Today on Word of Mouth, the Boston Marathon bombings happened a year ago this month, but questions about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s possible involvement in a triple homicide remain. Investigative reporter Susan Zalkind discusses the complicated case, and whether police missed their chance to apprehend Tsarnaev long before the marathon bombs. Plus, between online hacking, stored search histories, social media settings, and malware,protecting one’s privacy has become more important, and more complicated than ever. So, how much is our anonymity worth? We'll ask And finally, there are over 700 different Emojis out there, and plenty of interest groups asking for more. Why, for example, is there no hot dog Emoji? Turns out, the answer is surprisingly complicated.
The Murder Connected to the Boston Bombings
- Just about a month after the Boston Marathon bombings last year, an FBI agent shot Ibragim Todashev in his Orlando, Florida apartment. The agent and two Massachusetts state cops had been interrogating Todashev about a grisly triple murder in Waltham, Massachusetts. The agents say that Todashev had admitted to being at the scene of the crime along with accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Todashev was writing his confession out when he attacked his interrogators and was shot seven times. Reporter Susan Zalkind has been following the investigation of Ibragim Todashev’s mysterious death for Boston Magazine and talked about some of the bizarre behavior, collateral damage and unanswered questions about the case for a recent episode of ‘This American Life’.
The Price of Privacy
- For more than a decade, Julia Angwin was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where she led a privacy investigative team. She was also part of the team to win a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of corporate corruption. In other words, she has deep and inside knowledge of who’s watching you, what they know, and why it matters. Those are some of the questions answered in her new book, “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance.”
Where is the Hot Dog Emoji?
- Last year an 800 page Emoji translation of Moby Dick was added to The Library of Congress, and more recently a video of Beyonce’s song ‘Drunk in Love’ went viral, with Emojis illustrating the lyrics of the song. With over seven hundred different Emojis available, you would think there are more than enough ways to convey a message in Emoji speak... not so, according to many different groups petitioning for missing Emojis, most glaringly for us Americans, the hot dog. Our guest is Caroline porter, she wrote the article called ‘Hot Dog Fan Campaigns for New Emoji’ for the Wall Street Journal.
