大象传媒

Radiolab explores an online world where that story about you lives forever. Can we shake our internet past?

In an online world, that story about you lives forever. The tipsy photograph of you at the college football game? It鈥檚 up there. That news article about the political rally you were marching at? It鈥檚 up there. A DUI? That鈥檚 there, too. But what if ... it wasn鈥檛.

In Cleveland, Ohio, a group of journalists are trying out an experiment that has the potential to turn things upside down: they are unpublishing content they鈥檝e already published. Photographs, names, entire articles. Every month or so, they get together to decide what content stays, and what content goes. On today鈥檚 episode, reporter Molly Webster goes inside the room where the decisions are being made, listening case-by-case as editors decide who, or what, gets to be deleted. It鈥檚 a story about time and memory; mistakes and second chances; and society as we know it.
This episode was reported by Molly Webster, and produced by Molly Webster and Bethel Habte.

Special thanks to Kathy English, David Erdos, Ed Haber, Brewster Kahle, Imani Leonard, Ruth Samuel, James Bennett II, Alice Wilder, Alex Overington, Jane Kamensky and all the people who helped shape this story.

Radiolab explores what does it mean and what does it take to belong to a place? With Jad Abumrad.

From WNYC. First broadcast on national public radio in the USA in 2019.