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, 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.

You can listen to Trailer: Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Trailer: Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet is an episode from Long Shadow by Long Lead.

This episode is 03:14 long.

This episode was published on Jun 17, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Long Shadow when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.