and their money.

The Art of The Long-Form Conversation

“Whereas traditional media outlets like TV, radio, film, etc. are usually of a certain length whether its 30 minutes, an hour, or 2 hours, podcasts can go on for more than even that with some podcasts clocking in at 4 to 5 hours without stopping.”

I really love podcasts and I have loved them for years. They have been around since the 2000s but only really became mainstream during the last decade of the 2010s. Their popularity to me involves the fact that you really can do a deep dive on any subject under the sun without being constrained to a time limit. Whereas traditional media outlets like TV, radio, film, etc. are usually of a certain length whether its 30 minutes, an hour, or 2 hours, podcasts can go on for more than even that length with some podcasts clocking in at 4 to 5 hours without stopping.

It is not easy to have an uninterrupted conversation for so long but there is a real art to it that stands out these days from other forms of popular media. The hosts can pick and choose how many guests they have, their background, as well as how long they would like each podcast to be. Instead of a news report, a sports segment, or a weather minute, where the host or correspondent will be cut off abruptly, a podcast allows the information to be fully thought out without interruptions or commercials. There can be the occasional advertisement read, bathroom break, or even an impromptu cut off of a podcast due to the guest or host needing to leave the studio early, but for the most part, podcasts are an extremely rare form of media that really is not constrained by lack of space, time, or platforms.

Back in the early days of media, you used to have to rely on a corporation or government funding to get your message out, but today, you can self-fund and self-host your own podcast. There are also different crowdfunded platforms like Patreon, Megaphone or popular website platforms for video and audio like YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, etc. where you can put your podcast on. There are a wealth of choices and a lot of different technology available to make hosting a long-form conversation easier than ever.

The beauty of hearing or watching these conversations is you get to learn from experts in a variety of fields from comedy to film to music to art to sports where you won’t have to pay a dime to tune in. Even if you pay a flat fee to a podcast hosting platform, you will have access to more podcasts and conversations than you can listen to or watch in a lifetime. There are thousands, if not, millions of podcasts available in the world in every major language. Such a wealth of information is something we could not fathom twenty or so years ago.

In an age of short attention spans and ten-second videos, the long-form conversation is still very much in demand. People may enjoy Instagram Reels, TikTok Videos, or a Tweet, but you will never get the same kind of details, wisdom, or knowledge from your average two-hour podcast. Podcasts are not perfect and often come with the bias of the hosts or the guests involved but it’s good to watch or listen to them with an open-mind and an open-heart.

The sheer number of efforts behind the scenes to make a long-form conversation happen should not be ignored. There are a lot of cameras, microphones, sound design, video quality, and getting the guests to appear, which would take a whole production team to put together. Podcasts do not have to be fancy like that but the more popular they become, the more they rival traditional media forms for both the amount of investment and the amount of time it takes to make them happen.

The core of any podcast though is the quality of the conversation, and the best podcasts are those where the host is patient, asks good questions, can answer them from the guest himself or herself, and will describe to the audience what is going on in case they are doing both an audio and a video feed. The most popular podcast in the world, The Joe Rogan Experience, started over ten years ago, and it was far from a polished product in the first episode.

It was not a fancy set with multiple team members and a lot of advanced gear. Instead, it was Joe Rogan, his computer, a microphone, and the help of a friend, who would bring on his friends, to talk about what’s on their minds. Now, it became the most popular podcast in the world not just the host is also a famous comedian, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) commentator, and a former TV and radio show host, but the fact that Joe is patient, understanding, and aware of how the conversation is going.

He can listen for long periods of time without interrupting, is able to get more out of his guests if they are shy, introverted, or not able to talk at length without prompting, and he genuinely knows about each person(s) he has on his podcast. The conversation easily flows because him and the guest do not talk over each other, when they disagree it’s not a big deal, and it doesn’t hurt also that he has some coffee or liquor on hand to make it a more inviting podcast studio.

With almost 2000 episodes under his belt, Joe Rogan among other popular podcast hosts like Marc Maron, Lex Fridman, Andrew Huberman, Sam Harris have not only put a lot of effort, time, and money for the audio and video experience to be good for the audience, but they have also trained themselves well in the art of talking with other people and in being a good host to a wide diversity and variety of guests from all over the world.

Podcasting is a necessary media in today’s tumultuous, fast-changing, and unpredictable world. I find that these conversations are meaningful, educational, and insightful. I do still watch TV and listen to radio programming, but it is impossible to beat the quality and knowledge that is dropped on a good podcast every day.

From news to sports to politics to music and even comedy, there are such good long-form conversations to be had from your average podcast. Whereas the news program will end on the hour, or the radio show will cut off every thirty minutes, you can find multiple podcasts analyzing different topics at a deeper level so that your knowledge and understanding will be much deeper than it would be from your average TV program these days. It is easy for me to see why podcasts in the 21st century is here to stay and why they are number #1 source of information in order technologically dependent world.

While podcasts with long conversations can be prone to bias, misinformation, controversy, and even backtracking after the fact, I still believe that there is no better way to learn from an expert or practitioner in a certain area of human endeavor than by settling into a two or three or even a five hour podcast with just hearing their voice and hearing what they have to say without any commercial or other interruption. If you have not listened to a podcast at this point in 2023, you should start now and remember to watch or listen to the whole podcast even if it is a few hours long. You’ll often be glad that you did at the end of it, and you’ll often learn a lot as a result.