Shane Smith Has Questions

Sean Penn has spent much of his life going places most people only experience through headlines — wartime Kyiv with Zelenskyy, Chávez's Venezuela, Castro's Cuba, Iran before the Green Movement, and deep inside cartel country in Mexico with El Chapo.

In this conversation with Shane Smith, Penn reflects on meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy in wartime Kyiv, traveling through Iran before the Ahmadinejad era, spending time with Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, and the infamous journey that led to his meeting with El Chapo while the cartel leader was still on the run.

Along the way, they talk about propaganda, journalism, war, political mythmaking, and why the story almost always changes when you go there yourself.

Penn explains why he skipped the Oscars after winning his third Academy Award, what Americans misunderstand about Ukraine, why he was drawn to Chávez and Cuba, and what decades spent around power and conflict have taught him about human nature.

This isn't a conversation about politics as much as it is about proximity — to history, to power, and to the people we are told to fear.

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For more than a decade, Gelareh Kiazand reported from some of the world's most complicated and misunderstood places.

From covering life under the Taliban in Afghanistan to documenting everyday life inside Iran, her work focused on telling stories from the ground — often in places where politics, war, and international headlines rarely capture the full picture.

In this conversation, Shane Smith sits down with Gelareh to reflect on years of reporting across Iran and Afghanistan, the realities of covering conflict, and what journalists can learn by spending time with the people who actually live through these events.

Featuring archival VICE reporting and footage from recent reporting in Tehran, they discuss war, sanctions, media narratives, daily life, and the challenge of understanding countries that are often reduced to headlines and geopolitics.

After decades covering the region, one thing remains true:Showing up still matters.

In this episode:

• Reporting from Afghanistan during the war
• Life under the Taliban and what changed after the withdrawal
• What everyday life in Iran looks like beyond the headlines
• The challenges of reporting from conflict zones
• Journalism, propaganda, and competing narratives
• Sanctions, politics, and ordinary people
• How VICE reported from places few Western outlets could access
• Why being there still matters

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Ken Burns has spent more than five decades telling America's story. From The Civil War and The Vietnam War to Baseball, Jazz, and The U.S. and the Holocaust, his films have shaped how generations of Americans understand their country.

In this conversation, Shane Smith sits down with the legendary filmmaker to talk about much more than documentaries. Together they explore why America feels so divided, whether we're living through another turning point in history, the collapse of shared facts, the changing media landscape, and why Burns believes understanding our past is essential to navigating our future.

Burns also reflects on his early films Brooklyn Bridge and The Statue of Liberty, the making of The Civil War and The Vietnam War, the importance of PBS, and why documentary filmmaking still matters in an age of algorithms, clips, and social media.

After a lifetime studying America's greatest triumphs and deepest failures, Ken Burns keeps coming back to one simple idea:

"There's only us.”

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In this episode:

• The story behind Brooklyn Bridge and Burns' first documentary

• Why The Civil War became a cultural phenomenon

• The making of The Vietnam War

• Why PBS has been essential to documentary filmmaking

• Journalism vs. history

• The collapse of shared reality

• Social media, AI, and the future of truth

• Political polarization and America's recurring cycles

• What history says about our future

• Why Ken Burns still believes there's reason for hope

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Who actually controls the biggest secret in modern history?

For decades, UFOs were treated as conspiracy theories, fringe science, or tabloid fodder. Today, senators, intelligence officials, military officers, and even presidents are publicly discussing unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs). What changed?

This week, Shane sits down with filmmaker Dan Farah, director of The Age of Disclosure to discuss the growing push for government transparency around UAPs, the role of defense contractors, congressional investigations, declassified documents, and the battle currently unfolding inside Washington over what the public should know.

The conversation goes far beyond aliens.

Shane and Dan explore the idea of a decades-long "legacy program," whether critical information has migrated from government agencies into private contractors, why recent disclosures may be happening now, the role of China and a potential technological arms race, and whether the real story is less about extraterrestrials and more about power, secrecy, and accountability.

They also discuss Steven Spielberg's influence on Farah's work, the making of The Age of Disclosure, media stigma, FOIA requests, whistleblowers, and what full disclosure could mean for science, technology, and society.Topics include:

• The making of The Age of Disclosure

• Steven Spielberg and Ready Player One

• Government transparency and secrecy

• Congress vs. the intelligence community

• The "legacy program"

• Defense contractors and oversight

• China and the UAP technology race

• FOIA and declassified records

• Media stigma around UFOs

• What disclosure could actually look like

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Before the interview, Shane reviewed hundreds of pages of UAP documents in our custom PDF Space. Explore the files yourself here: https://adobe.ly/ViceUAPFilesYT

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Shane Smith and Andrew Callaghan sit down with the anonymous creator behind Explosive Media, the Iranian team whose AI-generated LEGO videos became one of the most viewed and controversial media phenomena of the recent Iran-Israel conflict. With a team of fewer than ten people, their videos reached hundreds of millions of viewers and sparked debate about propaganda, AI, meme culture, and the future of information warfareIn this rare interview, the creators explain why they chose LEGO animation to depict war, how a team of fewer than ten people reached hundreds of millions of viewers, and why they believe modern conflicts are increasingly fought through algorithms, social media, and information warfare rather than traditional media alone.The conversation explores propaganda, AI-generated content, meme culture, Jean Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality, President Trump's social media strategy, and the future of political storytelling in an age where billions of people experience world events through their phones.The group also responds to questions about their relationship with the Iranian government, whether their work should be considered propaganda, and why they describe themselves as "guerrilla soldiers in the propaganda war.”As AI tools become more powerful and media becomes increasingly decentralized, this conversation offers a glimpse into what the future of information warfare may look like.Subscribe to VICE News for more reporting from around the world.

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