Available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
When the founding fathers penned the Second Amendment, (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”), could they have imagined that in 235 years there would be more guns in this country than people? Or that over 20 million of those weapons would be semiautomatic rifles in the hands of civilians?
Based on a 2023 Pew Research report, 81 percent of murders in 2021 involved firearms. The COVID-19 pandemic only made it worse. Gun violence has permeated our schools (nearly 340,000 students have experienced gun violence since 1999), our homes (4.6 million children in this country live in a home with at least one gun that is kept loaded and unlocked), and our day-to-day lives (on average, 327 people are shot in this country daily: at grocery stores, concerts, sporting events, and religious services).
Journalist, historian, and host Garrett Graff has made our country’s gun fixation the focus of the third season of his celebrated podcast, Long Shadow. In season one, Graff tackled the road to 9/11 and how the events of that day changed our country and world. The second season focused on the rise of the American Far Right, from the 1993 tragedy in Waco, Texas, to present. Season three, much more methodically paced, takes aim at our nation’s gun lust and how it continues to divide us.
What makes Long Shadow worth your time is the dispassionate method with which Graff presents his thesis. A gun owner himself, he manages to turn down the noise (from both sides of the issue) surrounding gun rights for a nuanced overview of our nation’s dependency on firearms.
While the gun debate festers still—and will only worsen as the election nears—Long Shadow can be used as a recentering tool for every American and an opportunity to ask ourselves a question that has circled this debate for decades: If guns make us safer, why isn’t America the safest country on earth?
In Case You Missed It
American Scandal
Available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
For pure escapism, American Scandal’s time-tested formula has remained relatively unchanged for more than 60 seasons. Hosted by the able but formidable Lindsay Graham, each season of this award-winning podcast deconstructs a uniquely American controversy and reconstructs it for listeners.
It’s an exhaustive treatment, but it’s also an immersive exercise in duplicity, cover-ups, outrage, and learning from our mistakes. From police corruption to the opioid crisis to the many crimes of Bernie Madoff, American Scandal is substantive, beautifully researched, and irresistibly salacious. The tagline says it best: “Every scandal begins with a lie. But the truth will come out.”
