Question Everything

Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian grip on Hungary became a model for the American right. He hollowed out the country’s democracy and turned much of the media into a government megaphone. Then a small newsroom called Direkt36 exposed a plot against the opposition party involving a mysterious political operative, a young IT worker, a raid on a boat in the Danube and a whistleblowing police captain. A few weeks later, Orbán was ousted from power in a landslide election.

Sean Cole reports on the investigation, called the Hungarian Watergate, and what it shows about why an independent press still matters.

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

Guests:

Zsuzsanna Wirth, Direct36 investigative reporter

András Pethő, Direct36 editor

Marius Dragomir, Director of the Center for Media, Data and Society

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While we’re heads down working on a bunch of great new episodes, we’re sharing the first episode of the new season of Drilled.

In it, award-winning climate journalist Amy Westervelt exposes how Republican corn ethanol mogul Bruce Rastetter sold "sustainable aviation fuel" to world leaders from North Dakota to Brazil. The problem is, his “clean energy” project does nothing to help climate change.

Drilled: Carbon Cowboys follows the land grabs, pipelines, and political power stopping real progress from being made.

Find Drilled wherever you get podcasts, or at pushkin.fm/plus.

Please support the organizations that support this show:

Go to https://zbiotics.com/QUESTION and use QUESTION at checkout for 15% off any first-time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.

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.

DeleteMe makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online. Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans when you go to joindeleteme.com/QUESTION and use promo code QUESTION at checkout.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation just filed an ethics complaint against Florida Judge Jeffrey Kuntz, who has been nominated by President Trump for a lifetime federal court appointment. They want him stripped of his gavel and his law license.

Why? Judge Kuntz was one of the judges who ruled in Trump’s favor in his peculiar defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize board. The Freedom of the Press Foundation claims the judge handed Trump this victory while, behind the scenes, he was seeking a nomination from the Trump administration for a federal judgeship.

While Judge Kuntz’s nomination is being considered by the Senate, we revisit an episode we first aired in February 2025 about this strange lawsuit against the organization behind journalism’s most prestigious award.

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

Guests:

Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of Semafor and co-host of the Mixed Signals podcast

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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.

DeleteMe makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online. Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans when you go to joindeleteme.com/QUESTION and use promo code QUESTION at checkout.

Like millions of others, Gordon Pennycook’s older brother has leapt down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, and Gordon says he’s tried to change his brother’s mind, without success. Which tracks, if you’ve ever debated a conspiracy theorist — it can feel impossible to pull them back to reality.

If anyone was qualified to convince his brother, though, it’s Gordon, who’s a psychology professor at Cornell University where he studies why people believe things that aren’t true. So Gordon wanted to put this question to the test: Is it actually the case that conspiracy theorists rarely change their minds? He and a team of researchers ran an experiment using an AI chatbot to rebut people’s theories. And the results were very surprising. In fact, they ended up changing Gordon’s mind about conspiracy theories, and the people who believe them.

Sign up for our newsletter and we’ll share the Debunkbot from Gordon’s study, where you can test out your own beliefs.

Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.

Guests:

Gordon Pennycook, Cornell University, Associate Professor, Dorothy and Ariz Mehta Faculty Leadership Fellow

Please support the organizations that support this show:

Go to https://zbiotics.com/QUESTION and use QUESTION at checkout for 15% off any first-time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.

Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to Quince.com/QUESTION for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

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.

DeleteMe makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online. Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans when you go to joindeleteme.com/QUESTION and use promo code QUESTION at checkout.

According to the fact-checking company NewsGuard, Claude has been a very reliable and accurate chatbot. But in the last month or so, users have started complaining that it seemed to be getting slower, stupider, and less trustworthy. So NewsGuard AI analyst Isis Blachez ran a test on Claude, to see if it is actually getting worse. And running this test revealed a whole new iteration of Russian disinformation campaigns, designed for the AI-era, that are evolving by the second specifically to coerce chatbots into deceiving us.

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

Guests:

Isis Blachez, analyst for AI and France at NewsGuard

Please support the organizations that support this show:

Go to https://zbiotics.com/QUESTION and use QUESTION at checkout for 15% off any first-time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.

Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to Quince.com/QUESTION for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

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.

DeleteMe makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online. Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans when you go to joindeleteme.com/QUESTION and use promo code QUESTION at checkout.