Long Shadow
Channel Details
Long Shadow
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...
Recent Episodes
33 episodesThe 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 t...
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...
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...
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...
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 fa...
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 pran...
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,...
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....
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 sa...
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 gu...
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 ca...
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 agains...
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 rig...
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? Ev...
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...
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...
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 Christ...
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...
Info War: From the Fringe to Fox News
Using conspiracy theories and anger to amass enormous audiences in the 1990s, Rush Limbaugh and Bill Cooper pave the way for Fox News to mainstream fa...
Oklahoma City: Sic Semper Tyrannis
Experts claimed 1995’s Oklahoma City bombing was a lone-wolf event, but Timothy McVeigh’s act of retribution for the Waco siege, shows how domestic ex...
Ruby Ridge: The Revolution Begins
The government lays siege to Ruby Ridge, Idaho, where Randy Weaver and his family are hiding out in the shadow of a growing white supremacist movement...
Waco: The Spark
Out of the flames of a tragic government mishap—the 1993 siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas—the modern far-right movement is born.
Trailer: Long Shadow: Rise of the American Far Right
The Ruby Ridge raid, the Waco siege at the Branch Davidian compound, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Jan. 6 insurrection… they are all explosive moment...
Long Lead Presents: The Depths She'll Reach
Out now from Long Lead, The Depths She’ll Reach, the story of how Alenka Artnik emerged from mental health struggles to become one of the world’s most...
How do we move on from 9/11?
When we think about 9/11, we often only think of the tremendous loss of life on that day. But what we sometimes forget about are those who made it; th...
What was the Saudi connection to 9/11?
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, which was also the home of al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama Bin Laden. In the days after September...
Who was the 20th hijacker?
Immediately after 9/11, investigators began piecing together the plot. In the flight manifests, they discovered a pattern: A team of five terrorists h...
Could 9/11 have been stopped before it happened?
Before 9/11, FBI Special Agent John O’Neill kept setting off alarms about the emerging terrorist organization al-Qaeda and their mysterious leader Osa...
Was there a “fifth plane” on 9/11?
After the first two hijackings, the nation’s air traffic controllers quickly and efficiently grounded thousands of planes flying to and over the conti...
Who issued the order to shoot down Flight 93?
With the Capitol under attack, the President on Air Force One, and the Defense Secretary missing, Vice President Dick Cheney was the most powerful man...
What was the target of United Airlines Flight 93?
Every defense mechanism the U.S. government had on 9/11 failed except for one: the passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93. They were on...
Why weren’t more people rescued from the Twin Towers?
After both towers of the World Trade Center were hit on September 11, 2001, first responders coordinated the largest emergency response in New York Ci...
Trailer: Long Shadow: 9/11's Lingering Questions
Many of us watched the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 unfold right before our eyes. In the years since, law enforcement, congressional inqu...