In September, the Signal Awards announced Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet was a finalist in three categories: Best History, Best Documentary, and Best Technology podcast. Yesterday the Signal Awards academy named the Long Lead-produced show a winner in all three!
Through the prior three seasons of Long Shadow, the Garrett Graff-helmed podcast had won five Signal Awards. Now with the honors given to Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet, it has been cited for excellence eight times by Signal judges. To date, Long Shadow has won Signal Awards for Best History Podcast three times, Best Documentary Podcast twice, Best Editing, Best Public Service Podcast, and now with Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet, Best Technology Podcast.
Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet retraces 30 years of web history — a tangle of GIFs, blogs, apps, and hashtags — to answer the bewildering question many ask when they go online today: “How did we get here?”
It’s the story of mankind’s greatest invention, a tool that gave everyone access to all the world’s information and unlocked democracy across the globe. But Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet is also about the biggest crisis facing society today: how the web’s unlimited feed of data morphed into a firehose of hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and lies that divided Americans over things we once agreed on, like science, diversity, and even democracy itself.
Chronicling innovations, revolutions, cyber attacks, and meltdowns across seven episodes, this limited series podcast untangles the web in a way you’ve never considered before. Featuring memes and moments you know — like when the world became transfixed by the color of a dress — and others you don’t, but should — like how people sent death threats to the woman who posted that meme online — Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet both scales the heights of internet virality and plumbs the depths of social media’s depravity.
In addition to winning eight Signal Awards, the Peabody Award-nominated show has also won the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award and been honored by RFK Human Rights for public service and the Society of Professional Journalists for best narrative podcast. Its second season has also been included in the curriculum at the University of Houston and its third has been integrated into Harvard Law School’s program on the Second Amendment.
Across four seasons and through a series of riveting, complex narratives, Long Shadow makes sense of what people know — and what they thought they knew — about the most pivotal moments in U.S. history, including Waco, Columbine, Y2K, 9/11, COVID-19, January 6, and beyond.
Hosted by Pulitzer-finalist historian, author, and journalist Garrett Graff, the podcast has been called “rigorous, authoritative, and an electrifying listen” by the Financial Times and honored as one of the year’s best podcasts by The Atlantic, Audible, Mashable, and The Week.
For more on Long Shadow, visit www.longshadowpodcast.com.