David Lowery of bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven thought the internet would become a vibrant new marketplace for creators. Instead, he says, the internet era is worse for artists than the infamously unfair record company system. Brooke talks to Lowery about what's wrong and how to fix it.

Since Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle over a century ago, going undercover has been one of the only ways to expose malpractice in agricultural and meat processing facilities. But legislation, so-called ‘ag-gag’ bills, has either passed or is being considered in about a dozen states and would explicitly outlaw undercover reporting as well as the publication of material gathered by undercover reporting.  Brooke speaks with environmental journalist Will Potter about how these bills jeopardize the public’s health and right-to-know how their food is processed.

Wishmountain - Luzocade

Aasif Mandvi is a stage and film actor, a writer and teller of stories, and Senior Muslim Correspondent on The Daily Show. A purveyor of "fake news" and an advocate of real issues, Mandvi sat down with Brooke for a live event to discuss being "the brown guy" in theater, movies, and of course, The Daily Show.

Ina Mina Dika

Sending a petition to your government is as old as politics, but what the Obama Administration is doing with its We the People site is novel. Brooke talks with Time Magazine White House Correspondent Michael Scherer about how the site is allowing the administration to communicate with some of its most fierce opponents.

Los Lobos - Las Amarillas 

This month, the conservative site Breitbart.com suggested that Senator Chuck Hagel, Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense, had secret financial ties to a group called “Friends of Hamas.” It did not look good: a U.S. politician had allegedly received money from a terrorist organization that's called for Israel’s destruction. Turns out though, it  wasn’t true. New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman tells Brooke about his theory that he was the source of the rumor.

Tanlines - Rain Delay

Fed up with his unsatisfying job at a call center, game designer David S. Gallant channeled his frustration into a video game called I Get This Call Every Day, a game where you play a guy working an unsatisfying job at a call center. Brooke talks to Gallant about what it's like to make a game that's not necessarily fun to play.

Some of the coverage of the sequestration has been characterized as a "pox on both their houses" attitude towards the Democrats and Republicans who are, once again, inching us closer to the edge. Brooke speaks with New York magazine writer Jonathan Chait who says that sticking to that approach despite the facts can lead reporters and Op-Ed writers to mislead readers about what's really going on. 

For years, photographer Ernest Withers captured many of the most important moments of the Civil Rights movement. But, unbeknownst to everyone in the movement, he was also ME338-R,an FBI informant. Memphis Commercial Appeal reporter Marc Perrusquia talks with Brooke about breaking the story and the life of Ernest Withers. 

Sabazz Palaces - Endeavors for Never

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported on decades-old documents that have recently come to light which point to significant fabrications in two chapters of Capote’s masterwork, including one of it’s most thrilling moments.

This election season, fact checking has become a story in itself. But what do we really know about how different media outlets fact-check their stories, and what could they be doing better? In a piece that ran in September of 2012, Brooke speaks with "This American Life" host Ira Glass, The New Yorker's Peter Canby,"All Things Considered" producer Chris Turpin and Poynter's Craig Silverman about the process of trying to get things right.

YouTube "networks" that specialize in niche content have created a lucrative business model that relies on vacuuming up the content of independent artists' and giving them a cut of the advertising profits. But some of these networks have begun to sign their talent to restrictive and exploitative contracts. Brooke talks to Tessa Stuart, who wrote about the plight of YouTube creators in LA Weekly.

This week saw a fount of new information come to light about the US government's controversial and secretive drone program. Brooke talks to Stanford Law professor James Cavallaro, author of the Living Under Drones project, in which law students conducted interviews in northwest Pakistan to better understand the full impact of our lethal drone strikes.

Yo La Tengo - Cornelia and Jane

In 1995, roughly a decade before YouTube ushered in the age of the viral video, a couple of upstart young film-school grads created an underground, analog video sensation.  Producer JP Davidson brings us the story of that video and its unlikely role as viral video’s ‘patient zero’.  

Muzak – the carefully-curated elevator music maligned for its mild and universally inoffensive sound – is ditching its name. Mood Media, the parent company of Muzak, has decided to rebrand their music services under the name “Mood” in an attempt to distance themselves from a label that has become a regular source of ridicule. Brooke talks with Joseph Lanza about his book Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong. 

Sometime in the next few months, the five major US Internet Service Providers will implement what is called the "Copyright Alert System," known colloquially as "six strikes." Brooke talks to Jill Lesser, Executive Director of industry group the Center for Copyright Information, about how the six strikes program will work.

Acid Pauli - Mst

As a technology reporter for The New York Times, Nicole Perlroth says it's hard to convince corporations to go on the record with the details of their cybersecurity breaches. But last October, when The Times learned that Chinese hackers had infiltrated its own computer systems, Nicole got a front-row seat to report on her own company's response to a targeted attack. Perlroth talks to Brooke about the inevitability of security breaches, and the measures that can be taken to minimize damage.

Andrew Pekler - Here Comes the Night

Throughout the months of the Arab Spring, the twitter feed of NPR senior strategist Andy Carvin was a one stop shop for keeping up with events in the region--even though Carvin was a world away in Washington D.C. Now Carvin has written a new book about his experience, Distant Witness: Social Media, the Arab Spring and a Journalism Revolution, and sat down with Brooke for a live event to discuss his reporting with social media.

Mazen Dha Nahar el Youm

The massacre in Newtown has sparked a national debate about gun control. But usually, when a child falls victim to gun violence, it’s not in a comfortable suburb, and its coverage is confined to the metro page. At New York Public Radio, our producing station, reporter Kathleen Horan’s current assignment is to profile every child killed by a gun in New York City. Her series is called In Harm’s Way. Kathleen talks to Brooke about her project. 

Kronos Quartet - Tiliboyo ('Sunset')

On Wednesday, President Obama outlined his proposals for gun control. Among them was a request to Congress for $10 million to study the impact of media on violence, with a nod specifically to video games. Brooke talks to Jason Schreier, a reporter for Kotaku, about 25 years' worth of studies on the effect of violent games, and what researchers have found.

On January 11, 26-year-old hacker, programmer, and activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide. He had a history of depression and faced federal prosecution for downloading millions of articles from the online academic article repository JSTOR. Brooke talks to Gawker's Adrian Chen, who wrote about Swartz's legal troubles this week.