Podcast
Long Shadow
Hosted by Long Lead & PRX · EN
Through a series of riveting, complex narratives, LONG SHADOW makes sense of what people know — and what they thought they knew — about the most pivotal moments in U.S. history, including Waco, Columbine, Y2K, 9/11, COVID-19, January 6, and beyond.
Hosted by Pulitzer-finalist historian, author, and journalist Garrett Graff, this Peabody-nominated podcast has been called “rigorous, authoritative, and an electrifying listen” by the Financial Times and honored as one of the year's best podcasts by The Atlantic, Audible, Mashable, Rolling Stone, and The Week. A winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award and the RFK Human Rights Journalism Award, it has also been honored with eight Signal Awards, including for Best History, Best Documentary, Best Technology, and Best Activism, Public Service, & Social Impact Podcast.
The second season of LONG SHADOW has been added to the history program at the University of Houston and the third season has been integrated into Harvard Law School's curriculum on the Second Amendment.
Season 4
LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET
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.
LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET 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, a tool that gave everyone access to all the world’s information and unlocked democracy across the globe. But LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET is 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.
Chronicling innovations, revolutions, cyber attacks, and meltdowns across seven episodes, this limited series podcast untangles the web in a way you’ve never considered before. Featuring memes and moments you know — like when the world became transfixed by the color of a dress — and others you don’t, but should — like how people sent death threats to the woman who posted that meme online — LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET both scales the heights of internet virality and plumbs the depths of social media's depravity.
Within weeks of its launch in 2021, LONG SHADOW became a No. 1 history show on Apple Podcasts, and its first season, 9/11’s LINGERING QUESTIONS, won Best History Podcast at the inaugural Signal Awards. Its second season, RISE OF THE AMERICAN FAR RIGHT, was named Best ...
21episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Question Everything: "I Believed Sandy Hook Was a Hoax" (Bonus)
Mar 2500:47:09Tap to summarizeLong 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.
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Panic World: Russiagate (Bonus)
Jan 701:02:12Tap to summarizeLong 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.
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The Red Pill
Aug 501:04:20Tap to summarizeA 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.
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Going Viral
Jul 2900:55:15Tap to summarizeAfter 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.
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Weapons of Mass Distraction
Jul 2200:44:06Tap to summarizeNorth 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.
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Enragement Equals Engagement
Jul 1500:36:40Tap to summarizeWith 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.
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The Facebook Revolution
Jul 800:41:27Tap to summarizeIn 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.
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Establishing Connection
Jul 100:48:52Tap to summarizeAt 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.
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The End of the World as We Know It
Jun 2400:42:17Tap to summarizeThe 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.
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Trailer: Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet
Jun 1700:03:14Tap to summarizeWhen 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.
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