Long Shadow

A bonus for subscribers of LONG SHADOW, Long Lead presents a sample chapter of the audiobook of Garrett M. Graff's lates book, America in 25 Revolutions.

From historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff, America in 25 Revolutions follows America’s 250-year quest to fulfill the founders’ promise of a nation where all are created equal, introducing us to the ordinary champions who moved progress forward.

The Founding is only the start. America’s history is one of revolutions, plural.

Today we recognize that America’s founding creed, “all men are created equal,” was imperfect and incomplete in 1776, but the story of how subsequent generations made those words real is more dramatic and more unpredictable than you ever guessed. As the country marks its 250th birthday, Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff offers an inspiring and challenging new account of our past—and what it means for our future.

As the country celebrates its 250th anniversary, acclaimed historian Garrett M. Graff immerses us in the legendary—and the forgotten—milestones in Americans’ ongoing quest to create a more perfect union. Since our founding in 1776, Americans have never stopped fighting for revolutionary advances to get closer to our founding promise of a nation where all are created and treated equal. America in 25 Revolutions tells their stories.

The rights, freedoms, and opportunities so many of us now enjoy began as creative acts of imagination by individuals and groups excluded from the country’s founding principles. Progress has often been hard and come at great cost; many times, efforts to enshrine new rights and freedoms failed multiple times and efforts continued for years. From the Reconstruction Amendments in the 1860s to the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, from Brown v. Board of Education to the end of Jewish quotas at elite universities, from the Social Security Act to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the stories in America in 25 Revolutions offer critical lessons for trying times in the United States.

The opportunities and liberties so many of us now enjoy began as creative acts of imagination by individuals and groups excluded from the country’s ideals. Their efforts often came at great cost; many times, revolutions failed and were set back for decades or longer, only to later triumph through surprising pivots and coalitions. America in 25 Revolutions proves that progress isn’t linear nor is it constant, but the challenge—and hope—our country delivers to each generation is the chance to leave the country better than it was.

Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the worst terror attacks on U.S. soil, 'Long Shadow: 9/11's Lingering Questions' returns with this special episode hosted by bestselling author and journalist Garrett Graff. Listen to the Signal Award-winning first season of 'Long Shadow' now, and download the full episode on September 1, 2026, from Long Lead and PRX, wherever you get your podcasts.

A toxic army of trolls goes after women in the gaming industry, giving birth to an online movement of disaffected men. This "manosphere" contributes to the resurgence of Donald Trump and a constitutional crisis that holds American democracy in the balance.

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 virus uncorks a global pandemic and a contagion of hoaxes, conspiracies, and lies online.

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 even unleashes a network of trolls pitting ordinary Americans against each other, online and in the streets.

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 course of a decade, its algorithm drives the world to like, comment, and eventually, kill.

At the dawn of the new millennium, the internet yields powerful tools for coordinating and organizing online. From the 9/11 hijackers to flashmob pranksters to activists, it puts power in the hands of the people, for better and for worse.

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, and communicated. Then a computer bug threatened to shut it all down forever.

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.

This season host Garrett Graff, in collaboration with The Trace, recounts how a very specific, carefully manufactured fear has driven explosive demand for guns across the U.S. It’s the history of how firearms went from being an ordinary part of rural American life to a menacing element in modern society — and the epidemic of gun violence that’s come with it. How did we get here — how did America get so divided over guns — and can we we find a way forward? Find out, this season on LONG SHADOW.

LONG SHADOW: IN GUNS WE TRUST is produced by Long Lead and Campside Media in collaboration with The Trace, and is distributed by PRX.

The Ruby Ridge raid, the Waco siege at the Branch Davidian compound, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Jan. 6 insurrection… they are all explosive moments in recent U.S. history. But connect the dots between these—and other—seemingly disparate, violent events, and you’ll answer some of the most existential questions facing the U.S. today: How did America get the far right so wrong? What will it take now to get it right?

In LONG SHADOW’s first season, host Garrett Graff examined the lingering questions of 9/11, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Season two, LONG SHADOW: RISE OF THE AMERICAN FAR RIGHT, explores how the modern domestic extremist movement grew from a fatal shootout on a mountain top in Idaho, was fanned by a fiery fiasco on the plains of Texas, and ultimately led to a riot on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.

Crackling with rich archival tape and riveting eyewitness and expert interviews, this seven-episode narrative podcast examines a thread of history that’s vitally relevant to our current political climate. It will help listeners understand why the fringe is overrunning the mainstream, conspiracy theorists have captured offices in Congress, and peaceful protests are turning into riots. How did we get here? Find out by following and listening to LONG SHADOW: RISE OF THE AMERICAN FAR RIGHT.

Co-produced by Long Lead and Campside Media

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/

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?

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?

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?