Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day we are talking about December 14th, 2012. That was the date that a gunman entered

Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and using a Remington Bushmaster

rifle killed 20 children and six staff members.

This is the 10th anniversary of Sandy Hook.

There will surely be a lot of coverage out there from many, many angles.

Gun violence, school, safety, mental health, the political response. I'll be honest, I was a little, we were a little wary of diving into this. It's just such a tough conversation. But we decided we wanted to do it and talk about Sandy Hook, in particular because we have with us an expert on right-wing media, and that is a big part of this story.

All the conspiracy theories that popped up in the wake of the tragedy, of course, the worst of which were promulgated by people like Alex Jones.

And here we are, 10 years later, when juries in Texas and Connecticut awarded 1.4 billion dollars in damages to the families

at the end of Sandy Hook as a result of Jones's lies and defamation about the incident and Jones has declared

for personal bankruptcy so you know we're going to start

with that that's our angle the conspiracy theories about sending hook what they teach us about

the right-wing media ecosystem and the politics because there's this question of how the GOP has

danced with people like Alex Jones particularly over the last 10 years or so.

So here to discuss as always are Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley.

Hello there.

Hello Jody.

Hey there.

Incredibly sad story, just really tough to even you know with our particular angle to start to dive in but

well I will say you know I spent the last three years talking to members of the Obama

administration and this is one of those areas where if you just

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