Launching on Wednesday, August 18th on ABC and ABC iview, Question Everything is a quiz-panel show from the mind of Wil Anderson. In a world dominated by fake stories, false claims, scams, frauds, and outright lies, Question Everything will dissect the news and address all sorts of wild conspiracies.
At least that’s what anonymous sources close to the show tell us.
Mediaweek spoke to host, Jan Fran, about sorting facts from fiction and why people believe the things they do.
Coming To Be
Though Question Everything launches this week, Fran says that the show was first thought up years ago.
“It came to be in the wonderful mind of Wil Anderson, who had been thinking about it for quite some time. He says he’s been thinking about it since 2016. Which, casting our minds back to that year, what possible catalyst could there have been in the year of our Lord 2016 to encourage someone to think about fake news and misinformation?!
“So he’d been thinking about it for a while now, and approached me about it last year and said, ‘Look, I’ve got this idea, I want it to be a panel show. I want it to be a show that provides a space for particularly young and upcoming comedians to just do their thing and be funny. And I want you to be a part of it. What do you think?’ How can anyone say no to such a proposition?”
Working With The Gruen Team
It’s not just Wil Anderson on board, with the whole team behind Gruen working on Question Everything. Fran says that being in their hands was very reassuring.
“The minute I was told it was going to be the same team behind Gruen, I just immediately felt comfortable. They’ve been making Gruen for well over 10 years – it’s such a great show, it’s so well put together, you can tell the amount of research and background that goes into each episode. You feel massively confident going into a new show like this with a team that is, frankly, just so experienced, and so good at what they do.”
Choosing Conspiracies
With no shortage of falsehoods being put forward as truth, Fran says that deciding what makes it into the show has been a challenge.
“The amount of stuff out there to choose from has actually been our biggest asset and our biggest liability, because there’s so much of it. When we first started trying to shape the show, we wondered if we were going to have enough content every week. Was there going to be enough out there that we can look into? By just week one, it became apparent that not only are we going to have enough content, we’re actually going to have too much content.”
With the show looking into both the somewhat plausible as well as the outright bizarre, Fran says that she believes the reason people believe conspiracies is that most have a granule truth to them that appeals to people’s curiosity.
“A lot of people who believe in certain conspiracy theories also have a curiosity and a skepticism to them and for me, that’s a point of common ground. It’s really important that when you are trying to reach out to people who believe something so fundamentally different to you to try and remember that there is a common ground there. Because that’s the only way that you’re going to be able to get through to someone or to relate to someone or to have someone relate to you.
“We’ve never been exposed to this much information on this scale before, ever. We’re walking around with our phones in our pockets. People talk about being in silos where you only hear information from people that you agree with that confirms your worldview. So there’s all of that going on as well that I think exacerbates or exploits people’s skepticism and curiosity.”
Jansplaining
As well as hosting the show, Fran has her own segment – Jansplaining – which puts names to behaviours that people may be familiar with.
“This is a segment where I try to explain some of the tips and tricks and tactics behind what we see in the media or what our politicians say. So things like dead catting, or astroturfing, or deplatforming, or what a chum box is – which is a real thing. I mean, they all sound like they should be illegal sex acts, but they’re not. They’re real things and they have names.
“Sometimes naming something brings it into a sort of consciousness. So once you know that, oh, actually, that thing that Scott Morrison just did has a name, you kind of pull the curtain back a little bit and reveal the wizard, so to speak.”
Question Everything Guests
Joining the team each week will be a revolving panel of comedians.
“One of the big things about this show is that we really wanted to be a platform for comedians to do what they do best, which is to be funny,” says Fran. “So we’ve got three panelists: you have one who is at the beginning of their career, one who is mid-career, and one who’s had a pretty stellar career in comedy, all working together to try and sift through the misinformation of the week.
“They’re going to bring the comedy, they’re going to bring the levity, they’re going to bring the element of joy. Wil is going to bring the questions. I’m going to bring the answers and together – please, I feel like some violins need to play now – together, we’re going to fight misinformation!”
More Than Laughs
Whilst the show itself is lighthearted, Fran says that she hopes people will get more than just laughs.
“I really want people to walk away from the show feeling that they’re just that little bit more empowered in wading through all of the information that’s out there. I want people to walk away feeling like they’ve had a good time, maybe they’ve learned something interesting. But most of all, I want them to feel like they’re in a much better position to tackle misinformation, disinformation, clickbait, spin – not just what they see in the media, but in their own life.”
Question Everything will air Wednesdays at 8.30pm from Wednesday 18 August on ABC TV and ABC iview.