Soda Politics, Too Big to Know, Online Fear

Soda Politics (10:28) Dr. Marion Nestle Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. She is a leading advocate for better food safety in the U.S.  If you’ve watched a recent sporting event, from the super bowl, the current NCAA basketball tournament, NASCAR races, and even the Olympics, you’ve noticed the aggressive sponsorships from the leading beverage companies, namely Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. Numerous athletes are spokesmen for these products and it just strikes some as a bit odd. It has become common knowledge that soda is unhealthy, full of sugar and leads to health challenges like obesity, diabetes, and poor dental hygiene. So why are sporting events and athletes, seemingly active and fit people, the face of products they likely don’t even drink? Soft drinks seem like a basic product, simply sugared water, but according to our guest today, Dr. Marion Nestle, Soda is all about race and class in America. Dr. Nestle shares with us more about the business and threat the beverage industry poses on our nation’s health outlined in her book, Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (And Winning). Too Big to Know (51:45) Dr. David Weinberger is a senior researcher at the Berkman Center at Harvard University. He has been a philosophy professor, journalist, strategic marketing consultant, Internet entrepreneur and a Franklin Fellow at the US State Department.  According to Google, the search engine performs over 3.5 billion searches per day. That’s about 40,000 searches per second. With all this information, one truly important question to consider, one that you can’t search on Google, is this: what are we really learning? Dr. David Weinberger is the author of “Too Big To Know Dr. Weinberger with some ideas on how to manage all the information at our fingertips. Nothing Snowballs Online Like Fear (1:38:24) Adrienne Beard, writer in residence at Delta State University where she teaches journalism. Nowhere is information circulated more than on the internet, and nothing spreads faster than fear. Online, it’s as if fear brings people together. Tweets are circulated, articles are shared, and news coverage multiplies because stress and fear are contagious. From health crisis like Ebola, ISIS threats, and worries about the economy, and most recently the bombing in Brussels, our media is driven by fear. Why are we so easily influenced by fear? And what are the consequences of such a fear motivated media? Adrienne Beard's recent article, Nothing Snowballs Online Like Fear: How online fear feeds political smear campaigns, stock market rumors, and ISIS propaganda, discusses the media’s role in spreading the fear and how our reactions create more contagion.