Long Shadow

Long Shadow listeners: Today we’re sharing a great episode of the Question Everything podcast in our feed because it's the perfect crossover between "In Guns We Trust" and "Breaking the Internet."Propagandist? Truth teller? Influencer? Question Everything unravels the contested work of journalists and the moral complexities surrounding the stories that impact us all.Episode description: Kate grew up believing the Sandy Hook school shooting was an elaborate false flag operation. For years she thought the 20 elementary school children and six educators who were killed that day did not actually die, but were played by crisis actors. And then, one day – in a matter of minutes – suddenly Kate realized how wrong she was. Question Everything host Brian Reed talks with Kate about what it’s like to realize you believed something so obviously wrong, so deeply damaging, for so long. And he argues that her story is a case study for reforming Section 230 – the 1996 law that gives tech companies massive immunity from getting sued over what people post. Without that law, platforms like YouTube, which amplified the lies about Sandy Hook that Kate once believed, could be taken to court by the Sandy Hook families. “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.Guests: Kate, a former conspiracy believer Dr. Joan Donovan, disinformation scholar and Director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute at Boston University Thanks for listening to Long Shadow and be sure to listen and subscribe to Question Everything wherever you get your podcasts.

Long Shadow listeners: Today we’re sharing a great episode of the Panic World podcast in our feed because we think you’ll like it.Panic World is a weekly chat show that explores how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality — which is pretty much the story of Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet, only we do it in a longform narrative format. The show's host, Ryan Broderick, knows a lot about the web, but he doesn’t quite know what to think about Russian interference in the 2016 election. So for a recent episode, he invited Garrett Graff to re-examine the truth behind the scandal. This is a great listen for Long Shadow fans because it dives deeper into Russiagate and all consequences of that moment in history. Thanks for listening to Long Shadow and be sure to listen and subscribe to Panic World wherever you get your podcasts.

A toxic army of trolls goes after women in the gaming industry, giving birth to an online movement of disaffected men. This "manosphere" contributes to the resurgence of Donald Trump and a constitutional crisis that holds American democracy in the balance.

After the twin disasters of the massacre in Myanmar and the 2016 election, social media undergoes a reckoning in the halls of Congress… until a novel virus uncorks a global pandemic and a contagion of hoaxes, conspiracies, and lies online.

North Korea hacks a movie studio over a screwball comedy, inspiring America’s enemies to launch cyberattacks against the U.S. To roil an election, one even unleashes a network of trolls pitting ordinary Americans against each other, online and in the streets.

With the dawn of the newsfeed, Facebook begins a mass experiment on the human psyche — what we like and hate, what makes us happy and angry. Over the course of a decade, its algorithm drives the world to like, comment, and eventually, kill.

In Egypt, a ragtag group of young activists uses social media to spark a revolution and remove a dictator from power. They credit Facebook with the fall of the regime… until the platform is turned against them.

At the dawn of the new millennium, the internet yields powerful tools for coordinating and organizing online. From the 9/11 hijackers to flashmob pranksters to activists, it puts power in the hands of the people, for better and for worse.

The internet as we know it today is a harrowing landscape. But in its quirky infancy, the web changed everything about how we lived, shared, shopped, and communicated. Then a computer bug threatened to shut it all down forever.

When was the last time you felt good about the internet? Today’s online landscape is a harrowing one. People screaming at each other on social media. Violent videos going viral. Cyberbullying, racism, misogyny. Back in the day, the web gave power to the people, and going online could actually be fun.In LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET, Pulitzer-finalist historian, author, and journalist Garrett Graff retraces 30 years of web history — a tangle of GIFs, blogs, apps, and hashtags — to answer the bewildering question many ask when they go online today: “How did we get here?”It’s the story of mankind’s greatest invention, but it's also about the biggest crisis facing society today: how the web's unlimited feed of data morphed into a firehose of hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and lies that divided Americans over things we once agreed on, like science, diversity, and even democracy itself. LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET is produced by Long Lead and is distributed by PRX.

Raised on active shooter and lockdown drills, Gen Z has endured an onslaught of violence — and emerged inspiring a wave of activism, a powerful gun safety movement, and hope.

Easy to handle and easy to conceal, handguns went boom in the 2000s, the same moment when many Americans — falsely and tragically — began to equate guns with safety.

After a devastating, now largely forgotten, mass-shooting prompted lawmakers to take aim at assault weapons in the 1990s, their ban backfired — and caused gun sales to explode.

In the 1980s, a pair of intimidating NRA leaders recast the organization in their own imposing images as the group went on an all-out offensive against gun regulations.

The Second Amendment may have begun as a Constitutional afterthought, but a late 20th-century ideological shift caused some to view it as a sacred right in the name of self defense.

Mass shootings have plagued the U.S. for generations. But in 1999, when shots rang out in a suburban Denver school, it was different. What changed? Everything.

This season host Garrett Graff, in collaboration with The Trace, recounts how a very specific, carefully manufactured fear has driven explosive demand for guns across the U.S. It’s the history of how firearms went from being an ordinary part of rural American life to a menacing element in modern society — and the epidemic of gun violence that’s come with it. How did we get here — how did America get so divided over guns — and can we we find a way forward? Find out, this season on LONG SHADOW.LONG SHADOW: IN GUNS WE TRUST is produced by Long Lead and Campside Media in collaboration with The Trace, and is distributed by PRX.

Emboldened by COVID lockdown protests and fighting Black Lives Matter demonstrators, far-right extremists and white power groups prepare to overthrow the government on Jan. 6… or a later date.

After Trump’s election, far-right extremism explodes, and internet racism boils over into the real world. From Charleston to Charlottesville to Christchurch, experts warn of a race war.

When the government seizes Cliven Bundy’s cattle over unpaid grazing fees, militias like the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers—which are later at 1/6—aid a standoff on his ranch.