There Are No Girls on the Internet - Introducing podcast “Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet” - EPISODE DROP

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

We're excited to share the first episode of Peabody Award-nominated podcast Long Shadow’s new season, Breaking the Internet.  Hosted by Pulitzer Prize finalist and historian Garrett Graff, Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet charts the evolution of the internet – from the optimistic days of the dot-com boom to our present moment. Produced by Long Lead and distributed by PRX, this seven-part series aims to tell the story of humanity's greatest invention, and how it's led us to the biggest crisis facing society today.   In this specific episode, you’ll travel back to 1993. Gas is just over a dollar a gallon. Minimum wage is $4.25 an hour. Mass media is hitting its apex, and American culture is about as homogenous as it’s ever been. And somewhere in the background of all that, this new thing called the World Wide Web just became available to the general public…. then a computer bug threatened to shut it all down forever. To listen to more episodes, follow Long Shadow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app.   If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there or email us at [e-mail]!    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media! Many vids each week.   instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/    tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc    youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. This week, we're doing something a little bit different. Instead of our normal news roundup, I'm so excited to share an episode of the Peabody Award nominated podcast, Long Shadow, Breaking the Internet. This is the first episode of their new season, which dives into the history of the Internet. It's hosted by Pulitzer Prize finalist and historian Garrett Graf and charts the evolution of the internet from the optimistic days of the dot-com boom to our present moment. It's an ambitious project produced by Long Lead and distributed by PRX,

a seven-part series exploring how choices made by tech companies and others in those early days shaped the Internet into what it is today. In this specific episode, the first in the seven-part series, you'll travel back in time to 1993. Gas is just over a dollar a gallon. The minimum wage is $4.25 an hour. Mass media is hitting its apex, and American culture seems to be getting ever more homogenous. And somewhere in the background of all of that, this new thing called the World Wide Web

just became available to the general public. Then, Y2K threatened to shut it all down forever. If you like this episode, be sure to follow Long Shadow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, here's the full episode. When was the last time you felt good about the Internet? The online landscape today is a harrowing one.

People screaming at each other. other on social media, violent videos going viral. Cyberbullying, racism, misogyny. It's hard to say for sure where the web started to turn sour. But a case can be made that the last good day of the internet was February 26, 2015. How could we not start with this video? Two llamas on the run in Sun City for hours today. That morning, people around the country were huddling around their monitors. A new event was unfolding that was holding the internet in a trance the must-see video of the day llamas on the loose in the valley they were in an event a pair of llamas had escaped from a visit to a nursing home in sun city Arizona a man led go of his rope and before we knew it it was llamas day out

here in sun city so we're double choppering the two llamas for the day we've learned some helicopter crews documented the chase as the llamas dodged handlers and oh la llama llama's head button that is Not good. And wove in and out of oncoming traffic. This is crazy. It would be really neat to be in those cars on the streets with the llamas. Online, the incident was going viral under the hashtag llama drama. The entire internet, my office included, was just obsessed with these escaping llamas in Arizona.

Kate's Holderness and her colleagues at BuzzFeed were watching the llama drama from their office in New York. And there was like, helicopter. copter footage and news coverage, and it was just hours of everyone being like, oh, are they going to catch the llamas? They do have a couple of guys with lassus around there, but they've tried to throw these things. Oh, yeah, they got it with one. The llamas finally caught and headed back to their trailers. They finally didn't catch the llamas.

Believe it or not, watching Lama videos was a big part of Holderness's job at BuzzFeed, trying to predict what would go viral and how to capitalize on it. At the time, BuzzFeed was the king of viral content with 200 million visitors a month. We had the attitude of if a piece of content makes you feel something, you should post it. And toward the end of that day, as the Lama drama was dying down, Holderness got a message on BuzzFeed's Tumblr account. Hey, BuzzFeed, can you look at this thing that I posted? My friends and I are losing it. We're freaking out. And I was just like, well, I don't see what the big deal is. it's a blue and black dress.

I leaned over to two of my colleagues who were sitting beside me, and I was just like, hey, guys, what color is this? And at the exact same time, one of them said white and gold, and one of them said blue and black. Her colleagues were looking at the same picture of a dress and seeing completely different colors. They immediately started debating with each other. Their argument drew people in from the rest of the office.

Within 10 minutes, there were 20 people standing behind my desk just screaming at each other. Just couldn't believe people were seeing at different colors. I was like, if we're fighting about it, maybe the rest of the internet will fight about it. So I threw it up into a BuzzFeed post, hit publish, and then left work. Didn't really think much about it until I got off of the subway. My phone kept crashing. I couldn't load Twitter and I had

dozens of text messages from friends and colleagues and family members saying you're ruining our lives like what did you do? I looked on Twitter at that point I had like several thousand notifications and everyone was freaking out

just like the entire internet was freaking out it started making the rounds through New York media what's black and blue or golden white and has us debating all over It's golden and white. Blue and black. Yellow and white for sure.

Well, my wife says it's blue and black. And then it just spiraled from there. Taylor Swift is tweeting about it now. Kim Kardashian's tweeting about it. It was just, it was absolutely surreal. Most of the people who voted in the poll voted white and gold, which just is bonkers to me because I've never been able to see it white and gold.

The dress would go on to become one of the most to become one of the most viral means to ever break the internet. It drew everyone in from the sidelines in a mostly fun battle over the very nature of our shared reality. I think it went viral because people just love fighting over low-stakes things. At the time, it wasn't clear why the dress became such a viral phenomenon. We didn't know it, but the internet landscape was shifting beneath our feet. It wasn't about keeping up with what your friends and family were doing anymore.

It was about feeding you content you would click on, and social media companies knew that what people really engaged with was content that was controversial, content that was divisive. Even things that were supposed to be fun, like the dress, were sparking heated arguments. And as a result, the internet was getting angrier. The number of posts that I saw of people like using wildly aggressive language, you know, not only just, towards me, but so are other people, calling people just the worst names and the worst slurs. I should not have gotten death threats and rape threats for posting a picture of a dress. It's like, really, guys? It's a picture of a dress. It's not that deep. The dress was right there on the crest of a powerful wave. It was both a symbol of harmless internet fun

and also a sign of division to come. It's a metaphor for the fact that people can approach an objective fact and be so far divided in how they view and interpret that fact. It's been 10 years since the dress, and today the Internet is in a state of turmoil. The line between online and off is increasingly blurred. Fights over the nature of our reality seem to rage every. day. But now, the stakes of those fights are higher than ever, and we're left to wonder what went

wrong. I think a lot went wrong. I think a whole lot went wrong. The internet we have in 2025 is fractured. How did we get here? To the moment we're in right now with the internet, a tool designed to give everyone access to all the world's information has become a fire hose of lies, hoaxes and conspiracies. The anti-vaccination movement is growing due to a new wave of conspiracy theories shared through social media. They're forced vaccinating our children.

Websites that brought friends together have also become rallying points for hate groups and hotbeds of extremism. The incels are part of a larger online group that's been called the Manosphere. Their frustration festering online can turn violent. But it wasn't always like this. The internet also gave power

to the people and it helped to topple autocracies. Opposition activists organized the march on Facebook. That online energy could actually be converted into on the street action. In this season of Longshadow, we're going to chart the evolution of the internet from the optimistic days of the dot-com boom to our present moment, a time when the internet is at the heart of so many of our problems. The story of the internet is also a story of greed. of greed.

The world's richest companies used algorithms to monetize attention and maximize profit, algorithms that have changed the way that we interact with each other, online and offline. The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. Along the way, we became the product and the target, and we learned that the internet could be turned against us.

It's the protesters who've gone on trial. People were being imprisoned and held indefinitely because of what they posted on social media. And used by adversaries abroad to try to destroy America from within. The Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy. How did a tool offering so much knowledge drive us into an existential debate over our shared reality? We're living in a post-fact world with fake news, echo chambers, and deep distrust of media. How did a tool with the potential to lift all voices

end up amplifying the very worst of them? The result is a system that amplifies division, extremism, and polarization. How did a tool with the ability to fuel democracy become a weapon aimed at the very heart of it? There is an alignment of interests that runs through Silicon Valley to what is now a coming autocracy.

It's a coup. This is the story of mankind's greatest invention. It's also the story of the biggest crisis facing society today. My name is Garrett Graff from Longlead and PRX. This is Longshadow, breaking the internet. Episode 1, the end of the world as we know it. Imagine a world where every word ever written, every picture ever painted and every film ever shot could be viewed instantly in your home. It sounds pretty grand, but in fact,

that's already happening on something called the internet. The year is 1993. Gas is just over a dollar a gallon. Minimum wage is 425 an hour. Mass media is hitting its apex, and American culture is about as homogenous as it's ever been. Everyone is listening to the new Whitney Houston song on their Walkman. million people are tuning in to watch Oprah interview Michael Jackson. What did that he-he-he-he thing come from? He-he-he-he-he. And there's one movie everyone has to see in theaters.

Jurassic Park. Hold on to your butts. But somewhere in the background of all that, this new thing called the World Wide Web just became available to the general public. For decades up until now, the Internet has been a thing used by computer nerds, scientists, and the military. But the World Wide Web is meant to be used by anyone than everyone. You can do more than just send messages on the Internet.

There's loads of useful information in here. You can get news, recipes. The World Wide Web is better looking. It even has pictures on it. And I found this satellite weather map in there. The web is still brand new, and only a select few seem to understand what it's good for. What about this Internet thing? Do you know anything about that?

Sure. What the hell is that exactly? What are you write to it? Like mail? Allison, can you explain what internet is? It's wild what's going on. You can send electronic mail to people. It is the big new thing. I mean, when I heard about it, I definitely wanted to try it out.

You know, I have this dial-up line and we used it to download the World Wide Web. This is Stephen Levy. He's been writing about the internet for publications like Wired for four decades. But his interest in the subject really took off. when the World Wide Web came out in 1993. It was pretty easy to use. It was incredibly slow, and I would spend hours and hours sitting in my little office waiting for the pages to load.

There were so few websites that every day you would learn which websites came on. There would only be a handful. Here's a website about Elvis. Here's a website about the Grateful Dead. Here's a website about medicine or politics or whatever. Even in its quirky infancy, the World Wide Web was tearing down the barriers of communication. Suddenly, through email, instant message, and chat rooms, people all over the world could communicate in one big open forum. And the crazy part is that back then, online conversations were pretty civil.

There's an interesting kind of restraint you find. I mean, there's not a lot of cursing or swearing. One would think, if you're anonymous, you'd do anything you want. but people have their own sense of community and what we can do. And the content was pretty tame too. There was this one site in Cambridge, England. The people in their computer department had a coffee room, and they put a camera on the coffee pot,

and they put it on the web, and people all over the world could check the status of the coffee pot. And I would check it like three or four times a day. It's hard to explain now how being able to connect to a live, stream of a coffee pot in another country felt revolutionary. But people like Levy knew that if you could access that from the comfort of your own home, one day you were going to be able to access everything.

A lot of the people who were the philosophers of the internet preached an idea that information should flow as freely as possible. This is something that's going to democratize everything. It's going to level the playing field and big institutions. We'll have to face competition. from the little guy everywhere. Citizen journalists could spring up and come up with their own publications.

Governments would lose power as people could share information and spread it. People thought it was going to topple autocracies. So it was an exuberant time where people celebrated the potential of the Internet. I definitely felt that it was going to be a democratizing force. The Internet was going to change the game. But in 1993, it only had about 14 million users.

By 1994, 25 million people had logged on. Many of them through services like CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online. The web was still so small, all of its sites could fit in a book, called the Atlas to the World Wide Web. But it was starting to become a household name. Internet is that massive computer network. The one that's becoming really big now. big now. The internet's founders believed in its democratic power, but its real potential was in commerce.

In 1994, Pizza Hut became one of the first companies to sell something online, a large pepperoni and mushroom with extra cheese. Anyone want some pizza? It didn't take long for big companies to see the appeal. By 1996, there were 40 million people surfing the internet, spending more than half a billion dollars a year on online shopping. Who are you? I'm Jeff Bezos. What is your claim to say? I'm the founder of Amazon.com.

When Amazon appeared, unbelievable, a bookstore with a catalog, with everything. As the revenues of companies like Amazon soared and people logged onto the internet by the millions, it sparked a feeding frenzy of investors willing to buy into dot-com companies at any price. They dumped obscene amounts of money into web startups you either don't remember or have never heard of. We're coming to you for one crazy dog park. Like Pets.com, a pet supply company with a dog sock puppet as a spokesman. Squeaky toys, new collars, leashes. Even that company was valued at almost $300 million.

The Wall Street trading floor was a mosh pit as the stock market ballooned to record highs on the back of all that dot com speculation. It was perfect. The internet was a cash count. but it was also good for society. It was going to change everything about how we lived, communicated, shopped, and shared. And in 1999, with 280 million users in growing, there was nowhere to go but up.

I can't believe how easy it is to surf the net. It's so easy to learn and so much fun to play on. Surf's up. See you on the net. From the beginning, the internet was just a tool. It reflected the people who were using it. In the early 90s, those people were mostly polite nerds. But as more and more people piled in, some of the problems we now recognize as part of a free and open internet started to emerge.

Two years ago, Elliot pulled the plug when she found her teenage sons downloading pornography. We found sadomasochism on our computer available at the flick of a button. Pornography was something that there was like a big panic about. The idea is that an 11-year-old kid is going to see more. were pornography than a person like me saw in his entire lifetime. Children sometimes are exposed to images. Parents don't want them to see because they shouldn't. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Communications Decency Act into law.

The law makes it a crime to display indecent or patently offensive words or images on the internet. But opponents say the law is patently unconstitutional. Parts of the law were struck down the following year for violating the First Amendment right to free speech. But a debate started that still rages today. How would we deliver on the democratic promise of the Internet that speech and information should be free while also keeping it safe? The upside of the Internet was that it allowed for unfettered access to information. But people were starting to learn that that was also its downside.

This man asked to remain anonymous. His 14-year-old son paid $9 and got the recipe for this pipe bomb from the Internet on his home computer. What would happen if volatile information got into the wrong hands? By using those computerized directions, this is the result. We have enough problems in America without our kids learning how to become junior terrorists. But perhaps the Internet's most obvious and glaring problem was just starting to dawn on people. The internet, as wonderful as it is, has become the world's largest rumor mill, chalkful of hoaxes, scams, and conspiracy theories.

What if I just wanted to vent my rage at whatever? Can I just get out there? Piece of cake. I can go out there and say anything I want. Take me about 10 seconds to make this live on the internet. You heard that right. People on the internet could say anything, whether it was truthful or not. The good side of this is that everyone can become a source.

The bad side is that everyone can become a source. The double-edged nature of a free internet was clear. The world's information would be at everyone's fingertips. That included its porn, its bomb instructions, and its outright lies. But at the end of the day, what you consumed would still be up to you. At least for now. By the late 90s, it was obvious just how dependent we were going to be on the internet. In a decade, it had infiltrated almost every aspect of American life.

Kids used it in classrooms, businesses used it for commerce, and governments used it to run their systems. But as the 20th century drew to a close, and a new millennium was on the horizon, the world was going to learn just how quickly technology could turn against us. If you want to, there are plenty of things to worry about as we approach the end of the 20th century. global warming, biological warfare, meteors from outer space. And now, Y2K.

Y2K is the year 2000 computer glitch that threatens to crash the world's computer networks. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group.

The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name.

The Harvard Yard. But they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Cuba me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast. Radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting.

Let us show you at IHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast's point game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin and Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the

lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got to. at the bar like, you go through a training camp with that Isaiah, you figure it out real quick.

Oh, yeah. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a perimenopausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it.

Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with Deanna Maria Riva? where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate Midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden, I'd had hanginess happening on my own. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be.

Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45, how high can it be getting naked at 50 with the new guy? That one's kind of hard, you know? Well, that's light. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears or tears of laughter, and dive into it, unfiltered and unbothered and ask,

How Hard Can It Be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One night, I was in my kitchen. I don't know, straightening something up. I get a phone call.

Some random guy. Kind of high-pitched, hysterical. And the first thing, this guy said, stop being listed. People should not know your name. You're going to be in danger. You know, I was thinking, this guy's a nutcase. This was the first call that I got, warning me about the end of the world. In 1999, Ellen Olman was a computer programmer who had published a book about the tech revolution.

She says she was used to getting cold calls from random men trying to date her. But one night, she got a call from a man who was trying to warn her about a computer glitch that had become known as the Y2K bug. He said, society's going to crack up. It's going to be wild out there. Everyone's going to be roaming around, you know, trying to steal other people's stuff. Nothing will work, no electricity, and water won't run. Water.

Okay, okay, all right. He was in terror. He said, you have to fix it. You have to help everyone to fix this. The world's going to come to an end. I went on to tell people, but a different story from the one he wanted me to tell. By the time Olin received that call in 1999, the Internet age was facing its biggest crisis yet. A Senate panel describes Y2K, the year 2000,

computer bug as a worldwide crisis and one of the most serious and potentially devastating events this nation has ever encountered. The Y2K, or year 2000 bug, had been in the offing for years. Back in the 1960s, computer memory was really limited, precious, and expensive. To save room, programmers decided that years in computer code would be represented with only two numbers instead of four. 1965 would just be 65. The choice saved millions in memory costs. But as the millennium approached, it presented a massive crisis. By 1999, there were hundreds of millions of computers, but many of them were not able to recognize the year 2000.

It was thought that as the world rolled over into the new millennium, critical systems would malfunction disastrously. Shotdowns of telephone systems, the food industry, power and water, banking, even nuclear bombs going off on their own could all plague the world on January 1st. Power grids might be completely knocked out. Plains could fall out of the sky. I don't want to be anywhere remotely close to an airport midnight on December 31st. But the biggest concern was that a nuclear weapon might launch accidentally or that a radar system might think. think one had been launched. Russia, like the United States, still keeps thousands of strategic weapons on air trigger alert. That's the equivalent of about 100,000 Hiroshima bombs that could be logged around the planet

in under an hour. The fix for the Y2K bug seemed impossible. Programmers would have to work around the clock on every system in the world, scanning billions of lines of code and updating year dates manually. It's an enormous task. More I thought about it, the more I thought, God, how is this going to work? How in the world are you going to do this? If we act properly, we won't look back on this as a headache, sort of the last failed challenge of the 20th century. It will be the first challenge of the 21st century successfully met, and together we can do it.

I think a lot of people thought it was a hoax, and nothing would happen. They were just scaring us. I got scared for a minute. There was one night I'm sitting alone, and I just felt, uh-oh, what's over my shoulder, something dark is over my shoulder. Olman decided to do what the crazy man on the phone had told her to do. Find out how people were tackling the Y2K problem and write about it.

Companies were desperate to find people who knew what this code was about, and they were calling back all these old veterans to come in and help them. I talked to a few programmers. as they said, I'm fixing code I wrote 30 years ago. I don't think I'd ever see this code again. They just got to work. Fixing the Y2K problem would take a massive effort of coordination and cooperation, an effort that was now possible because of the web.

Programmers around the world connected online, sharing software updates and patches. The rapid sharing of information allowed companies big and small to prepare their systems for the new year. The process of fixing a single computer program is tedious and time-consuming, and you have to go through them line by line. The year 2000 is approaching the rate of 3,600 seconds per hour. We're running out of time. With the clock ticking, the Internet was bringing nations together around the world

to collaborate on the problem. Even the American and Russian governments were working side by side. The Pentagon has spent $3.5 billion fighting the Battle of Y2K, including setting up a joint missile warning center with the Russians to make sure a computer glitch doesn't set off false alarms of an attack. But as organizations tested their systems, there were signs that catastrophe might strike anyway. The Peach Bottom nuclear facility experienced a serious glitch when operators tried to fix a Y2K problem. Doomsday sayers are predicting massive blackouts come January 1, 2000. I spoke with a programmer at the Federal Reserve.

I asked him, how's it going? Oh, it's fine. We have these techniques. And I go, oh, that's good. And then he went on to say, well, almost everyone I know is getting off the grid. They're buying guns. They're buying camping equipment because it's all going to be dangerous, collapse out there. I said, how did you get from everything's great to everything's terrible?

He said, well, I think we have everything well in hand, but I don't know if other people are in hand. That was the fear that they're in the darkness, the darkness of the internet. Someone else would bring it down. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriters, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me.

Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. But they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion?

We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smygel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me, I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, They'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started.

That's 844-844-I-Hart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before.

And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall.

And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the ball.

Like, after you go through a training camp with that, Izaa, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things.

I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix so we, too, can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull out what you already have inside. We're coming into this world, fighting for our lives. All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. We're there to support and celebrate. other and that's not like a your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain.

You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. While the internet sped up the Y2K overhaul, it was also spreading rumors, fear, and misinformation about the crisis. There were fear mongers out there, scaring everybody. You're going to have water problems.

I'm seeing a rather dark forecast. You're going to lose half the population of the planet. We're going to be in a world of hurt come January the 1st, 2000. Order Millennium Fears, Fact or Fiction Video, for only 1995. In the last days of 1999, people all over the world were preparing to varying degrees. Some were hoarding food. Chicken noodle. They've stocked their shells with soups.

Chicken noodle, more than you'd find in some convenience stores. Somebody really like chicken noodle. Some people were preparing for a full societal collapse. The biggest sellers are ammunition, gun safes, kerosene lamps, and water jumps. I think there are real risks of, you know, panic behavior which could have a profound impact on our society. There's people out there that I've talked to that said, there's nothing going to happen. What are you basing that on? Nobody knows.

For others, all this Y2K stuff was a warning. The technology was leading society astray. It's almost become an idol, like the 10 hours that my son stays in front of the computer. So it's maybe only just that this idol comes crashing down. Toward the end of 1999, the U.S. government reported that it had made tremendous progress in fixing the Y2K bug. We do not at the moment expect that this will be, as the websites are calling it Tia Tawaki. That's the acronym for the end of the world as we know it.

I am standing at Ground Zero in case of any accidental nuclear missile launch. Behind me, you can see the tunnel entrance to the command center for NORAD. It's December 31, 1999, outside the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs. At nearby Peterson Air Force Base, Russian and American officers are working together around the clock. You may think you're in Moscow. Our cruise are getting along as a piece in a pod. Are you confident that there will not be a launch? We are very confident in the U.S. forces. There will not be an accidental launch

of a nuclear weapon. And how confident are you of the Russian forces? I'm very confident that the Russians will not have a problem either. New Year's Eve, Y2K, I gave a party who lives in a loft at the time. And a hundred people showed up. We got dressed up like it was 1933. We put on evening gowns. It was so much fun. At this party, I kept the TV on. I was watching it. One place after another entered the year 2000. The world's eyes turned to New Zealand, the first major country to ran the new millennia. Orchestra blared and the lights stayed on. Here in New Zealand,

Not one single major, or for that matter, that we know of, minor Y2K problem. Back at NORAD in Colorado, military officials watched closely as Moscow prepared to enter the 21st century. It is a dramatic time in Moscow. You see Red Square celebrating this moment in the less than 20 seconds now to midnight. Earlier that day, Russian President Boris Yeltsin stepped down, appointing enacting president. Vladimir Putin and Mr. Yeltsin's hand-selected Prime Minister. and now successor there has been as the clock struck midnight in Moscow,

an intense relief spread across the room at NORAD. But that relief was short-lived. From Russia, looks like the city of the sets. Radar showed three scud missiles had been launched in southern Russia. The officers rushed to figure out what had happened and learned that the Russian military was firing at extremists in Chechnya. In American General reportedly called Russia and said, this is not a good time to be launching missiles.

People around the world were reporting in on the internet. There were no major Y2K issues. Every city they go to all around the globe, nothing happens. As one time zone after another was still operating, I got relieved. But I wondered, what's the next one? Is that going to go down? And eventually it rolled around to us in San Francisco. And it was over and nothing happened.

And we all yelled, yay, and Happy New Year and lifted our glasses of champagne. And there was a sense of relief. It was just like a sense, I think, of disappointment somehow. No one really wanted to go home yet. So we went and watched the fireworks on the roof. A lot of people were crowded up there, drinking heavily and, obviously, end of the world.

I'm going to go down drunk. I saw all those people celebrating it. I got really happy. There was a sense that we were all in this. The whole world was involved in this. I thought, good, thank you, programmers. Thank you, thank you. Now everyone's happy.

At the end of the party, I was putting away some things. And that call from that strange guy came to me out of the blue. He said that everything's going to collapse. And water won't run. Water. Turned down the faucet. washed my hands. There it was, all the water. Like all the code, it runs. Disaster had been averted. The billions of dollars and millions of man hours spent on

addressing the crisis had paid off. But of course, there were those who thought the whole thing had been a big hoax. Some people are questioning now whether all of this was overkill, whether the problems were that large to begin with. I just would like to know when you're going to come by to pick up all that bottled water and beef jerky that you made me buy? I just want to say flatly that it wasn't a hoax. We didn't have a collapse because there were armies of dedicated programmers. The job they did was astounding to me. Y2K is remembered today as a joke, a punchline for government fear-mongering.

In overreaction, rather than a rare moment when people came together to solve a problem. It's worth imagining if the same thing would even be possible today, that we could agree on anything, much less unite in a common cause. But this was a time before the Internet went sour. And as the sun rose on a new millennium, the world felt more connected than ever before. Good morning and happy new year. Or we should say happy new millennium. President Bill Clinton gave a New Year's Day address.

What is perhaps most remarkable about? last night celebration is the way it was shared all around the world. The people all over the planet could experience the same events at the same time would have been impossible for anyone to imagine a thousand years ago, even a hundred. Yet the growing interconnectedness of the world today, thanks to technologies like the Internet, is more than just a mark of how far we've come. It's the key to understanding where we're going. in this new interconnected world, America clearly must remain engaged.

We must help to shape events and not be shaped by them. We can make this new century a time of unprecedented peace, freedom, and prosperity for our people and for all the citizens of the world. Thank you. Happy New Year and God bless America. At that moment in time, the Internet was a blank canvas. It would take the shape of us, the people who, who used it for better and for worse. It's supposed to be a very transparent medium between the author and the reader. So if you find that life is complex on the web, you're reading a complicated part of it.

This is Tim Bernersley, the man who invented the World Wide Web, speaking in an interview in 1997. The analogy was with paper. Can you imagine trying to invent a sort of paper which can't be used for writing untruths or can't be used for immoral purposes? It's only as good as the world it serves. Yes, in many parts, that's not very good, is it? In this interview, it's like Berners-Lee is staring through a monitor at the future, at our present-day world, where the web has the power to push us into echo chambers and disrupt our shared sense of reality.

With the web, you can find a myriad of different websites. Something really matches your particular weird viewpoint on life. World government, implantable microchips, Satanism, it's out of the open. The Bible is. And then you can filter your emails that you only communicate with people who also share that weird view. You can get into a sort of cult.

You're trafficking children. I did my own research and I found out with... You can get into a sort of cultural pothole with a few crazy fanatics. They can't climb out of it. They can't understand anybody who's not in it. And they bump into somebody else on the street. The only form of communication that is left is shooting them.

Welch fired at least one round into the restaurant floor with an AR-15 rifle. Welch read online that the Comet restaurant was harboring child sex slaves. Do you think in some ways that it's the creation of a monster? It's a profound revolution, isn't it, in terms of technology around the world, and revolutions are sometimes painful, aren't they? Yes, I suppose that there will be aspects of any change which are painful. Difficulty, the audacity of hope. In Egypt, Facebook, Twitter, and Google mobilized crowds and sparked a revolution. I believe Facebook's product stoked division and weaken our democracy.

Trump supporters helped the Russian Internet trolls spreading Russian-made messages. Misinformation and conspiracy theories are rapidly spreading online. QAnon's presence in the mob was unmistakable. It all started as an online conspiracy more than four years ago. Google and Twitter and Facebook, they're really treading on very, very troubled territory. They better be careful. This is something that we've never seen before. The CEOs of some of the most powerful and wealthy technology and media companies in the world

seated on the platform for the inauguration of an American president. It's a type of power that the world has never seen before. You're watching the unraveling of our democracy. see it's not about to happen. It is happening right now. That's all coming up on this season of Longshadow, breaking the internet. Longshadow is a production of Long Lead, distributed by PRX. The show is produced and co-written by Ryan Swiker.

John Patrick Pullen is our story editor and executive producer. Emily Barone is Longlead's managing editor. Kevin Shepard and Ula Culpa served as associate producers. Additional editorial support, by Ula Kulpa. Audience development by Jensen Rubenstein. Fact-checking by Will de Gravia. Claire Mullen did the mix.

Sound design by Claire Mullen and Ryan Swikert. John Singh handles publicity for Longlead. The podglomerate provides publicity, marketing, and promotional support for the show. Music by Epidemic Sound and Marmacet. Cover art by Longlead's creative director, Sarah Rogers. Learn more about Longlead and subscribe to our newsletter. at longlead.com. Episode transcripts and more are available at longshadowpodcast.com.

If you're enjoying the show, spread the word and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps others find the show. I'm Garrett Graf, and thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I'm happy to report there is plenty more where that came from, including their recent episode, Enragement equals Engagement. I really liked that one. they talked to a new mom about her experiences confronting vaccine misinformation and connect it with Facebook's relentless pursuit of engagement and profit.

Be sure to follow Long Shadow and Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Ari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.

Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Dodd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy,

not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, street or Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform?

We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs.

We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis come in to her,

he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why are we all so obsessed with romance? On the Radio 831 podcast,

join us, Sanjana Basker, and Tyler McCall, as we unpack all the trending tropes, fuzzy adaptations, book talk drama, and celebrity love stories. with hot takes and sharp guests. Each episode digs into what these stories reveal

about desire, fantasy, identity, and how we love now. Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Edwin Castro, also known as Castro 1021. And I'm Conky, his best friend and business manager. And we've got a new show called The 1021 Podcast. I'm taking you behind the scenes on how I became one of Twitch's most popular streamers.

We also love sports. And with the World Cup right around the corner, we'll be breaking down the biggest storylines ahead of the big tournament here in the USA. Listen to the 1021 podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.

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