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.

The End of the World as We Know It

Episode description