Question Everything – Details, episodes & analysis

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 Ira Glass and Zoe Chace on “This American Life”.  Astead Herndon hosts “The Run Up” for the New York Times.  Jonathan Eig’s book about Martin Luther King, Jr. is called “King: A Life”.  Since drinking and talking off the cuff doesn’t always result in the most precise utterances, here are a few corrections and clarifications from our fact-checker: In Astead’s story about the anti-immigrant group in St. Cloud, Minnesota, the quote was “These people aren’t coming from Norway,” not “Sweden.” The book Jonathan mentioned about adolescent cellphone addiction, by Jonathan Haidt, is called The Anxious Generation. There were a few people we were unable to track down to confirm the details of the stories told about them: the two police officers Jonathan mentioned, and the source’s family member who Astead said complained to him about his reporting.   “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brian talks to a fellow journalist who called his most well-known work “morally indefensible.” You can read Gay Alcorn’s column here. Subscribe to our newsletter to read Gay’s full reaction to this episode.  You can listen to S-Town here.  If you’re having thoughts of suicide, please reach out for help by dialing 988 or clicking here.  “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist Brian Reed of S-Town is questioning everything, even his own work. Season premiere Sept 12. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.  Watch the unedited conversation between Jeff Jarvis and David Folkenflik. Subscribe to the Question Everything newsletter: https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/question-everything “Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 phrase 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices