War, Peace... and Clowns

In this bite-sized OTM, Bob looks at two important news stories that we won't be able to fit into the full-sized OTM this weekend. 

First: this weekend, voters in Colombia rejected a peace agreement with the rebel group FARC. It would have brought to end over 50 years of fighting, and polling suggested that Colombians would have approved the deal. The vote has been explained as the triumph of bitterness over common sense, but it could also be seen as a failure of media messaging. Bob talks to Alex Fattal, Assistant Professor in the Department of Film-Video and Media Studies at Penn State University, about the role that media has played in Colombia's armed conflict. Fattal is also author of the forthcoming book Guerrilla Marketing: Capitalism and Counterinsurgency in Colombia, from University of Chicago Press.

Then: a rash of clown sightings has spread since the first report of creepy clowns in Greenville, South Carolina in late August. They've been seen from Oregon to New York, from Florida to Missouri. Or have they? Turns out these "phantom clown" sightings have been happening in waves for decades, and they tell us a lot about our own fears. Bob speaks with Benjamin Radford, author of Bad Clowns and a research fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, about our historic and cultural relationship with phantom clown sightings. 

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