Telescope

Smoke Screen: Deadly Cure is a podcast about a family on the fringe who convinced tens of thousands of people across the globe to buy a miracle liquid made of poison, the international conspiracy they ignited, and the people who fought to take them down. Smoke Screen: Deadly Cure is a Neon Hum Media, Bloomberg & Sony Music Entertainment production. Want the full story? Unlock all episodes of Smoke Screen: Deadly Cure, ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge — All Episodes. All at Once. Plus, you’ll unlock brand new stories, dropping every month - that’s all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Just click ‘Subscribe’ on the top of the Smoke Screen: Deadly Cure show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Neon Hum Media and L.A. Taco, this is Smoke Screen: The Sellout, a podcast about a politician dogged by allegations of corruption, harassment and pathological pettiness. It’s about the residents who fought gentrification even as their neighborhoods were auctioned off to the highest bidder. And it’s about a community that feels the pain of betrayal – from one of their own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It sometimes feels like we’re living in a time warp. Like we just went into lockdown. But it’s been four months – and the whole world is different now than it was then. After 50 episodes of Telescope, we’re checking back in with five people we spoke to this season, to see how they’re handling the new normal. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporters: Catherine Saint Louis, Joanna Clay, Tanner Robbins, Carla Green & Jonathan Hirsch Producer: Carla Green Editors: Vikram Patel & Catherine Saint Louis Engineer: Scott Somerville Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eleven-year-old Emerson Weber has something of a hobby: she loves to write letters. And one day, she decided to write one to the person who makes her hobby possible -- her mailman. And, to her surprise, that gesture went much, much further than she ever imagined. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporter & Producer: Joanna Clay Editors: Vikram Patel & Catherine Saint Louis Engineer: Mark Bush Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Caitlin Doughty wants you to reconsider your relationship with death. She’s a funeral director and “Death Positivity” advocate in Los Angeles. And she believes that facing your own mortality can be transformative, even in the middle of a pandemic. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporter & Producer: Tanner Robbins Editors: Vikram Patel & Catherine Saint Louis Engineer: Scott Somerville Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Science journalist Ed Yong covers the pandemic for The Atlantic. But he also saw it coming, writing a story two years ago predicting the issues that we’re seeing now in the U.S. He reflected on hindsight compared to what he sees now and how this pandemic might end. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Producer: Joanna Clay Editors: Vikram Patel & Catherine Saint Louis Engineer: Scott Somerville Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the pandemic shuttered stages across the country, playwright Qui Nguyen wanted to give schools a little bit of hope. He took his popular play, She Kills Monsters, and adapted it for video conferencing, with all new cues and ideas. The University of Pittsburgh had put on the play in 2018. They knew the show well. So they thought they’d try to revive it on Skype. How much could be different? Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporter & Producer: Kate Mishkin Editors: Nick White, Catherine Saint Louis & Vikram Patel Engineer: Mark Bush Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Something about these long hot days just feels off when there isn’t a baseball game on in the background. Games are about to start up again, but without any fans or most of the stadium staff. Today, we hear from a Dodger Stadium employee who has worked there every season for almost three decades -- until this year -- and what missing this season means for her and her family. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporter & Producer: Hayley Fager Editors: Vikram Patel & Catherine Saint Louis Engineer: Scott Somerville Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

American democracy is complicated, especially when it comes to voting. Sam Levine is a journalist covering voter rights at The Guardian. As the 2020 election approaches, Sam will help us understand what is going right and what is going wrong as we prepare to go to the ballot box in November. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Producer: Tanner Robbins Editors: Vikram Patel & Catherine Saint Louis Engineer: Scott Somerville Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Derrick Sanderlin was well-acquainted with the San Jose police department – he volunteered his time to train police on implicit bias. Then, he found himself at a protest where that very same police department was indiscriminately firing rubber bullets at the crowd. Derrick stepped up to try to deescalate the situation – and found that it was impossible. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporter: Catherine Saint Louis Producer: Carla Green Editors: Vikram Patel & Jonathan Hirsch Engineer: Mark Bush Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As COVID settled over college campuses, most schools moved students’ education entirely online. It was a necessary move, designed to prevent the spread of the virus. But American college tuition now costs tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of dollars. And coronavirus has, for the first time, moved students and their parents into the driver’s seat. Some have decided to sue the very schools they’d been so eager to gain admission to, demanding colleges give them some money back. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporter & Producer: Carla Green Editors: Catherine Saint Louis & Vikram Patel Engineer: Scott Somerville Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teaching high school during a pandemic has been near impossible. Educators are in crisis mode. One English teacher in Flint, Michigan, has spent the last few months trying to teach remotely and worrying about her students. Students who have lost family members to COVID and are working essential jobs. But she also sees an opportunity to completely change the system. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporter & Producer: Hayley Fager Editors: Vikram Patel & Catherine Saint Louis Engineer: Mark Bush Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When stay-at-home orders hit, daycares and preschools across the country had to figure out new protocols. Some shut down. Some laid off staff. Some reopened to serve essential workers with new safety measures. We look at two early childhood educators -- Melissa Belnap in Oregon and Tanya Garcia in Los Angeles -- to see how two classrooms are adapting to this new normal.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr. Laurie Santos is something of an expert at being happy. Her class “Psychology and the Good Life” became the most popular class at Yale University. She also hosts a podcast called “The Happiness Lab,” where she talks about counting blessings, battling misconceptions about happiness and maintaining good relationships -- lessons that feel even more relevant in the time of Covid-19. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporter & Producer: Kate Mishkin Editors: Vikram Patel & Catherine Saint Louis Engineer: Scott Somerville Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now that many of us are in isolation, we have to use technology to communicate with each other. But that technology isn’t always built with everyone in mind. On today’s episode, we talk about what the transition to virtual learning -- and to quarantine life in general -- has meant for one person in the Deaf community as she spends her last semester of college online. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporter: Catherine Saint Louis Producer: Hayley Fager Editors: Vikram Patel Engineer: Mark Bush Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For many of us, our weekly trip to the grocery store is the most dangerous outing of the week. The place we’re most likely to be exposed to coronavirus. Today on Telescope, we spend some time with two people who are spending forty hours a week in those stores – praying that they don’t get sick. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporter & Producer: Carla Green Editors: Catherine Saint Louis & Vikram Patel Engineer: Scott Somerville Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today is Juneteenth. It’s a holiday that marks the end of slavery in America, and for many it represents a second day of independence. As the mass protests against police brutality and systemic racism continue across the country, journalist Soledad O’Brien gives her take on how the media narratives around police are changing and how coronavirus helped inspire outrage. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Guest Host: Catherine Saint Louis Reporters: Catherine Saint Louis & Kate Mishkin Producer: Tanner Robbins Editors: Vikram Patel & Jonathan Hirsch Engineer: Scott Somerville Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Social media’s role during this moment -- as we face two pandemics in the name of COVID and racism -- is cyclical. It’s both impacting and being impacted by the various tragedies that have unfolded over the last few months. To dig deeper into this phenomena, Neon Hum's Senior Editor Catherine Saint Louis speaks with Slate Magazine reporter Julia Craven about what we're seeing online with white people confronting their whiteness -- how it's different, how it's the same, and whether or not things will really change this time. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Guest Hosts: John Asante & Catherine Saint Louis Reporter: Catherine Saint Louis Producers: Mary Knauf & Kate Mishkin Editors: Vikram Patel & Jonathan Hirsch Engineer: Mark Bush Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two activists share their journeys of leading anti-racism protests in response to the killing of George Floyd. KC Short -- an Army veteran based near San Diego -- quickly learned the ins and outs of organizing protests. Melina Abdullah, a longtime organizer and the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, juggles her efforts to defund the LAPD with the overwhelming response to thousands of people joining the protests she’s leading. Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Guest Host & Managing Producer: John Asante Producers: Carla Green & Joanna Clay Editors: Catherine Saint Louis, Vikram Patel, Jonathan Hirsch Engineer: Scott Somerville Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Zach Stafford rose like a comet through the media, going from Huffington Post blogger to Editor-In-Chief of The Advocate magazine in just a few short years. As a Black gay man, Zach’s identity has driven him to fight the systemic problems in our society. Now, he wants LGBTQ Pride to meet the moment and stand up against police brutality. Host & Executive Producer: Jonathan Hirsch Managing Producer: John Asante Reporter & Producer: Tanner Robbins Editors: Catherine Saint Louis, Vikram Patel Engineer: Scott Somerville Music by Matt McGinley & Blue Dot Sessions Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @neonhummedia. We want to stay connected with you during this unprecedented time in our history, so please don’t be shy. Share your stories with us. Our DMs are open. Email us your story. We’re also interested in hearing what life in isolation sounds like to you. We welcome your voice memo recordings. You can email them to pitches@neonhum.com. Also, you can join our Facebook group by searching for Telescope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices