Podcasts about WWJ

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.

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

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)

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.

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)

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)

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.

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.

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)

Controversy in Dearborn Heights after what the Mayor is calling "a mock-up version of a police patch" was posted online. WWJ's Chris Keyzer and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories. (Image credit: DHPD)

An early morning fire in Westland destroyed eight condominiums and damaged several others. No injuries were reported. WWJ's Chris Fillar and Jackie Paige have your Friday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Charlie Langton)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports there could be lessons learned from the annual styling changes automakers undertook years ago.

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports the CEO of a new Chinese automaker says they have entered the "knockout" round and only five companies will survive.

Police in Inkster are searching for a suspect they say escaped custody from a hospital. WWJ's Tracey McCaskill and Chris Keyzer have the afternoon's top news stories. (Photo: Inkster PD)

It's a look at potential road projects in Oakland County based on fresh safety data. And a $2 million Powerball ticket sold in Detroit. WWJ's Jackie Paige has your Thursday morning news. (Photo credit: Getty Images)

Hazel Park detectives worked with the Oakland County Sheriff's Department to execute a search warrant at a home in Pontiac where the suspect was arrested for the murder of Linda Hill and her son Kardi Jackson. Charges are pending. WWJ's Jackie Paige and Chris Fillar have your Wednesday morning news.

A woman accused of stabbing her manager to death at an Eastpointe McDonald's was back in court on Wednesday. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories. (Photo: Jon Hewett/WWJ)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports doubling speed limits by 2050 would revolutionize the auto industry and turbo charge the U.S. economy

Family members are mourning the loss of a Hazel Park mother and her 12-year-old son who were murdered last night in their home. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

Hazel Park police are investigating the deaths of a mother and her 12-year old son who were found in their home Monday afternoon. WWJ's Jackie Paige and Chris Fillar have your Monday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Charlie Langton)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports it's about time the U.S. gets rid of mirrors and switches to cameras outside of cars and trucks.

Labor Day 2025 had thousands of union workers along with politicians and community leaders taking part in the annual Detroit Labor Day parade. WWJ's Greg Bowman has your Monday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Jon Hewett)

⸻ 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.

Two homes on Detroit's east side went up in flames on Friday morning. And this is the 20th anniversary of when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. WWJ's Chris Fillar has your Friday morning news and talked with former WWJ reporter Vickie Thomas. (Photo credit: WWJ's Charlie Langton)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports a couple of automakers are using autonomous technology to drive cars and trucks off the assembly line.

Firefighters from eight fire departments battled an early morning fire in Independence Township. No injuries are reported. WWJ's Chris Fillar has your Thursday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Charlie Langton)

A Rochester Hills man has been charged with sexually assaulting a teen -- whom police say he met through social media. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports automakers have dreamed of the day auto regulations would be the same around the world, and now it appears the U.S. and Europe may be getting ready to make a deal that could make auto manufacturing far simpler. (Photo: Getty Images)

Instrument panel problems are leading to a big recall at Ford. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

After an uproar about a change with their logo, Cracker Barrel is bringing back its old logo. WWJ's Chris Fillar has your Wednesday morning news. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has been subpoenaed to testify before the state House Oversight Committee. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

The process to terminate the parental rights of a Pontiac mother who is accused of abandoning her three children for years has started with a no contest plea. WWJ's Jackie Paige has your Tuesday morning news. (Photo credit: Oakland County Sheriff's Department)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports the latest forecast from the U.S. Energy Information Agency predicts the price of a barrel of oil may be less than $50 next year. It's the result of more drilling outside the U.S. (Photo: Getty Images)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports even with mining all of the materials for EVs, the Transportation Energy Institute says electric vehicles are much cleaner than those with internal combustion engines.

Several school districts in Metro Detroit started classes Monday. Students and parents were nervous, but administrators say "You've got this." WWJ's Jackie Paige has your Monday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Tim Pamplin)

Michigan's Attorney General Dana Nessel is calling out Michigan's major utility companies for what she considers to be unnecessary rate hikes. Plus, a Macomb County business owner back in court today on charges connected to a series of explosions that killed a man last year. WWJ's Tracey McCaskill and Tony Ortiz have the afternoon's top stories.

A woman is dead after being shot inside of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

Detroit police are investigating a deadly shooting that left one dead and one injured. The victims' SUV ended up in front of Henry Ford Hospital. WWJ's Jackie Paige has your Friday morning news.

A settlement between two families of the murdered students during the 2021 mass shooting at Oxford High School and the school district. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories. (Photo: © Nick King/Lansing State Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

A viral video shows rats running around inside the McNamara Terminal at Detroit Metro Airport. An airport spokesperson said they are now working with a contractor to address the issue. WWJ's Jackie Paige and Chris Fillar have your Thursday morning news. (Photo credit: WWJ's Jon Hewett)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports automakers are losing billions on the money they invested in EVs, so they have to maximize profit on their piston-power lineups. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Governor Gretchen Whitmer visits Metro Detroit as time is running out to get a new state budget agreement in place. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

Ann Arbor police are investigating after recent reports of prowlers in neighborhoods near the University of Michigan campus. WWJ's Chris Fillar and Jackie Paige have your Wednesday morning news. (Photo credit: Ann Arbor Police Department)

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports it costs thousands of dollars to replace headlamps on current vehicles and it's out of control.

Michigan State Police searching for a suspect who shot a woman on I-96 in Detroit. It happened just after midnight on the freeway between Joy and W Chicago roads. WWJ's Jackie Paige and Chris Fillar have your Tuesday morning news.

Michigan is home to FOUR of the top 100 high schools in the country. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.

WWJ auto analyst John McElroy reports Ford's move to modular assembly will include fewer work stations and boost productivity. Other automakers have talked about using a similar process. (Photo: Workers constructing a Model-T engine on an assembly line in a Ford Motor Company factory. By Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Growing concerns for residents in Van Buren Township -- after it was announced that a site holding hazardous waste could expand. WWJ's Tony Ortiz and Tracey McCaskill have the afternoon's top news stories.