Question Everything

***Question Everything has been nominated for a Webby Award! Please click here to vote for us. The episode that was nominated is the event we held at Tufts University while grad student Rümeysa Öztürk was being detained by ICE for co-authoring an op-ed. Today (April 16th) is actually the last day to vote, so don’t wait. Thanks!***

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 reporting. 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.

This week, we’re re-upping a story we first ran last year about journalist Dana Ballout. Dana struggled with this personal-professional dilemma while investigating a story 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.

This also prompts Brian to revisit his own experience dropping the charade in a previous podcast he made 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.

“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. We have a Substack.

Guests:

Dana Ballout and Alex Atack, co-hosts of The Copernic Affair

Hamza Syed, co-host of The Trojan Horse Affair

Please support the organizations that support this show:

Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias and break free from algorithms. Go to groundnews.com/QUESTION to get 40% off the unlimited Vantage plan.

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code QUESTION at https://www.oneskin.co/QUESTION #oneskinpod

Listen to our supporter More Muslim wherever you get podcasts.

This episode originally aired on March 27th, 2025.

***Question Everything has been nominated for a Webby Award! Please click here to vote for us. The episode that was nominated is the event we held at Tufts University while grad student Rümeysa Öztürk was being detained by ICE for co-authoring an op-ed. Today (April 16th) is actually the last day to vote, so don’t wait. Thanks!***

Taylor Little was 11 years old when they lied about their age to sign up for Instagram. Now, 13 years later, they’re one of thousands of people suing the company, accusing Instagram of purposely addicting them as a child and driving them to years of mental health struggles.

Taylor takes Brian inside their dark and twisted experience with the app. They say it all started with a suggestion Instagram sent them to visit an account they didn’t follow, which they developed a morbid fascination with.

Who bears responsibility for what happened to Taylor? Is it Instagram? The users who posted the content that consumed them? Their mom?

Today’s show deals with issues of self harm and suicide. If you or someone you know are struggling with these issues, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.

Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter.

Guests:

Taylor Little, plaintiff in social media trial

Please support the organizations that support this show:

Loyola Marymount University

If you’re interested in Fabric by Gerber Life go to https://meetfabric.com/QUESTION and apply today, risk-free.

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code QUESTION at https://www.oneskin.co/QUESTION #oneskinpod

Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias and break free from algorithms. Go to groundnews.com/QUESTION to get 40% off the unlimited Vantage plan.

***Question Everything has been nominated for a Webby Award! Please click here to vote for us. The episode that was nominated is the event we held at Tufts University while grad student Rümeysa Öztürk was being detained by ICE for co-authoring an op-ed. Today (April 16th) is actually the last day to vote, so don’t wait. Thanks!***

In the span of two days, juries handed down landmark verdicts against Meta and Google. In New Mexico, a jury ordered Meta to pay the state $375 million for failing to protect young people from predators on Instagram. And in Los Angeles, a jury found that Meta and Google knowingly designed social media platforms that addicted a young girl, causing depression, body dysmorphia, and self-harm.

But as listeners to this show might wonder – isn't suing social media companies supposed to be impossible, because of Section 230?

Brian talks to co-lead counsel in LA, Mariana McConnell, about how they pulled off the win, what this huge verdict means for the internet, and the internal Meta document that said, “Young ones are the best ones.”

Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter – we’ll be sharing Brian’s extended interview with Mariana McConnell there.

Guests:

Mariana McConnell, plaintiff's co-lead counsel

Please support the organizations that support this show:

Loyola Marymount University

If you’re interested in Fabric by Gerber Life go to https://meetfabric.com/QUESTION and apply today, risk-free.

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code QUESTION at https://www.oneskin.co/QUESTION #oneskinpod

Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias and break free from algorithms. Go to groundnews.com/QUESTION to get 40% off the unlimited Vantage plan.

Brian sits down with expert fact-checker Sofia Rubinson who spends hours every day tracking lies online, and together they dissect a single lie that’s been rocketing around the world to millions of people, affecting the way people think about the war in Iran — including the world’s biggest podcaster.

Sofia says the AI deepfakes she’s seen consume the internet in just the last few weeks make her worried that we’ve entered a dangerous new phase of disinformation.

Watch the video of Benjamin Netanyahu featured in this episode, which NewsGuard confirmed to be real.

You can sign up for NewsGuard’s Reality Check newsletter here. And here’s our Question Everything newsletter.

“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.

Guests:

Sofia Rubinson, senior editor of Reality Check for NewsGuard

If you’re interested in Fabric by Gerber Life go to https://meetfabric.com/QUESTION and apply today, risk-free.

Locked up, alone, accused of being a spy, reporter Jeremy Loffredo has to defend the fact that he’s a journalist. To the Israeli courts. And then…to our reporter.

This is part two of our two-part series about Jeremy Loffredo, who in October 2024 became the first American journalist arrested by Israel. This story won Best Reporting at the 2026 Ambie Awards, which is why we’re sharing it again now.

“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter.

This episode originally aired January 30th, 2025.