This is a fascinating conversation with ace investigative reporter Jason Dearen on his new book, Kill Shot, a true story that reads like a thriller. We also cover a lot of other ground here diving into the world of Big Pharma and the modern medical machine.

Jason Dearen is an investigative reporter and writer whose first book Kill Shot was published on February 23, 2021 by Avery Books, an imprint of Penguin-Random House. Jason was a 2018-2019 Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT, and is currently on the national investigative team at The Associated Press. His work has appeared in hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and websites including The Washington Post, The Guardian, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Seattle Times, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune and The New York Times.

Jason’s investigative and accountability journalism during the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the Trump administration’s shelving of a series of detailed pandemic safety guides created by the CDC. Dearen’s reporting led to the release of the previously suppressed documents for schools, day care centers, summer camps, and other places trying to make difficult decisions about reopening during the outbreak.

Previously, Jason’s long-form, narrative feature chronicling the final, desperate hours of the cargo ship El Faro was called a “must read” by The Washington Post and Harvard Nieman Foundation’s Storyboard. The story won the national Associated Press Media Editors Award for feature writing, voted on by editors at AP member publications.

His coverage of the flooding of toxic waste sites in Houston during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 earned national reporting honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE). In addition, Jason was among the team of AP reporters who were awarded a George Polk Award in 2011 for their coverage of the Gulf oil spill.

Jason’s journalism has twice been nominated by The AP for the Pulitzer Prize. He grew up in California, and attended the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

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