Question Everything with Brian Reed
Propagandist? Truth teller? Influencer? Question Everything unravels the contested work of journalists and the moral complexities surrounding the stories that impact us all. Hosted by Brian Reed (S-Town, This American Life, The Trojan Horse Affair). For outtakes and an inside peek inside the editorial conundrums that confront journalists every day, sign up for our newsletter at www.kcrw.com/questioneverything. Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Episodes
April 25, 2025 • 27 mins
Last episode we discussed the campaign to overturn the Supreme Court decision that protects reporters’ ability to criticize and investigate people in power.
But even with that decision still in place, reporter David Enrich has discovered a shocking wave of legal attacks that is being waged on journalists in towns and cities across the country. These are often reporters at tiny, local outlets, trying to hold people accountable in t...
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April 24, 2025 • 41 mins
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 gives the first amendment teeth and sets our country apart, as a place that prizes free speech.
But recently, right under our noses, some of the same people who once sang Times v Sullivan's praises have turned against it.
The story of the growing movement that is trying to ...
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April 17, 2025 • 48 mins
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 won't be released. No one will ever see it.
In his first sit-down interview about this scandal, the filmmaker Ezra Edelman seeks catharsis – if not closure – in the fight for truth and control over the life story of Prince.
Thanks ...
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April 3, 2025 • 25 mins
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 a...
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March 27, 2025 • 41 mins
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 so...
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March 26, 2025 • 1 min
Do you have questions for us? If so, we want to talk to you!
If you have thoughts about Question Everything, critiques of our episodes, or anything you're curious about, that we're covering, or not covering…please tell us. We want to set up some conversations between listeners and Brian and our staff for an upcoming episode. Write to us at hey@placementtheory.com and someone from our staff may reach out.
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March 20, 2025 • 34 mins
Journalists jailed for an article they published. In America. How did this happen?
Brian tells the story of a reporting trip he took to Alabama, where two small-town journalists had been locked up, which 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-...
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March 6, 2025 • 52 mins
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 tradition...
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February 27, 2025 • 40 mins
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...
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Ben Smith tells the story of the strange controversy over a journalism award that’s been going down in a Florida courthouse.
Ben is Editor-in-Chief of Semafor and co-host of the Mixed Signals podcast. He used to be The New York Times media columnist and was founding editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News.
Sign up for our newsletter to read the lengthy listener criticism that helped inspire Brian to do this episode: www.kcrw.com/questio...
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January 31, 2025 • 58 mins
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.
Part two of our special series about Jeremy Loffredo, who in October became the first American journalist arrested by Israel. If you haven't listened to part one, check that out first in your feed: "Blindfolded And Arrested On Assignment In Israel."
This week in our ne...
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January 16, 2025 • 58 mins
Just a few months ago, Israel did something it has never done before. It arrested an American journalist. His name is Jeremy Loffredo.
This is his story.
Part one of a special, two-part series.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
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When Hollywood Tells The Truth: with Tom McCarthy, Antonio Campos, Tina Satter, and Tobias Lindholm.
December 19, 2024 • 49 mins
Four Hollywood directors gather after hours at a wine shop to drink and commiserate about the perils – and power – that come when you’re straddling fact and fiction. With behind the scenes stories about documentary romance, regret, and pirates.
Featuring Tom McCarthy, who won an Oscar for Spotlight; Antonio Campos, creator of The Staircase for HBO; Tina Satter, who directed and co-wrote Reality starring Sydney Sweeney; and Tobias ...
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December 5, 2024 • 31 mins
Our team at Question Everything has been playing around with a new technology that sucks up tons of social media posts, and then uses AI to figure out what ideas are forming in the shadows of the internet before they hit the mainstream.
Brian interviews a journalist who uses this tech, to see what conversations are brewing right now that we might want to keep an eye out for in the coming weeks.
“Question Everything” is a production...
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November 21, 2024 • 40 mins
We hire a freelancer to research every comment Donald Trump has made about the press. He ends up telling his wrestling buddy about the assignment, and using it to see if he can get him to trust in journalism.
You can find more work by Sam Eagan here.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
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November 4, 2024 • 20 mins
A special election-eve episode from Brian: Ruminations on a story that never was, and a late night conversation with the source he was supposed to make it about.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
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October 24, 2024 • 39 mins
Did you hear us on This American Life? Keep listening as Brian stops doomscrolling and starts doom-living. He brings two journalists he saw duking it out on Twitter into a studio, where they debate how to report on lies and racism in the Trump era. Then he finds a journalist who’s putting their big theoretical questions into practice – at a personal cost – as she covers one of the most messed up stories of the election cycle.
Wat...
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October 10, 2024 • 32 mins
A married couple finds themselves fighting miserably over the news. So they set out on a quest for the seemingly impossible: to find a news source that both a self-admitted “bleeding heart liberal” and a Trump supporter can trust.
Check out Tangle News here.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
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September 26, 2024 • 41 mins
How one of the most accomplished reporters of our time, Barton Gellman, lost his confidence in journalism.
Sign up for our newsletter to hear the one outtake from the interview that Brian wished he could get into the episode, but couldn’t.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
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September 12, 2024 • 52 mins
Brian puts four journalists together in a room, gives them drinks, and starts rolling tape. Their only instructions: show up with questions for each other and be ready to talk candidly about the challenges in their jobs. Foremost on their minds: Why do people even share their stories with journalists in the first place?
You can watch this whole episode on YouTube! And subscribe to the Question Everything newsletter.
You can hear...
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