Podcasts about WWJ

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports NASA is running a contest to see who can come up with a new lunar rover. GM has one contract.

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy says EV sales shot up as incentives were nearing an end, but maybe sales don't have to plummet with no incentives.

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports two automakers have started to turn things around in China.

While Governor Whitmer signed a continuation budget for Michigan, the federal government shutdown early Wednesday morning. WWJ's Chris Fillar and Jackie Paige have your Wednesday morning news. (Photo credit: Getty Images)

Investigators are still working to figure out a motive, two days after the mass shooting at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township. WWJ's Chris Fillar and Jackie Paige have your Tuesday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Charlie Langton)

Afternoon and evening classes are canceled at Monroe County Community College after a bomb threat. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

Local, state and federal agencies are investigating a deadly shooting at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township. Five people, including the shooter, have died, but authorities say some people are unaccounted for. The Governor has ordered flags lowered to half staff in honor of the victims. WWJ's Chris Fillar and Jackie Paige have your Monday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Charlie Langton)

An update this afternoon from officials in Grand Blanc, a day after a gunman opened fire in a Mormon church, killing four people. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories. (Photo: Tim Pamplin/WWJ)

A Pontiac woman accused of abandoning her kids for five years is now fighting for custody. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories. (Photo: Mandi Wright / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

Repairs are continuing Friday at the site of the water main break in Novi. Crews are making progress, according to the Great Lakes water Authority. A Boil Water Advisory will remain in effect through the weekend. WWJ's Jackie Paige and Chris Fillar have your Friday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Charlie Langton)

A broken water main along 14 Mile Road in Novi has closed schools, prompted boil water alerts, and now a watering ban has gone into effect in the area. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

A 42-inch water main broke Thursday morning causing low, or no, water pressure for thousands of residents near 14 Mile and M-5. WWJ's Jackie Paige has your Thursday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Charlie Langton)

An incentive for electric vehicle owners is going away next Tuesday, and car makers are offering big deals on EVs leading up to that day. Jeff Gilbert, auto reporter for WWJ in Detroit tells us more.

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports autonomous taxis will have to have ways to communicate to pedestrians.

The suspect in the Macomb county Meijer gas station murder was in front of a judge today. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories. (Photo: Macomb Co. Prosecutor's Office)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports heavy truck sales started dropping in May a month after new tariffs were announced. Experts say there's been a decline in freight demand

The Michigan Department of Transportation wants to remind drivers to be alert following a crash in Novi this morning that killed 2 people. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

Michigan State Police and the Novi Police Department are investigating an early Tuesday morning crash in which two cars burst into flames. The crash happened in the eastbound lanes of I-96 near Beck Road. WWJ's Jackie Paige and Chris Fillar have your Tuesday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Charlie Langton)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports several tier one suppliers, who are major players in the auto industry, are selling junk bonds because they couldn't sell their own stock to raise money for capital projects. (Photo: Getty Images)

The Shelby Township Police Department has one man in custody after he allegedly stabbed a woman to death at a Meijer gas station. WWJ's Chris Fillar has your Monday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ Newsradio 950)

A grieving family in Metro Detroit is seeking justice following the death of their 5-year-old son. WWJ's Tony Ortiz has the afternoon's top news stories.

As debate over a budget deal continues among Lansing lawmakers, organizers from several workforce and healthcare support groups are sounding the alarm over the potential damage a state government shutdown could cause. That's our top story as WWJ's Tony Ortiz runs down the local headlines for your Friday afternoon in Metro Detroit. (Photo: Getty Images)

A suspect who ran from police was shot by officers Thursday night on the city's east side. It happened at Moross and Kelly when members of the gang intelligence agency were conducting an investigation. WWJ's Jackie Paige and Chris Fillar have your Friday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ Newsroom)

A day after Vice President JD Vance visited Howell and suggested sending the National Guard to the streets of Detroit -- Mayor Mike Duggan is responding. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

Detroit police are investigating an early Thursday morning shooting that left one man hospitalized. Neighbors say they heard a slew of gunshots and police put down as many as 90 markers that show bullet casings or other evidence. WWJ's Chris Fillar and Jackie Paige have your Thursday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Charlie Langton)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports the cyber attack happened three weeks ago and there hasn't been one car built during that time.

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports while artificial intelligence is a wonderful thing for some, it is driving the cost of a car higher. (Photo credit: Getty Images)

Students in the South Lyon School District have a third straight day off as administrators and IT professionals try to restore the network affected by a cyber attack. WWJ's Jackie Paige and Chris Fillar have your Wednesday morning news. (Photo credit: Getty Images)

Speaking to a crowd of supporters in Howell Vice President JD Vance suggest the White House is open to sending American troops to the streets of Detroit. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories. (Photo: © Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports Canada is looking to drop tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and it could affect the Detroit Big Three.

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy says GM may have to turn to Brazil to sell low-cost cars and trucks in Mexico.

Three families are trying to recover after losing everything in a fire that destroyed three homes in the Meadow Lake mobile home park in White Lake Township. WWJ's Chris Fillar and Jackie Paige have your Tuesday morning news. (Photo credit: Go Fund Me)

Governor Whitmer expressing the urgency of passing a state budget during a speech in Lansing. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories. (Photo: MI Governor's Office)

Ford employees will be moving from the Glass House headquarters in Dearborn to the newly named Henry Ford II World Center near Greenfield Village. The current headquarters building will be demolished. WWJ's Jackie Paige has your Monday morning news. (Photo credit: Ford Motor Company)

A new report on the mass shooting at Oxford High School says the four students who died wouldn't have survived if help had arrived earlier. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports Mexico is worried about China flooding its market with new cars so tariffs will be increased.

Detroit Police continue to search for a suspect following a stabbing near a high school. It happened last night on Fairview Street, near Detroit Southeastern High School. WWJ's Jackie Paige and Chris Fillar have your Friday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ Newsroom).

One local foundation is using MILLIONS of dollars to invest into Detroit neighborhoods -- and an announcement revealed that its headquarters is going to be built on the Marygrove College campus. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

In a potential landmark discovery, NASA says its Mars rover has found potential signs of ancient microscopic life on the Red Planet. For details, WWJ's Tracey McCaskill was joined live by Mike Narlock, Head of Astronomy at Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills. (Photo: Getty Images)

Three children were shot and one has died as a result of a domestic situation in Port Huron early Thursday morning. WWJ's Chris Fillar and Jackie Paige have your morning news briefs. (Photo credit: Getty Images)

The city of Detroit slaps a contractor with a suspension for allegedly dumping contaminated dirt at a number of sites across the city. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports the most noticeable design trend of new century involved grilles that are huge. But now they are no longer trendy.

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports franchise laws were put into place so automakers couldn't compete with auto dealers.

I-75 was shutdown in southwest Detroit for several hours overnight after a motorcyclist was hit by a semi and several other cars. The Detroit man died at the scene. WWJ's Jackie Paige and Chris Fillar have your Wednesday morning news. (WWJ Photo)

Canton police have launched an investigation after a 30 year old woman was found dead in a home in the area of Pinehurst Drive and Cherry Hill Road. WWJ's Chris Fillar and Jackie Paige have your Tuesday morning news. (WWJ Photo)

Dozens of speeding citations have been handed out to drivers by the Detroit police traffic enforcement team today on one busy street on the city's east side. WWJ's Tracey McCaskill has the afternoon's top news stories. (Photo: Darrylin Horne/WWJ)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports automakers are getting serious about using fewer parts, and in one case Lucid said it will have one-half the number of parts when compared to a Tesla Model Y.

Oakland County Sheriff deputies will be at a local middle middle school following a threat made over the weekend. WWJ's Jackie Paige and Chris Fillar have your Monday morning news. (Photo credit: Getty Images)

A boat with two people and a dog onboard at the time explodes over the weekend in St. Clair Shores. WWJ's Tracey McCaskill and Chris Keyzer have the afternoon's top news stories.

⸻ Podcast: Redefining Society and Technologyhttps://redefiningsocietyandtechnologypodcast.com _____ Newsletter: Musing On Society And Technology https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/musing-on-society-technology-7079849705156870144/_____ Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/OYBjDHKhZOM_____ My Website: https://www.marcociappelli.com_____________________________This Episode's SponsorsBlackCloak provides concierge cybersecurity protection to corporate executives and high-net-worth individuals to protect against hacking, reputational loss, financial loss, and the impacts of a corporate data breach.BlackCloak:  https://itspm.ag/itspbcweb_____________________________A Musing On Society & Technology Newsletter Written By Marco Ciappelli | Read by TAPE3The First Smartphone Was a Transistor Radio — How a Tiny Device Rewired Youth Culture and Predicted Our Digital FutureA new transmission from Musing On Society and Technology Newsletter, by Marco CiappelliI've been collecting vintage radios lately—just started, really—drawn to their analog souls in ways I'm still trying to understand. Each one I find reminds me of a small, battered transistor radio from my youth. It belonged to my father, and before that, probably my grandfather. The leather case was cracked, the antenna wobbled, and the dial drifted if you breathed on it wrong. But when I was sixteen, sprawled across my bedroom floor in that small town near Florence with homework scattered around me, this little machine was my portal to everything that mattered.Late at night, I'd start by chasing the latest hits and local shows on FM, but then I'd venture into the real adventure—tuning through the static on AM and shortwave frequencies. Voices would emerge from the electromagnetic soup—music from London, news from distant capitals, conversations in languages I couldn't understand but somehow felt. That radio gave me something I didn't even know I was missing: the profound sense of belonging to a world much bigger than my neighborhood, bigger than my small corner of Tuscany.What I didn't realize then—what I'm only now beginning to understand—is that I was holding the first smartphone in human history.Not literally, of course. But functionally? Sociologically? That transistor radio was the prototype for everything that followed: the first truly personal media device that rewired how young people related to the world, to each other, and to the adults trying to control both.But to understand why the transistor radio was so revolutionary, we need to trace radio's remarkable journey through the landscape of human communication—a journey that reveals patterns we're still living through today.When Radio Was the Family HearthBefore my little portable companion, radio was something entirely different. In the 1930s, radio was furniture—massive, wooden, commanding the living room like a shrine to shared experience. Families spent more than four hours a day listening together, with radio ownership reaching nearly 90 percent by 1940. From American theaters that wouldn't open until after "Amos 'n Andy" to British families gathered around their wireless sets, from RAI broadcasts bringing opera into Tuscan homes—entire communities synchronized their lives around these electromagnetic rituals.Radio didn't emerge in a media vacuum, though. It had to find its place alongside the dominant information medium of the era: newspapers. The relationship began as an unlikely alliance. In the early 1920s, newspapers weren't threatened by radio—they were actually radio's primary boosters, creating tie-ins with broadcasts and even owning stations. Detroit's WWJ was owned by The Detroit News, initially seen as "simply another press-supported community service."But then came the "Press-Radio War" of 1933-1935, one of the first great media conflicts of the modern age. Newspapers objected when radio began interrupting programs with breaking news, arguing that instant news delivery would diminish paper sales. The 1933 Biltmore Agreement tried to restrict radio to just two five-minute newscasts daily—an early attempt at what we might now recognize as media platform regulation.Sound familiar? The same tensions we see today between traditional media and digital platforms, between established gatekeepers and disruptive technologies, were playing out nearly a century ago. Rather than one medium destroying the other, they found ways to coexist and evolve—a pattern that would repeat again and again.By the mid-1950s, when the transistor was perfected, radio was ready for its next transformation.The Real Revolution Was Social, Not TechnicalThis is where my story begins, but it's also where radio's story reaches its most profound transformation. The transistor radio didn't just make radio portable—it fundamentally altered the social dynamics of media consumption and youth culture itself.Remember, radio had spent its first three decades as a communal experience. Parents controlled what the family heard and when. But transistor radios shattered this control structure completely, arriving at precisely the right cultural moment. The post-WWII baby boom had created an unprecedented youth population with disposable income, and rock and roll was exploding into mainstream culture—music that adults often disapproved of, music that spoke directly to teenage rebellion and independence.For the first time in human history, young people had private, personal access to media. They could take their music to bedrooms, to beaches, anywhere adults weren't monitoring. They could tune into stations playing Chuck Berry, Elvis, and Little Richard without parental oversight—and in many parts of Europe, they could discover the rebellious thrill of pirate radio stations broadcasting rock and roll from ships anchored just outside territorial waters, defying government regulations and cultural gatekeepers alike. The transistor radio became the soundtrack of teenage autonomy, the device that let youth culture define itself on its own terms.The timing created a perfect storm: pocket-sized technology collided with a new musical rebellion, creating the first "personal media bubble" in human history—and the first generation to grow up with truly private access to the cultural forces shaping their identity.The parallels to today's smartphone revolution are impossible to ignore. Both devices delivered the same fundamental promise: the ability to carry your entire media universe with you, to access information and entertainment on your terms, to connect with communities beyond your immediate physical environment.But there's something we've lost in translation from analog to digital. My generation with transistor radios had to work for connection. We had to hunt through static, tune carefully, wait patiently for distant signals to emerge from electromagnetic chaos. We learned to listen—really listen—because finding something worthwhile required skill, patience, and analog intuition.This wasn't inconvenience; it was meaning-making. The harder you worked to find something, the more it mattered when you found it. The more skilled you became at navigating radio's complex landscape, the richer your discoveries became.What the Transistor Radio Taught Us About TomorrowRadio's evolution illustrates a crucial principle that applies directly to our current digital transformation: technologies don't replace each other—they find new ways to matter. Printing presses didn't become obsolete when radio arrived. Radio adapted when television emerged. Today, radio lives on in podcasts, streaming services, internet radio—the format transformed, but the essential human need it serves persists.When I was sixteen, lying on that bedroom floor with my father's radio pressed to my ear, I was doing exactly what teenagers do today with their smartphones: using technology to construct identity, to explore possibilities, to imagine myself into larger narratives.The medium has changed; the human impulse remains constant. The transistor radio taught me that technology's real power isn't in its specifications or capabilities—it's in how it reshapes the fundamental social relationships that define our lives.Every device that promises connection is really promising transformation: not just of how we communicate, but of who we become through that communication. The transistor radio was revolutionary not because it was smaller or more efficient than tube radios, but because it created new forms of human agency and autonomy.Perhaps that's the most important lesson for our current moment of digital transformation. As we worry about AI replacing human creativity, social media destroying real connection, or smartphones making us antisocial, radio's history suggests a different possibility: technologies tend to find their proper place in the ecosystem of human needs, augmenting rather than replacing what came before.As Marshall McLuhan understood, "the medium is the message"—to truly understand what's happening to us in this digital age, we need to understand the media themselves, not just the content they carry. And that's exactly the message I'll keep exploring in future newsletters—going deeper into how we can understand the media to understand the messages, and what that means for our hybrid analog-digital future.The frequency is still there, waiting. You just have to know how to tune in.__________ End of transmission.