Question Everything

Back in December, we did an episode about Pyrra, an AI-powered software that tracks sifts through the far corners of the internet – in some places you probably haven’t even heard of – to see what narratives are emerging from the people who post there. A lot of these are conspiracy theories, and also violent threats.   This week, we check back in with the creator of that software, Dr. Welton Chang, about what narratives he’s seeing, right now, that might soon make the jump from fringe internet posts to actually having an impact in the real world.    Welton’s especially concerned about the violent rhetoric aimed at one particular group of people which has been topping the charts in recent weeks.   Welton is the creator of Pyrra Technologies, and Vice President for Digital Intelligence Solutions at AlertMedia.    Sign up for our newsletter: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything   “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.  

Where better to huddle up and discuss what to do about Rümeysa Öztürk and the chilling effect that is happening in journalism than on campus at Tufts University with the student journalists at The Tufts Daily?This week Brian and Question Everything co-host a live event with the editor-in-chief and associate editor from The Tufts Daily– Arghya Thallapragada and Ellora Onion-De. Together they interview journalists and attorneys, including Carol Rose, one of Rümeysa’s lawyers and executive director of the ACLU to learn what all happened to Rümeysa, and why. What did her abduction by federal agents a month ago have to do with her immigration status as a Turkish graduate student studying child development, here on a student visa? Why did Secretary of State Marco Rubio say her Op-ed was cause for incarceration? Why is she still in ICE’s custody? And what happened to the constitutional protections around free speech and a free press that we depend on in a free society?    Joined by former editor-in-chief of the Washington Post and Boston Globe Marty Baron, First Amendment lawyer Robert Bertsche and senior politics reporter at The Intercept, Akela Lacey, the group wrestles in real time with the gravity of this moment, not just for Rümeysa Öztürk, but for all of us.Read the Op-ed Rümeysa and others wrote that ran in The Tufts Daily a year ago in March.Watch the video of federal agents in plainclothes, forcing Rümeysa Öztürk into an SUV on March 25, 2025.Quick thing: In our discussion Carol Rose says the ACLU has filed 100 legal actions in President Trump’s first 100 days. The specific count on those is actually higher: the ACLU filed 110 legal actions in the Trump administration’s first 100 days.   Sign up for our newsletter: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.

Hamza Syed, an investigative reporter known for his work with Brian Reed on projects for Serial and The New York Times, dives into the alarming legal attacks targeting journalists. He highlights the stark differences in press freedoms between the U.K. and U.S., illustrating how such threats can stifle local journalism. Hamza shares eye-opening cases, including a small-town reporter facing serious defamation lawsuits. Together, they discuss the psychological toll on journalists and the strategic use of frivolous suits to silence the press.

For decades, a Supreme Court decision called New York Times vs Sullivan was widely beloved by people across the political spectrum. Hailed as a decision that gave the first amendment teeth and made our country great.   But recently, under our noses, some of the same people who once sang its praises have turned against it.    The story of the growing movement that is trying to get the Supreme Court to overturn one of the strongest protections for speech and the press in America.   This is part one of a two part series about the book Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful, by Times investigative editor David Enrich. Sign up for our newsletter here to hear about one of Brian’s own legal battles: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything   “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.  

The best documentary filmmaker in America spent nearly five years of his life making a nine-hour masterpiece for Netflix.    It will never see the light of day.    After a nasty estate battle, the series will not be released. No one will ever see it.   In his first sit-down interview about this catastrophe, the filmmaker, Ezra Edelman seeks catharsis – if not closure – in the fight for truth and control over the life story of one of the biggest control freaks ever.    Thanks to “Pablo Torre Finds Out” for sharing this interview with us.    “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.

Last year, we did an episode with Barton Gellman, who talked about the war games he was running with high-level military leaders and government officials to prepare for a second Trump term.    A bunch of you have been asking us to have Barton back, to find out what he’s doing, now that the second Trump term is here. So we called him up.   Barton works at the Brennan Center for Justice.   “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.

It’s easy to get frustrated with the charade reporters are supposed to keep up, where they pretend they don’t have opinions or feelings or any kind of human thoughts about a story they’re telling. Plenty of journalists have been trying to break out of that charade. But the decision to do that: it can be a fraught one, with real implications.    Dana Ballout struggled with this on a story she was investigating about Hassan Diab – a sociology professor who’s living as a free man in Canada, yet is convicted of a terrible crime in France. Dana and her co-host Alex Atack open up about their reporting on the series The Copernic Affair, and why Dana ultimately cut her own opinions out of the show, even though her co-host and editors wanted to include them.    And this prompts Brian to revisit his own experience dropping the charade in a previous podcast he made with Hamza Syed, for The New York Times and Serial: The Trojan Horse Affair.    You can check out The Copernic Affair wherever you get your podcasts or at https://www.canadaland.com/shows/the-copernic-affair/.   Same with The Trojan Horse Affair: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.html   To get the soundbyte from Hamza’s interview that we’re asking people to remix into something danceable, sign up for Brian’s newsletter here: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything   “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.

Brian tells the story of a reporting trip he took to Alabama, where two small-town journalists had been locked up in jail, that led to one of the most honest - and surprising - conversations about journalism he’s had in a long time.    Sign up for our newsletter to see some stories and pictures from a recent event Brian held in Alabama about his podcast S-Town. Including a photo of an S-Town inspired tattoo somebody was eager to show him. www.kcrw.com/questioneverything   “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.

As trust in traditional journalism plummets, social media content creator V Spehar of Under the Desk News is ascendant, with over 3.4 million TikTok followers. But recently, V found themself in a public dustup with NPR over, in part, how the outlet had classified V in an interview. In this special episode of Question Everything––largely recorded live at On Air Fest––Brian and V take the stage to explore the tensions between traditional and non-traditional journalism, and what the two can learn from each other.   Since talking off the cuff live on stage doesn’t always result in the most precise utterances, here are a few additional corrections and clarifications we didn’t address directly in the episode:   While live on stage, V said that TikTok is owned “mostly by the richest man in Philadelphia, Mr. Jeffrey Yass.” In fact, Yass’ personal share in TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, is 7%, worth roughly $21 billion.    Regarding the stat in the Under the Desk News video stating “every school in America gets about 20 percent of their total school budget from the federal government,” in reality, public schools may get as little as 0% or as much as 75% of their funding from federal sources, depending on the district.    The Pew Research referenced in the conversation shows that 1 in 5 Americans get their news from online news influencers, and 54% of Americans get their news at least sometimes from social media.   And lastly: Senator Tammy Duckworth has fought for about a dozen federal employees fired from the Veteran’s Crisis Line to get their jobs back, and not employees solely from her state, Illinois.    We reached out to V’s father to confirm their conversation about the possible effects of cuts to the Department of Education, but he didn’t want to comment.   Sign up for our newsletter: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.

As billionaires hoard more control over our politics, it seems more important than ever to ask: What makes them tick? Four reporters gather after hours at a wine shop to discuss – over drinks – what they’ve learned from covering billionaires for years, and how it can help us hoi polloi make sense of what the ultra-rich are doing right now.   Featuring Vicky Ward, who has covered the Kushner family and Trump, and who, in 2002, was the first journalist to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s finances in a profile for Vanity Fair; John Hyatt, who covers billionaires, with a focus on Elon Musk, for Forbes; Douglas Rushkoff, who has written about tech billionaires preparing for the end of the world; and Edward Ongweso, Jr., who covers the impact of the exponential growth of large tech companies for outlets like Vice and The Nation.    A small correction: Douglas Rushkoff said that his trip to a hedge fund conference in the desert happened in 2018, but the trip was actually in 2017.   Sign up for our newsletter: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything   “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.