Publishing Details
Contact & Outreach
About This Podcast
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 Podcast at the 2024 Edward R. Murrow Awards. IN GUNS WE TRUST, the show’s third season produced in collaboration with The Trace, was nominated for a Peabody Award and awarded the RFK Human Rights Journalism Award for its coverage of America’s gun violence epidemic.
LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET premiered June 24, 2025 and won three Signal Awards (for Best Technology, Documentary, and History podcast) as well as an Anthem Award for Best Responsible Technology Awareness.
LONG SHADOW is produced by the award-winning journalism studio Long Lead and distributed by PRX.
For more visit www.longlead.com and www.longshadowpodcast.com.
Podcasting 2.0 Features
Explore Statistics
Recent Episodes
S4 Question Everything: "I Believed Sandy Hook Was a Hoax" (Bonus)
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…
S4 Panic World: Russiagate (Bonus)
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…
S4E7 The Red Pill
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…
S4E6 Going Viral
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…
S4E5 Weapons of Mass Distraction
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…
S4E4 Enragement Equals Engagement
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…
S4E3 The Facebook Revolution
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…
S4E2 Establishing Connection
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…
S4E1 The End of the World as We Know It
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…
S4 Trailer: 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,…
S3E6 Generation Lockdown
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.
S3E5 A Good Guy with a Gun
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.
S3E4 The Right to Bear AR-15s
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.
S3E3 The Hardliners
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.
S3E2 Shall Not Be Infringed
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.
S3E1 A Uniquely American Problem
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.
S3 Trailer: Long Shadow: In Guns We Trust
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…
S2E7 January 6: Day of the Rope
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.
S2E6 MAGA: American Carnage
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.
S2E5 The Bundys: A Call to Arms
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Long Shadow has published 35 episodes since July 2021, covering topics in History.
Long Shadow is currently sporadic with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 45m.
Sign up on Grep.FM to access contact details for Long Shadow, including email and social media links.
Similar Podcasts
The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Ascension
1,715 episodes
Sword and Scale
Sword and Scale
105 episodes
Revisionist History
Pushkin Industries
202 episodes
Lore
Aaron Mahnke
500 episodes
Radiolab
WNYC Studios
656 episodes
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
489 episodes