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Long Lead & PRX

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.

Hosted by Pulitzer-finalist historian, author, and journalist Garrett Graff, the Peabody Award-nominated LONG SHADOW podcast makes sense of the most pivotal moments in U.S. history, including Waco, Y2K, 9/11, Columbine, January 6, and beyond. Within weeks of the launch of its first season, 9/11’s LINGERING QUESTIONS in 2021, LONG SHADOW became a No. 1 history show on Apple Podcasts. 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 awarded the RFK Human Rights Journalism Award for its coverage of America’s gun violence epidemic. The podcast has also been nominated for an IDA Award and won three Signal Awards, among other honors.

LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET premieres June 24, with new episodes available for download the following six Tuesdays, wherever you get your podcasts.

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.

Long Shadow

Many of us watched the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 unfold right before our eyes. In the years since, law enforcement, congressional inquiries and the press have successfully uncovered more about what happened that day. But now on the 20th Anniversary of the attacks, many mysteries remain. Hosted by bestselling author and reporter Garrett Graff, Long Shadow answers those lingering questions and explores other enduring mysteries that still surround 9/11, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Premiering this August, produced by Long Lead and Goat Rodeo.

Trailer: Long Shadow: 9/11's Lingering Questions

After both towers of the World Trade Center were hit on September 11, 2001, first responders coordinated the largest emergency response in New York City’s history. But their heroism at Ground Zero was hampered by institutional bureaucracy and ultimately undone by decisions made decades earlier, when the Twin Towers were built.

So why did these iconic structures and architectural marvels fall so fast? Could more people have been rescued from the towers? And could some of those deaths have been avoided?

Why weren’t more people rescued from the Twin Towers?

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 the final plane to be hijacked that day and heard reports of the attacks from loved ones on the ground. Then they rallied to stop the terrorist plot.

But where was the plane headed before it crashed? What was the intended target of the Flight 93 hijackers?

What was the target of United Airlines 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 in the country on the morning of 9/11. From a bunker beneath the White House, he gave fighter pilots flying above the Capitol permission to shoot down hijacked commercial planes.

But did Cheney actually have the authority to issue this order? Did he and President Bush connect before or after Cheney ordered the fighters into battle? And was the U.S. even ready to shoot down any hijacked flights?

Who issued the order to shoot down Flight 93?

After the first two hijackings, the nation’s air traffic controllers quickly and efficiently grounded thousands of planes flying to and over the continental United States. Their quick thinking is said to have potentially saved countless lives.

But what if another plane was meant to be hijacked that day, and never made it off the ground? What if there was a fifth plane on 9/11?

Was there a “fifth plane” on 9/11?

Before 9/11, FBI Special Agent John O’Neill kept setting off alarms about the emerging terrorist organization al-Qaeda and their mysterious leader Osama Bin Laden. As a result of his warnings the FBI knew terrorists were planning a big attack and the CIA even had eyes on two of the eventual hijackers prior to the attacks.

So what went wrong? Why didn’t they capture the hijackers? What more could law enforcement have done to stop the attacks? And could they have been prevented?

Could 9/11 have been stopped before it happened?

Immediately after 9/11, investigators began piecing together the plot. In the flight manifests, they discovered a pattern: A team of five terrorists hijacked every plane that day, except for one. United Airlines Flight 93 had only four hijackers. Investigators believed one person was missing from that group.

Who was the 20th hijacker — if there even was one? And is there a 9/11 hijacker still on the loose?

Who was the 20th hijacker?

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 11, dozens of his friends, family members and business associates left the U.S. on secret flights bound for The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That has led to questions that four presidents have avoided answering:

What role did the Saudi government play in the attacks? What did it know?

Even worse, did it help?

What was the Saudi connection to 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; the thousands of people who survived the attacks, but have had to carry it with them every day since. 

Firefighter Jay Jonas and Port Authority Police Officer Will Jimeno were in the Twin Towers on September 11 — 100 stories of the World Trade Center fell on top each of them. But they got back up and survived.

How did they move on from this attack? And how should we?

How do we move on from 9/11?

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 elite athletes. A multimedia feature by Xan Rice and Daan Verhoeven, produced by Long Lead. 

https://onjustonebreath.com/

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