‘I Believed Sandy Hook Was a Hoax’
Question Everything
Brian Reed
4.6 • 707 Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kate grew up believing the Sandy Hook school shooting was an elaborate false flag operation. For years she thought the 20 elementary school children and six educators who were killed that day did not actually die, but were played by crisis actors. And then, one day – in a matter of minutes – suddenly Kate realized how wrong she was.
Brian talks to Kate about what it’s like to realize you believed something so obviously wrong, so deeply damaging, for so long. And he argues that her story is a case study for reforming Section 230 – the 1996 law that gives tech companies massive immunity from getting sued over what people post. Without that law, platforms like YouTube, which amplified the lies about Sandy Hook that Kate once believed, could be taken to court by the Sandy Hook families.
Check out our Substack, with more reporting on the war on truth, free speech, and tech companies’ role in it all.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Guests:
- Kate, a former conspiracy believer
- Dr. Joan Donovan, disinformation scholar and Director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute at Boston University
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, Kate. How are you? I'm Brian. Hi. Hi. How's it going? Good. Nice to meet you. |
| 0:12.6 | Yeah, you too. I've heard your voice and I've heard about you and it's nice to see your face. |
| 0:16.6 | This is Kate. For years, Kate believed a lie, a terrible lie that spread on the internet, on social media, which lots of Americans believed. |
| 0:26.1 | It's a lie that really hurt people, individuals, and our society as a whole. |
| 0:31.0 | This lie, which Kate has now come to realize was a lie, is the kind of thing I'm hell-bent on fighting through the mission I announced |
| 0:38.8 | in our first episode back after the summer break. My mission to get a law known as Section 230, |
| 0:45.1 | repealed or reformed, which I think it helps stop lies and propaganda from overwhelming us |
| 0:50.7 | online. Section 230, which Congress passed in 1996, it makes it so that internet companies can't be sued for what happens on their sites. |
| 1:01.4 | Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, they bear essentially no responsibility for the content they amplify and recommend to millions, even billions of people. |
| 1:11.0 | No matter how much it harms people, no matter how much it warps our democracy, under Section |
| 1:15.8 | 230, you cannot successfully sue tech companies for defamation, even if they spread lies about |
| 1:21.5 | you. |
| 1:22.5 | You can't sue them from pushing a terror recruitment video on someone who then goes and kills your |
| 1:26.8 | family member. |
| 1:27.9 | You can't sue them from bombarding your kid with videos that promote eating disorders or that |
| 1:33.1 | share suicide methods or sexual content. These companies have a special protection that only |
| 1:39.6 | internet companies get. We need to strip that protection away. And I think Kate's story is a perfect example |
| 1:46.8 | of why. But I had been told was so outrageous that it was like, wow, I can't believe I ever |
| 1:52.9 | even thought that this was real. From KCRW in placement theory, this is question everything. |
| 1:59.9 | I'm Brian Reed. |
| 2:07.5 | Today, I make my case to you for how I think we can beat back the most destructive lies in our society. |
| 2:12.3 | And I start by talking to someone who deeply believed one of them. |
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