Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reviewed by: Radioactive: The Father Coughlin Storyby Andrew Lapin David Weinstein (bio) Radioactive: The Father Coughlin StoryAndrew Lapin, host Eight episodes (10 12, 2021 to 11 23, 2021) Produced by Tablet Studios, with support from Maimonides Fund, in association with The WNET Group's reporting initiative Exploring Hate: Antisemitism, Racism, and Extremismhttps://www.tabletmag.com/podcasts/radioactive Radioactive, a terrific eight-part podcast series from Tablet, examines the life and legacy of Father Charles Coughlin. Tablet is well-established in Jewish news and culture circles for its daily Tabletonline magazine and weekly Unorthodoxpodcast. Radioactiverepresents a significant step forward for Tablet as a podcast producer. Unorthodoxfollows a standard format for culture podcasts: smart, charismatic hosts share their thoughts on the news and interview one or two guests, who usually have a book or other product to promote. Radioactivetakes elements of this format: An insightful host, Andrew Lapin, presents Coughlin's story assuming that the listener is well-educated and curious about history and culture, especially Jewish people and ideas. But Radioactivealso expands on the familiar podcast style by ambitiously incorporating elements that are more typical in historical documentary films. Radioactiveis driven by a rich narrative, meticulous research, surprising archival material, and apt clips of interviews with scholars who are experts in their respective fields. The series will engage historians and general listeners, including those who already know a little about Coughlin. Radioactiveis the first podcast series for the Detroit-based Lapin, an experienced print journalist, and occasional commentator on other radio shows and podcasts, who has published widely about film, popular culture, and American Jewish life. Lapin contextualizes Coughlin's biography within the histories of radio, American Catholicism, American Nazism, 1930s political movements, and political communication. The host peppers his fast-moving narrative history with surprising anecdotes about people who came into Coughlin's orbit, from Babe Ruth to J. Edgar Hoover. Lapin also interviews appropriate archivists and scholars who succinctly analyze Coughlin and his times. For example, American Jewish Historyreaders will hear the familiar voices of Gary Zola, Richard Breitman, and Thomas Doherty. Throughout the series, Lapin incorporates rare archival audio of Coughlin's radio speeches, including many that have not circulated among radio collectors and will be new to most Radioactivelisteners. The audio quality of these archival programs is excellent. Radioactive's engineers have removed the crackles, pops, and broadcast interference typical of radio disks from this era. Links to [End Page 334]additional audio clips, primary articles, scholarly books, and full program transcripts are available through co-producer WNET's Exploring Hate website: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/exploring-hate/series/radioactive/. These resources will be useful to teachers, though there is, at this time, only one link to additional Coughlin programs: a poorly organized online Coughlin archive at the University of Detroit-Mercy. The producers may have been unable to secure rights to stream Coughlin's broadcasts on the Exploring Hate site. In fact, neither the website nor the individual episode credits are as clear as they should be about the provenance of the best Radioactiveclips of Coughlin. A popular Catholic priest with a weekly radio program, Coughlin stands today as a prominent symbol of, and catalyst for, American antisemitism during the 1930s. Radioactivepresents a nuanced account of Coughlin's career and politics. Born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1891, Coughlin was ordained in 1916. His career took off in 1926, when Reverend Michael Gallagher, Bishop of Detroit, offered Coughlin an opportunity to start a new parish, the Shrine of the Little Flower, in Royal Oak, north of Detroit. Coughlin used the emerging medium of radio to expand his influence through weekly sermons: a fiery mix of anti-communism, isolationism, populism, and commentary on Scripture. During the late 1920s, radio became a powerful force in American life, reaching listeners across the country with the same programing simultaneously. "Radio could sell cereal," Lapin asserts, "But was it big enough to sell God? In 1927, just a few months into his radio career, Father Coughlin took a big bet that the answer was going to be yes." By 1930, Coughlin was airing nationally on the...
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.065 | 0.013 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".