Question Everything
Question Everything is a weekly investigation into how the truth gets buried, distorted, and denied, and the ways people are fighting to make it matter again. Hosted by Brian Reed, of S-Town and This American Life. The podcast has won a Webby Award, an Ambie Award, and a Signal Special Achievement Award for pushing the boundaries of the medium.
Episodes
The High Stakes Game of Bargaining with the News
Question Everything has been nominated for six Signal Awards. To take home the win, we need you to vote for us by going to vote.signalaward.com. Enter Question Everything in the search bar, and start voting. Voting ends October 15th. Thanks!
Just a few weeks ago, David Ellison and Paramount were staring down the barrel of a $7 million dollar per day fine for every d
Flock Won’t Answer This One Town’s Simple Question
Question Everything has been nominated for six Signal Awards. To take home the win, we need you to vote for us by going to vote.signalaward.com. Enter Question Everything in the search bar, and start voting. Voting ends October 15th. Thanks!
Flock Safety’s license plate cameras are in about 6,000 towns across the U.S. But lately, towns have been pulling out of
Wait, Did Zuckerberg Get Off Easy?
Question Everything has been nominated for six Signal Awards. To take home the win, we need you to vote for us by going to vote.signalaward.com. Enter Question Everything in the search bar, and start voting. Voting ends October 15th. Thanks!
A few weeks ago, Meta was in trouble. 47 states plus several U.S. territories were suing the company in federal court for know
Introducing: Reaching Out
Today we’re excited to share a special episode of Reaching Out, a new podcast from Futuro and KCRW.
Hailed by Ira Glass as the “best new show I’ve heard in years,” Reaching Out is a story about fathers, sons, and the distance between. The story begins on the eve of twin brothers’ Sayre and Connor’s 30th birthday, when they set out to find th
The Curious Case of the Fake Florida Newsroom
Question Everything has been nominated for six Signal Awards. To take home the win, we need you to vote for us by going to vote.signalaward.com. Enter Question Everything in the search bar, and start voting. Voting ends October 15th. Thanks!
When Florida reporter Kate Payne stumbled across a local news site called The South Florida Standard, something about it felt
A Pitch for Why Journalists Need to Fight
What would it take to actually fix America’s broken journalism industry? Using rural North Carolina as a petri dish, the podcast Scene on Radio spent their latest season, called “The News”, diagnosing how American journalism is failing the public: collapsing local newsrooms, corporate consolidation, an information crisis nobody seems able to solve.
In the fin
Badass Local Journalists on How to Fight Corruption
Local reporters from around the country tell stories of using the experiences of their neighbors to confront people in power.
Guests:
Anna Wolfe with Mississippi Today
Lisa Halverstadt with Voice of San Diego
Alissa Zhu with The Baltimore Banner
Tony Plohetski with The Austin American-Statesman and KVUE Austin
Lisa is a part of the Homelessness Beat Repo
The Journalist and the Firefighter
How one of the most accomplished reporters of our time, Barton Gellman, lost his confidence in journalism.
Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. Follow us on Instagram: @questionverything.podcast. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter.
This episode was originally published on September 26th, 2024. You can listen to our follow up episo
A Gen Z Reporter Questions Jonathan Haidt, author of ‘The Anxious Generation’
Over the past few months, we’ve been closely covering the major lawsuits against Meta over the ways its apps have hurt young people.
This week, we’re sharing a special episode of "Left To Their Own Devices", a Peabody-nominated series hosted by Gen Z reporter and tech-safety advocate Ava Smithing.
Recorded live on stage shortly after the recent jury verdicts
Judge Compares Meta to a Factory Emitting ‘Noxious Pollution’ in a Landmark Ruling
Just hours after we dropped last week’s episode on New Mexico’s landmark trial against Meta, Judge Bryan Biedsheid issued his ruling on what changes the company would have to make to Facebook and Instagram to better protect kids.
He ordered Meta to pay New Mexico $567 million, on top of the earlier $375 million jury penalty. He also mandated that Meta make unpreced
We Went to the Trial That Could Force Meta to Change its Ways
Back in 2023, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed a historic lawsuit against Meta, arguing that the tech giant has enabled the exploitation of children on its apps for years.
This year, that case finally went to trial in a Santa Fe courthouse. The state argued that Meta has knowingly harmed kids and should be forced, through a court order, to change how
Is A Billionaire Bromance Capturing Our Media?
Wall Street Journal reporter Emily Glazer investigates the rich and powerful, and recently, she got a tip that she couldn’t get out of her head: sources told her that Donald Trump and billionaire Larry Ellison are genuine friends. She found it hard to believe – in all her experience reporting on the wealthy, she’s used to hearing about transactional relations
The Sunscreen Paradox
In June, disgraced former Florida Congressman turned right-wing One America News Network anchor Matt Gaetz peddled a novel and dangerous conspiracy to his audience: that using sunscreen causes skin cancer. Gaetz’s guest was Nicholas Hulscher, a prominent voice in the COVID anti-vaccination movement and co-author of one of the most prolific medical disinformation newslett
The Sting That Exposed How Meta Endangers Kids
If you're new to our show and liked this episode, let us suggest a couple of our other recent stories you might enjoy -- check out "How Meta Is Making Billions from Scam Advertising", "I Was 11 When Instagram Took Over My Life", "The Talented Ms. Goldiee" and "Why Did ICE Lock Up This Pro-Trump Reporter?"
In a windowless room in Albuquerque, a small team of New Mexico inv
Ashley St. Clair is Fighting X – And Tried To Stop This Episode
If you're new to our show and liked this episode, let us suggest a couple of our other recent stories you might enjoy -- check out "I Was 11 When Instagram Took Over My Life", "The Talented Ms. Goldiee" and "Why Did ICE Lock Up This Pro-Trump Reporter?"
Last week, host Brian Reed interviewed former MAGA influencer and the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, Ashle
How a Tiny Newsroom Helped Bring Down Hungary’s Authoritarian Leader
Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian grip on Hungary became a model for the American right. He hollowed out the country’s democracy and turned much of the media into a government megaphone. Then a small newsroom called Direkt36 exposed a plot against the opposition party involving a mysterious political operative, a young IT worker, a raid on a boat in the Danube an
From Drilled: Carbon Cowboys
While we’re heads down working on a bunch of great new episodes, we’re sharing the first episode of the new season of Drilled.
In it, award-winning climate journalist Amy Westervelt exposes how Republican corn ethanol mogul Bruce Rastetter sold "sustainable aviation fuel" to world leaders from North Dakota to Brazil. The problem is, his “clean energy” p
‘Kick Him Off The Bench.’ A Judge in Trump’s Pulitzer Case Gets a Prize
The Freedom of the Press Foundation just filed an ethics complaint against Florida Judge Jeffrey Kuntz, who has been nominated by President Trump for a lifetime federal court appointment. They want him stripped of his gavel and his law license.
Why? Judge Kuntz was one of the judges who ruled in Trump’s favor in his peculiar defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize
Can a Chatbot Convince Conspiracy Theorists of the Truth?
If you're new to our show and liked this episode, may we suggest a couple of our other recent stories you might enjoy? Check out "I Was 11 When Instagram Took Over My Life", "The Talented Ms. Goldiee" and "Why Did ICE Lock Up This Pro-Trump Reporter?"
Like millions of others, Gordon Pennycook’s older brother has leapt down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, and
Claude’s Russian Propaganda Problem
According to the fact-checking company NewsGuard, Claude has been a very reliable and accurate chatbot. But in the last month or so, users have started complaining that it seemed to be getting slower, stupider, and less trustworthy. So NewsGuard AI analyst Isis Blachez ran a test on Claude, to see if it is actually getting worse. And running this test revealed a whole new iter
Did FEMA Really Build a Secret Lair in a Mountain?
The first episode of a special series from On The Media’s Micah Loewinger about how a seemingly benign and important agency, FEMA, has become the subject of some of the wildest conspiracy theories.
FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) is supposed to keep Americans safe from wildfires, hurricanes, and nuclear disasters. So why has it become so profoundly distrus
ICE Jailed a Student for an Op-Ed, Now She’s Left America
In recent days, we learned that Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University grad student who was snatched off the street by masked ICE agents last year and locked up for more than a month, has had enough of America, and moved home to Turkey. The U.S. government had continued to threaten her with legal proceedings and deportation, even after releasing her from detention
You Can Bet on Everything Now. What Could Go Wrong?
Gambling is infiltrating American life. Ads for online sportsbooks are everywhere. Prediction markets – which are not legally considered gambling – now allow betting on everything from the unemployment numbers, to the war in Iran, to how many times Elon Musk will tweet this week. Lots of news outlets are getting in on the action: CNN, CNBC, the AP, and others are p
The Story She Reported, the View She Buried
It’s easy to get frustrated with the charade reporters are supposed to keep up, where they pretend they don’t have opinions or feelings or any kind of human thoughts about a story they’re reporting. Plenty of journalists have been trying to break out of that charade. But the decision to do that: it can be a fraught one, with real implications.
This week
I Was 11 When Instagram Took Over My Life
Taylor Little was 11 years old when they lied about their age to sign up for Instagram. Now, 13 years later, they’re one of thousands of people suing the company, accusing Instagram of purposely addicting them as a child and driving them to years of mental health struggles.
Taylor takes Brian inside their dark and twisted experience with the app. They say it all st
Meta Knew They Were Addicting Kids. Now They’re Paying for It.
In the span of two days, juries handed down landmark verdicts against Meta and Google. In New Mexico, a jury ordered Meta to pay the state $375 million for failing to protect young people from predators on Instagram. And in Los Angeles, a jury found that Meta and Google knowingly designed social media platforms that addicted a young girl, causing depression, body dysmorphia, a
A Video So Real It Looks Fake
Brian sits down with expert fact-checker Sofia Rubinson who spends hours every day tracking lies online, and together they dissect a single lie that’s been rocketing around the world to millions of people, affecting the way people think about the war in Iran — including the world’s biggest podcaster.
Sofia says the AI deepfakes she’s seen consume
The Case Against Jeremy Loffredo (Ambie Award-winner for Best Reporting of the Year)
Locked up, alone, accused of being a spy, reporter Jeremy Loffredo has to defend the fact that he’s a journalist. To the Israeli courts. And then…to our reporter.
This is part two of our two-part series about Jeremy Loffredo, who in October 2024 became the first American journalist arrested by Israel. This story won Best Reporting at the 2026 Ambie Awards, w
Blindfolded and Arrested on Assignment in Israel (Ambie Award-winner for Best Reporting of the Year)
Part one of a special, two-part series, about Jeremy Loffredo, the first American journalist ever arrested by Israel, and the questions that were raised about not only Israel, but the outlet Jeremy worked for, once our team started looking into his story. We’re re-airing these episodes because they won Best Reporting from the Podcast Academy, at the 2026 Ambie Awards.&nb
Are We Captured Yet? Now Trump’s Pals Are Taking Over CNN
News recently broke that Paramount, which is newly controlled by David Ellison and his billionaire dad Larry Ellison, won the bid to buy Warner-Brothers Discovery, after aggressively squeezing out Netflix.
As Trump himself has said, the Ellisons are “friends of mine…big supporters of mine, and they’ll do the right thing.”
Is the “right thin
The Talented Ms. Goldiee
When a promising young freelancer pitched a good story to his magazine, editor Nicholas Hune-Brown was ready to assign it. But as he looked more closely at the pitch and the writer’s bylines across the internet, Nicholas began to realize maybe this writer wasn’t who she seemed.
A version of Nick’s story first appeared in The Local – you can read it here
A Reporter Fights for His Freedom (Part Two)
After journalist Mario Guevara was arrested while covering an anti-ICE protest, ICE moved him into their detention. As his lawyers and the ACLU tried to get Mario free, ICE argued again and again that he shouldn’t be let out, because his journalism made him too dangerous.
Mario was behind bars for 111 days. Then deported to El Salvador.
If you’re wondering wh
Why did ICE Lock Up this Pro-Trump Reporter? (Part One)
In June, journalist Mario Guevara was arrested while covering an anti-ICE protest in Georgia, transferred to ICE detention, and locked up by the federal government for more than 100 days. And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
But Mario is not the kind of ICE-criticizing reporter you might be picturing. He was a Trump-supporting, Republican-identifying, law-and-orde
The Dangers of Being a Journalist
A little message from host Brian Reed about a scary incident he’s dealing with. And much scarier incidents other journalists are dealing with.
Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. Sign up for our newsletter to see Brian’s interview with Senator Dick Durbin about his effort to repeal Section 230.
We want to know who is listening to our s
A Minnesota Dad Takes on ICE
Our managing editor, Kevin Sullivan, had a conversation this week with an old colleague in Minnesota that we wanted to share with you as quickly as we could. He’s a former data journalist, Michael Corey, who lives with his family in St. Paul. As ICE agents have flooded Mike’s state as part of a massive federal immigration enforcement operation, he started getting i
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on How He Fought ICE’s Messaging War
As ICE agents have continued to threaten and kill people in Minneapolis and Minnesota’s governor and other state officials plead with the agency to leave, we share an interview with the governor of another state that was recently targeted by ICE: JB Pritzker of Illinois.
In October, as ICE agents were descending on Chicago in “Operation Midway Blitz”, B
Inside ICE’s Push to Go Viral
Many people were surprised that ICE officer Jonathan Ross was filming with his phone when he shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis. But Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell was leaked thousands of internal ICE messages that show the agency is obsessed with creating viral videos, and is using arrests of immigrants slapped with “hooky” captions and pop music to
How One Tweak to the Internet Led This Guy to a BDSM Dungeon
The story of an adult performer, Davin Strong, whose life was upended by a seemingly small change to Section 230.
Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. For more of our coverage of how the internet and press shape our reality, sign up for our newsletter.
Guests:
Davin Addison (aka Davin Strong), adult performer whose livelihood was upended af
When Lies Spread Like Wildfire
At a bar that survived the destruction, a group of reporters get together a year later to talk about the personal impact the LA wildfires had on them. And some of the harrowing – and surprising – requests they got from people to check if their homes were still standing.
Thanks to Good Neighbor Bar and West Altadena Wine & Spirits for hosting us.
Question Everyt
Host Brian Reed Confronts his Toughest Critic
We’re taking a quick break for the holidays, but in the spirit of New Year reflection, we’re sharing our very first episode of Question Everything.
Brian talks to fellow journalist, Gay Alcorn, who called his most well-known work – the hit podcast S-Town – “morally indefensible.”
You can read Gay’s column here. Subscribe to
When Hollywood Tells The Truth - with the directors of Spotlight, The Staircase, Reality, and The Investigation
We’re taking a short break over the holidays and will be plopping in front of the TV to watch some movies and shows. Maybe you’re doing the same? Check out one of our favorite episodes of Question Everything, where Hollywood directors gather after hours at a wine shop to drink and commiserate. They talk about the perils – and power – that come when you&
The Scammers and Smut that Sparked the Modern Internet
Over the past few months, our host Brian Reed has been reporting on Section 230 – the law that shields online platforms and websites from lawsuits and has shaped the way we get information today.
Now, a bipartisan attack on Section 230 is taking hold in Congress. During a Senate hearing last week, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island called Section 230 &
The Loophole That Could Keep the Epstein Files Hidden
By December 19th, the Department of Justice is supposed to release all DOJ and FBI files related to Jeffrey Epstein. But through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Bloomberg investigative reporter Jason Leopold has uncovered evidence of a secretive operation on the Epstein files that the FBI called the “Special Redaction Project.” That doesn’t necess
‘Let Him Hang Himself’
When the recent slate of Jeffrey Epstein emails dropped, one line immediately jumped out: “I think you should let him hang himself.”
It was part of a 2015 email exchange between journalist Michael Wolff and his source, Jeffrey Epstein, discussing whether they should give Donald Trump a heads-up that Wolff had heard CNN was planning to question Trump about his relat
Can Satire Save Democracy? w/ The Onion CEO Ben Collins
A nice treat for the holiday – an interview with the guy who runs the country’s funniest fake newspaper.
Ben Collins became CEO of The Onion after a long career working in traditional news, so he's got major thoughts about speaking truth to power. On this episode of fellow KCRW podcast The Sam Sanders Show, Ben lays out the role of satire in our current polit
Call 202-225-3501 To Fix The Internet
Next week, the House is expected to hold a hearing on kids’ online safety. They plan to release several bills to protect kids from harmful content. But one issue is not on the agenda: Section 230, the law that helps shield tech platforms from liability for content posted on their sites.
In an interview with our host, Brian Reed, Congressman Jake Auchincloss (MA-D)
How Meta Is Making Billions From Scam Advertising
It seems like Meta just can’t lose. The Facebook parent company won a huge victory in court this week. The federal government was claiming Meta was too massive after acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp, and wanted to force the company to spin off those platforms. But a federal judge disagreed.
And that means, Meta will continue to make a ton of money from scam ads on those
'We Don't Hate Journalists Enough': The Story of an F-ed Up Deepfake
When journalist Julia Mengolini criticized her country’s president, Javier Milei, she didn’t expect to be targeted with one of the more disturbing uses of AI: a pornographic deepfake video designed to humiliate her. What began as trolling by online extremists spiraled into a government-amplified smear campaign, spurred on by senior officials and the president himse
A Government Whistleblower Trusts a Newsroom, Ends Up in Prison
When NSA contractor Reality Winner leaked proof that Russia had tried to break into the U.S. election system, she thought she was helping her country. Instead, she got the longest federal prison sentence ever for giving information to the press. While prepping for her trial, she found out that the journalist she had trusted with the leaked document, accidentally exposed her. T
How Trump is Capturing America’s Media – Without a Coup
Veteran foreign correspondent Natalia Antelava has spent 15 years reporting from places where authoritarian regimes have “captured” the media. In other words, they control the dominant messages coming from the press. From Russia to Syria, Natalia has seen what it looks like when a government takes over the media, not overnight, but piece by piece.
Now, she&rs
TikTok Stars on the Politicians Begging Them for Exposure
What happens when TikTokers replace TV hosts and interviewers, and presidential candidates start begging to be on their shows?
Brian Reed sits down in a Brooklyn wine shop with four of the internet’s biggest creators: Caleb Simpson, who gets people on the street to take him up to their apartments; Julian Shapiro-Barnum who interviews kids on Recess Therapy; Anania Willia
‘I Believed Sandy Hook Was a Hoax’
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.
Brian talks to Kate about
Betraying a Friendship to Get a Viral Story
This episode of Death, Sex, and Money is a recommendation from our contributing editor Jen Kinney.
When blogger AJ Daulerio broke the Brett Favre sexting scandal in 2010, it became one of the biggest stories of his career. But it came at a cost: he had betrayed Jenn Sterger, the woman at the center of the story, who had confided in him as a friend and explicitly asked hi
The Film the BBC Wouldn’t Air
Two veteran journalists set out to document Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system: hospitals attacked, medical workers killed, doctors detained without charge. The BBC commissioned the film. Then pulled it.
Sometimes killing a story is routine. Sometimes it’s a scandal, even immoral.
In this episode, producer Sophie Kazis pulls back the
Brian Takes on Big Tech
When late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was forced off the air, it raised huge questions about who really controls what we’re allowed to say. From billionaires and politicians to social media platforms and regulators, the boundaries of free speech in America are being redrawn in real time.
To get a sense of the country’s mood, host Brian Reed goes to the Iowa State Fair
The Epstein Files
Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes have been picked apart in headlines, documentaries, and endless conspiracy theories. And yet there have continued to be shocking new revelations in the story this year, as President Trump’s base has pressured him to release the government’s files about Epstein.
In this episode of Question Everything, host Brian Reed brings toget
Question Everything Returns, Raring for a Fight
We're back. September 25th.
A Listener on What Journalists Should do Better
A listener weighed in with some criticism on Substack. Brian (our host) got involved. Some advice for journalists ensued. It ended up inspiring an entire segment on KCRW’s show Left, Right & Center, which we’re sharing with you here.
This is the kind of action that’s happening over on our new Substack – which you should subscribe to! If you do, we&r
Brian Can't Stop Fact-checking His Mother-In-Law (from “Proxy with Yowei Shaw”)
After her NPR show was canceled some years back, producer and host Yowei Shaw gave herself a new title: “Emotional Investigative Journalist.” She started a podcast called Proxy, where she helps people who are facing unique emotional or personal obstacles by connecting them with a proxy who’s uniquely positioned to help them.
Our host, Brian, recently went on
Badass Local Journalists on How to Fight Corruption
Local reporters from around the country tell stories of using the experiences of their neighbors to confront people in power.
Featuring:Anna Wolfe with Mississippi Today
Lisa Halverstadt with Voice of San Diego
Alissa Zhu with The Baltimore Banner
Tony Plohetski with The Austin American-Statesman and KVUE Austin
Lisa is a part of the Homelessness Beat Repor
Who’s Behind the Raids? A Mystery in Marion (Part Two)
A TV reporter from Kansas City hears about the newspaper raids over in Marion. Her interest is piqued by the fact that the police chief who oversaw the raids had recently left Kansas City PD. So she heads to Marion to see what she can find out. And what she finds…is basically a Bravo reality series, small-town midwestern style.
Part One of this story aired last we
A Mystery in Marion (Part One)
On a Friday morning in rural Kansas, the publisher of a tiny local newspaper hears a knock at the door. It’s the police—with a search warrant. Within minutes, they’re inside his home, seizing his electronics. At the same time, officers are raiding his newsroom, confiscating computers and phones. No subpoena. No warning. And, according to legal experts, no rig
The Fight for Your Attention with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes
MSNBC host Chris Hayes discusses his book The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource, and reckons with his own culpability in the corruption and commercialization of our attention.
Thanks to “Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso” for sharing this interview with us.
“Question Everything” is a production of
The Hunt for a Journalist’s Killer
A group of reporters recently uncovered a closely held secret: the identity of the Israeli soldier who shot and killed renowned veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022. This is the story of how they figured it out.
Sign up for our newsletter: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
From the Fringe Web to Real Life: How Seriously Should We Be Taking Conspiracy Theories?
Back in December, we did an episode about Pyrra, an AI-powered software that tracks sifts through the far corners of the internet – in some places you probably haven’t even heard of – to see what narratives are emerging from the people who post there. A lot of these are conspiracy theories, and also violent threats.
This week, we check back in with the
Rümeysa Öztürk is Locked Up for an Op-ed: An Urgent Summit with the Student Newspaper that Published It
Where better to huddle up and discuss what to do about Rümeysa Öztürk and the chilling effect that is happening in journalism than on campus at Tufts University with the student journalists at The Tufts Daily?This week Brian and Question Everything co-host a live event with the editor-in-chief and associate editor from The Tufts Daily– Arghya Thallapragada
Pounding Beers in a Shed, and Other Dispatches from the War on Free Speech
Last episode we discussed the campaign to overturn the Supreme Court decision that protects reporters’ ability to criticize and investigate people in power.
But even with that decision still in place, reporter David Enrich has discovered a shocking wave of legal attacks that is being waged on journalists in towns and cities across the country. These are often repo
Freedom of the press is great, until you're the target
For decades, a Supreme Court decision called New York Times vs Sullivan was widely beloved by people across the political spectrum. Hailed as a decision that gave the first amendment teeth and made our country great.
But recently, under our noses, some of the same people who once sang its praises have turned against it.
The story of the growing movement tha
The masterpiece Prince documentary Netflix won’t let the public see.
The best documentary filmmaker in America spent nearly five years of his life making a nine-hour masterpiece for Netflix.
It will never see the light of day.
After a nasty estate battle, the series will not be released. No one will ever see it.
In his first sit-down interview about this catastrophe, the filmmaker, Ezra Edelman seeks catharsis &
He quit journalism to fight authoritarianism. How’s that going?
Last year, we did an episode with Barton Gellman, who talked about the war games he was running with high-level military leaders and government officials to prepare for a second Trump term.
A bunch of you have been asking us to have Barton back, to find out what he’s doing, now that the second Trump term is here. So we called him up.
Barton works at t
A Rant or a Slant: When Should Reporters Speak From the Heart?
It’s easy to get frustrated with the charade reporters are supposed to keep up, where they pretend they don’t have opinions or feelings or any kind of human thoughts about a story they’re telling. Plenty of journalists have been trying to break out of that charade. But the decision to do that: it can be a fraught one, with real implications.
Dana
A Teen, a Reporter, and a Grand Jury Leak (Over BBQ)
Brian tells the story of a reporting trip he took to Alabama, where two small-town journalists had been locked up in jail, that led to one of the most honest - and surprising - conversations about journalism he’s had in a long time.
Sign up for our newsletter to see some stories and pictures from a recent event Brian held in Alabama about his podcast S-Town.
The News is Coming from Under the Desk… on TikTok (live from On Air Fest)
As trust in traditional journalism plummets, social media content creator V Spehar of Under the Desk News is ascendant, with over 3.4 million TikTok followers. But recently, V found themself in a public dustup with NPR over, in part, how the outlet had classified V in an interview. In this special episode of Question Everything––largely recorded live at On Air Fest
Not Like Us: How Billionaires Think
As billionaires hoard more control over our politics, it seems more important than ever to ask: What makes them tick? Four reporters gather after hours at a wine shop to discuss – over drinks – what they’ve learned from covering billionaires for years, and how it can help us hoi polloi make sense of what the ultra-rich are doing right now.
Featuring Vi
And The Award Goes To...The Circuit Court Of The Nineteenth Judicial Circuit In and For Okeechobee County, Florida
Ben Smith tells the story of the strange controversy over a journalism award that’s been going down in a Florida courthouse.
Ben is Editor-in-Chief of Semafor and co-host of the Mixed Signals podcast. He used to be tThe New York Times media columnist and was founding editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News.
Sign up for our newsletter to read the lengthy listener c
A reporter? A spy? Or something else? Israel arrests its first American journalist.
Locked up, alone, accused of being a spy, reporter Jeremy Loffredo has to defend the fact that he’s a journalist. To the Israeli courts. And then…to our reporter.
Part two of our two-part series about Jeremy Loffredo, who in October became the first American journalist arrested by Israel.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and P
Blindfolded and Arrested on Assignment in Israel
Just a few months ago, Israel did something it has never done before. It arrested an American journalist. His name is Jeremy Loffredo.
This is his story.
Part one of a special, two-part series.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
When Hollywood Tells The Truth: with Tom McCarthy, Antonio Campos, Tina Satter, and Tobias Lindholm.
Four Hollywood directors gather after hours at a wine shop to drink and commiserate about the perils – and power – that come when you’re straddling fact and fiction. With behind the scenes stories about documentary romance, regret, and pirates.
Featuring Tom McCarthy, who won an Oscar for Spotlight; Antonio Campos, creator of The Staircase for HBO; Tin
Can AI tell us what stories to look out for? A live experiment.
Our team at Question Everything has been playing around with a new technology that sucks up tons of social media posts, and then uses AI to figure out what ideas are forming in the shadows of the internet before they hit the mainstream.
Brian interviews a journalist who uses this tech, to see what conversations are brewing right now that we might want to keep an eye out for in
Getting Ready to Interview Trump: An Exercise
A journalist tries to get his wrestling buddy to trust in journalism.
You can find more work by Sam Eagan here.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
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