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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...
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Long Shadow turns internet history into a human-scale account of how digital systems acquire political and social power.
Long Shadow treats the internet's recent past as a chain of choices with consequences. Garrett Graff's long-form narrative history moves between archival recordings, interviews, and sharply drawn scenes, tracing the distance from dot-com optimism to an online culture shaped by…
A young Musk gets a McLaren; you get the long road from dot-com optimism to online manipulation.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A hard look at how a lie spreads online and how difficult it is to unlearn.
Kate's arc gives the episode its charge: belief gives way to shock, and the collapse feels painfully quick. The piece works best when it stays close to her experience while also showing how the falsehood spread online and why Section 230 keeps hanging over the conversation.
An energetic look at 2016 that treats disinformation as a force exploiting existing fractures.
Panic World and Longshadow present Russia, disinformation, and information warfare as a story about existing fractures being used, not invented.
A sharp, unsentimental look at how early internet confidence hardened into a narrower media world.
The episode opens on Musk at the edge of his first major success, then moves from Zip2 and X.com into a later media world that feels more suspicious and self sorting.
A blunt, well reported look at how misinformation turns harmful.
Going Viral follows misinformation from a blunt Stanford critique of Facebook to the pandemic era spread of fake cures and conspiracies. It stays grounded in concrete examples, which gives the episode its best momentum.
A clear, focused account of how the Sony Pictures hack foreshadowed the DNC email scandal.
Weapons of Mass Distraction follows the line from the 2014 Sony Pictures hack over The Interview to the Russian military intelligence hack of the Democratic National Committee.
A sharp account of how Facebook turned emotional reaction into an advertising signal.
Online fights over vaccines open into a wider history of how Facebook came to treat emotion as a business asset. The episode traces that shift through Renee DiResta's 2013 pregnancy in California, the volatile exchanges inside largely anonymous birth month groups, and the Like…
A focused account of how an online call gathered force in the streets of Cairo.
Facebook becomes the organizing engine in this account of Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement, tracing young activists as online urgency turns into a street protest that draws hundreds of thousands toward Tahrir Square.
A broad look at dot-com ambition, digital protest, and the human cost of the Iraq War.
The episode begins with Elon Musk taking delivery of a McLaren in 1999, an image that neatly captures dot-com wealth and the ambition already forming around X.com.
Overlooked lives, read from the sources, talked through warmly.
Mike Duncan narrates Rome's full history solo, from Aeneas to Romulus Augustulus's exile in 476.
["A bonus Long Shadow episode follows Kate, an Iowa woman who says she grew up believing Sandy Hook was a hoax and later realized the shooting was real in college.", "Brian Reed ties her reversal to Alex Jones, a YouTube recommendation system that pushed Sandy Hook conspiracy videos, and a 2022 defamation verdict that topped $1 billion.", "He argues that Section 230, the 1996 law shielding Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok from lawsuits over user content, lets platforms profit from harmful lies without meaningful liability.", "Joan Donovan, Francis Haugen, Jack Dorsey, and Guillaume Chalot add platform-specific details about algorithms, engagement signals, and internal decisions that make Reed's reform case concrete."]
Garrett Graff argues that Russian interference in 2016 mattered less as direct vote manipulation than as a force that shaped the media environment around Hillary Clinton's emails, Jim Comey, and Donald Trump.
Long Shadow's 'The Red Pill' opens with Elon Musk in 1998 calling the internet 'the superset of all media' and later, in 2020, signaling 'take the red pill' on Twitter.
Chamath Palihapitiya's November 10, 2017 Stanford Q&A and Mark Zuckerberg's April 10, 2018 Senate testimony frame Long Shadow's Going Viral around Facebook's manipulation, apology, and responsibility.
Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet, Episode 5, traces how the 2014 Sony Pictures hack, the Colombian Chemicals hoax, and Russian-backed Facebook activity connected cyberattacks with political division.
Long Shadow’s “Enragement Equals Engagement” traces how Facebook’s News Feed turned emotional reactions into a distribution system, beginning with Ben Parr’s protest group that grew from 10,000 members to 750,000 in one week.
Long Shadow’s “The Facebook Revolution” follows Ahmed Meir, Wael Ghonim, and the April 6 Youth Movement from a 2008 Facebook group that exceeded 70,000 members to the 2011 protests that brought hundreds of thousands into Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet, “Establishing Connection,” follows the internet from Elon Musk’s 1999 X.com ambitions through its use by the September 11 hijackers and the post-9/11 information vacuum.
The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works.
Interviews with Gen Z members born on September 11, 2001, including Lily, Dylan, Chloe, Hillary and Tawny, show Sandy Hook on December 14, 2012 as the event that defined their childhoods.
This episode explores the landmark Supreme Court case D.C.
This episode recounts the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, from the first case to the national response.
The 1978 novel The Turner Diaries, which historian Kathleen Belew calls "a very bad novel," supplied the white power movement with a plan to overthrow the federal government.
Long Shadow host Garrett Graf recounts how only 18 people were rescued from the collapse of the Twin Towers, while hospitals across the New York area waited for a flood of patients that never arrived.