In his dotage, Bob is co-host of the popular language podcast Lexicon Valley. He is most associated, however, with his three decades on public radio. Bob’s career at the microphone began in 1986 as a roving features correspondent for All Things Considered on NPR. For a dozen years he hit the road foraging for American idiosyncracies — the audio portion of his now 35-year-long search for searchers of identity. Here is a small portion of his harvest:
The Quixotica Trilogy
Bowling in the White House. A parable of political influence. (14:21)
Tag, You’re It (Part I). Bob resolved to become a country music legend — and see if he didn’t. Part I. (16:03)
Tag, You’re It (Part II). The continuation of Bob’s discovery of the Nashville country music scene. Part II. (8:33)
The Next Casablanca. Bob’s undertakes to save Hollywood soul. (22:06)
Some Other Things Considered
No Ordinary Pig. The Ballad of Jeffrey Jerome. (10:22)
Shoeless in Santa Fe. Bob visits the New Age mecca looking for “weird stuff.” He does not fail. (16:51)
Earthworm Growers Wanted. Bob visits Worm King Hy Hunter, who comes out of retirement to save/scam the world. (22:33)
The Numbers Man. Bob’s year-long journey into the memory of messianic ice-cream-truck driver and mad genius, Norman Bloom. (22:49)
How Much is that Doggie in the Window? Bob travels to Korea for lunch. (7:48)
“Drivetime” with Bob Garfield. Bob auditions for a position as a talk-show host. (10:54)
Bob’s Grill
Owing to journalistic multiple-personality disorder, Bob often ditched his persons-of-human-interest pursuits for higher stakes inquiries. Thus, in his 20-year-tenure at WNYC’s On the Media, he not infrequently found himself in extremely confrontational conversations with interviewees whose conduct demanded accountability. The outcome was often quite dramatic.
Philip Morris
A top Big Tobacco selective articulates the most cynical justification imaginable for the cigarette holocaust that continues to claim more than 6 million lives per year
Judith Miller
The ex-New York Times reporter defends, and rationalizes, her conduct in her WMD stories that aided the Bush Administration in its headlong determination to invade Iraq. You may find her answers a little thin on introspection. never mind contrition.
The Pentagon
In rewriting the “Law of War” manual for American troops, the Department of Defense equated journalists with “belligerents.” This and a subsequent interview caused the Pentagon to backtrack and re-rewrite the manual.
Glenn Beck
The rightwing provocateur made a big show of recanting his former views and apologizing for his excesses. His media tour was a bonanza as one mainstream outlet after another lapped up his supposed confession. Beck had a different experience on On the Media.
ExxonMobil
Another corporate confession, this one after a top Big Oil Executive was forced the acknowledge years of climate-change disinformation.
Revenge Porn
The online entrepreneur Hunter Moore was forced to close up shop and relocate to federal prison shortly after his pitiful attempt to rationalize posting nude pictures of women — pictures provided by vengeful ex-partners.
Project Veritas
Media dirty trickster James O’Keefe became a darling of the right by going undercover with cameras and microphones to catch supposedly “woke” institutions in hypocrisy and bias. And it was easy for him, because he invented scenes that didn’t exist and — in violation of all journalistic standards — moved excerpts around out of context to make the benign seem indicting. Here we hear him denying unscrupulousness and using many big words.
Al Haig Advertorials
Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig retired to private life, and fronted for World Business Review, a fake business show with fake academic credentials, on public TV. This piece, which won an Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative journalism, ended the scam.
$70,000 a Year Lab Rats?
Talking to the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism about the ethics of recruiting prospective students in a downward-spiraling journalism industry. This one, unfortunately, aged quite nicely.
Watchdogs in Tuxedos
This piece documented the 2014 White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, DC, an annual exhibit of the unsavory chumminess between the press and officialdom.
Et Tu, Brooke?
One of the most tense confrontations in Bob’s radio career came in a conversation with his own co-host, Brooke Gladstone, on the day following Donald Trump’s 2016 election to the presidency. This one — not just unfortunately but catastrophically — holds up, too.
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