Question Everything

In recent days, we learned that Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University grad student who was snatched off the street by masked ICE agents last year and locked up for more than a month, has had enough of America, and moved home to Turkey. The U.S. government had continued to threaten her with legal proceedings and deportation, even after releasing her from detention.

Dr. Öztürk’s “crime?” Co-authoring an op-ed in the student newspaper advocating for Palestinian rights.

A year ago this week, while Rümeysa Öztürk was being held without charge in a Louisiana ICE facility and her case was drawing national condemnation, Question Everything co-hosted an urgent live event at Tufts with The Tufts Daily, which had published Dr. Öztürk’s op-ed. That episode has just received a Webby Award for Best News & Politics podcast episode.

Student journalists Arghya Thallapragada and Ellora Onion-De and Question Everything host Brian Reed were joined by former editor-in-chief of the Washington Post and Boston Globe Marty Baron, First Amendment lawyer Robert Bertsche, one of Dr. Öztürk’s ACLU attorneys Carol Rose, and senior politics reporter at The Intercept, Akela Lacey, to wrestle in real time with the gravity of what it meant for the U.S. government to jail a student for writing a political opinion in the student newspaper. In the wake of ICE surges in American cities and more retaliation against journalists by the administration, the conversation takes on new, perhaps even more disturbing meaning, a year later.

This episode originally ran on May 1st, 2025.

Read the Op-ed Dr. Öztürk and others wrote that ran in The Tufts Daily a year ago in March, and see the Tufts Daily’s recent retrospective of their coverage of Dr. Öztürk’s case.

Watch the video of federal agents in plainclothes, forcing Rümeysa Öztürk into an SUV on March 25, 2025.

Quick thing: In our discussion Carol Rose says the ACLU has filed 100 legal actions in President Trump’s first 100 days. The specific count on those was actually higher: the ACLU filed 110 legal actions in the Trump administration’s first 100 days.

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

Guests:

Naz Ahmed, Director of the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project

Arghya Thallapragada, former editor-in-chief of The Tufts Daily

Ellora Onion-De, associate editor of The Tufts Daily

Marty Baron, former editor-in-chief of the Washington Post and Boston Globe

Robert Bertsche, KLARIS Law

Carol Rose, Executive Director, ACLU of Massachusetts

Akela Lacey, Senior Politics Reporter at The Intercept

Please support the organizations that support this show:

Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias, and break free from algorithms. Go to GroundNews.com/QUESTION to get 40% off the unlimited Vantage plan.

DeleteMe makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online. Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans when you go to joindeleteme.com/QUESTION and use promo code QUESTION at checkout.

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code QUESTION at https://www.oneskin.co/QUESTION #oneskinpod

Listen to our supporter More Muslim, a narrative audio series telling deeply reported stories about the Muslim experience, wherever you get podcasts.

Gambling is infiltrating American life. Ads for online sportsbooks are everywhere. Prediction markets – which are not legally considered gambling – now allow betting on everything from the unemployment numbers, to the war in Iran, to how many times Elon Musk will tweet this week. Lots of news outlets are getting in on the action: CNN, CNBC, the AP, and others are partnering with prediction markets to use their stats in coverage. What could go wrong?

On today’s show, we’re joined by three journalists who cover gambling and prediction markets to answer that question. They tell stories about how gambling has already transformed sports, the unsettling ways betting seems like it’s already influencing the news and politics, and the not-so-crazy arguments for how it could lead to better informed citizens.

Also: hours after we posted this episode, federal authorities charged a soldier -- Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke -- with being the mystery bettor we talk about in the show, who made $400,000 on Polymarket by trading on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. When asked about it, President Trump said, "The whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino."

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

Guests:

Joon Lee, independent sports journalist and Youtuber. Find his channel here https://www.youtube.com/@iamjoonlee

Danny Funt, author of Everybody Loses: the Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Betting

Kate Knibbs, senior writer at Wired

Please support the organizations that support this show:

Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias, and break free from algorithms. Go to GroundNews.com/QUESTION to get 40% off the unlimited Vantage plan.

DeleteMe makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online. Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans when you go to joindeleteme.com/QUESTION and use promo code QUESTION at checkout.

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code QUESTION at https://www.oneskin.co/QUESTION #oneskinpod

Listen to our supporter More Muslim , a narrative audio series telling deeply reported stories about the Muslim experience, wherever you get podcasts.

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 reporting. 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.

This week, we’re re-upping a story we first ran last year about journalist Dana Ballout. Dana struggled with this personal-professional dilemma while investigating a story 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.

This also prompts Brian to revisit his own experience dropping the charade in a previous podcast he made 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.

“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. We have a Substack.

Guests:

Dana Ballout and Alex Atack, co-hosts of The Copernic Affair

Hamza Syed, co-host of The Trojan Horse Affair

Please support the organizations that support this show:

Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias and break free from algorithms. Go to groundnews.com/QUESTION to get 40% off the unlimited Vantage plan.

DeleteMe makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online. Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans when you go to joindeleteme.com/QUESTION and use promo code QUESTION at checkout.

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code QUESTION at https://www.oneskin.co/QUESTION #oneskinpod

Listen to our supporter More Muslim wherever you get podcasts.

This episode originally aired on March 27th, 2025.

Taylor Little was 11 years old when they lied about their age to sign up for Instagram. Now, 13 years later, they’re one of thousands of people suing the company, accusing Instagram of purposely addicting them as a child and driving them to years of mental health struggles.

Taylor takes Brian inside their dark and twisted experience with the app. They say it all started with a suggestion Instagram sent them to visit an account they didn’t follow, which they developed a morbid fascination with.

Who bears responsibility for what happened to Taylor? Is it Instagram? The users who posted the content that consumed them? Their mom?

Today’s show deals with issues of self harm and suicide. If you or someone you know are struggling with these issues, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.

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

Guests:

Taylor Little, plaintiff in social media trial

Please support the organizations that support this show:

Loyola Marymount University

If you’re interested in Fabric by Gerber Life go to https://meetfabric.com/QUESTION and apply today, risk-free.

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code QUESTION at https://www.oneskin.co/QUESTION #oneskinpod

Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias and break free from algorithms. Go to groundnews.com/QUESTION to get 40% off the unlimited Vantage plan.

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

Please support the organizations that support this show:

Loyola Marymount University

If you’re interested in Fabric by Gerber Life go to https://meetfabric.com/QUESTION and apply today, risk-free.

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code QUESTION at https://www.oneskin.co/QUESTION #oneskinpod

Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias and break free from algorithms. Go to groundnews.com/QUESTION to get 40% off the unlimited Vantage plan.