Question Everything

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

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

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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.

Part one of a special, two-part series, about Jeremy Loffredo, the first American journalist ever arrested by Israel, and the questions that were raised about not only Israel, but the outlet Jeremy worked for, once our team started looking into his story. We’re re-airing these episodes because they won Best Reporting from the Podcast Academy, at the 2026 Ambie Awards.

“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 15th, 2025.

News recently broke that Paramount, which is newly controlled by David Ellison and his billionaire dad Larry Ellison, won the bid to buy Warner-Brothers Discovery, after aggressively squeezing out Netflix.

As Trump himself has said, the Ellisons are “friends of mine…big supporters of mine, and they’ll do the right thing.”

Is the “right thing” squashing critical coverage of the president? Doing stories he’s more inclined to like? The Ellisons already own CBS News, through Paramount; now they’re about to own CNN. Larry Ellison also has a new ownership stake in TikTok, via a deal anointed by Trump.

Is this what experts call “media capture?” Is the U.S. in it, right now?

In this conversation we first ran in October 2025, after the Ellisons took control of Paramount, foreign correspondent Natalia Antelava explains the insidious implications of media capture from her experience living and reporting in captured countries around the world.

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

This episode originally aired October 30th, 2025.

Guests:

Natalia Antelava, founder of Coda Story