Dr. John Schneider rode into town like a character out of a Western: an outsider on a Harley-Davidson, in trademark cowboy boots. He promised relief to patients suffering in Wyoming and Montana. He seemed like the hero they needed. But when surgeries go wrong and a strange letter exposes a bitter feud, medical professionals and government officials search for the truth about this cowboy doctor. They discover claims of broken bodies, bullying, fraud, and lawsuits.

From Audible, the fifth season of the hit series Dr. Death returns with The Cowboy: the story of a surgeon who took advantage of a broken system and the fight to bring him to justice. 

Listen to Dr. Death: The Cowboy wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Dr. Death: The Cowboy ad-free right now. Start your Audible subscription in the Audible App or on Apple Podcasts.

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Is what’s happening on OnlyFans real? Or is it only a fantasy?

In this provocative investigation into OnlyFans—the adult platform where subscribers around the world spent more than $7 billion in 2024—journalist Leon Neyfakh teams up with comedian and OnlyFans creator Gracie Canaan for a one-of-a-kind exploration into the current state of human connection. Throughout, they discover that the site originally built for spicy adult content has quietly and surprisingly become something more complicated— an emotional marketplace where desire, performance, care, fantasy, and vulnerability seemingly blur together.

As Neyfakh and Canaan navigate timely questions about autonomy, performance, and profit, a question emerges: is connection mediated by a screen still authentic? To find the answer, they meet creators building lucrative businesses, subscribers who believe they’ve found something real, professional “chatters” who are paid to simulate affection, and pioneers who have helped engineer intimacy at scale.

Captivating and tender, OnlyFantasy is ultimately about the cost of loneliness, the seductive power of desire, and how the rules of human intimacy are being rewritten online.

Listen to OnlyFantasy wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge all episodes of OnlyFantasy ad-free right now on Audible. Start your Audible subscription in the Audible App or on Apple Podcasts.

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When you hear the term “civil disobedience,” most people think about mass demonstrations. But sometimes, the most effective protest involves a single individual willing to disrupt the system. In 2008, Tim DeChristopher aka “Bidder 70” bought $1.8 million worth of oil and gas leases in Utah that he never intended to pay for. Tim was sentenced to two years in federal prison and became an accidental martyr in the climate change movement. Nearly 20 years later, we ask him: Did it make a difference? 

Featured in this episode: 

Tim DeChristopher

Sources:

Gravitas Documentaries’s Bidder 70

Jeff Goodell’s Rolling Stone article “America’s Most Creative Climate Criminal” https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/meet-americas-most-creative-climate-criminal-196050/ 

Bibi van der Zee’s Inside Climate News article “Utah Climate Activist Found Guilty of Making False Bids on Energy Leases” https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04032011/tim-dechristopher-utah-oil-gas-auction-trial-activist/ 

Brandon Loomis’ The Salt Lake Tribune article “DeChristopher goes on trial, but does he have a defense?”

https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=51289931&itype=CMSID

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With the arrival of the second Trump administration, many employees at the Environmental Protection Agency have felt like they’re under attack – from their own boss. Under its new chief Lee Zeldin, the EPA has slashed budgets, programs, and staff, all in the name of what Zeldin calls rooting out “waste, fraud, and abuse” and “driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion.” On this episode, we talk to EPA insiders about how the cuts have impacted their lives and careers, and the programs they care so passionately about.

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Don Blankenship grew up poor in the heart of West Virginia coal country, but rose to become a union-busting CEO with a track record prioritizing profits over safety. For decades, he operated with seeming impunity, even as his company, Massey Energy, spilled toxic coal slurry into local waterways, and its miners died in preventable accidents. Then, in 2010, a disaster too big to ignore finally brought Blankenship down. But what does his long career reveal about an industry that the Trump administration is trying to revitalize?

Sources:

Peter A. Galuszka's book Thunder on the Mountain: Death at Massey and the Dirty Secrets Behind Big Coal

Sludge documentary

Mine War on Blackberry Creek documentary

CBS’s 60 Minutes report “From inmate to candidate: Who is Don Blankenship?”

Jeff Goodell’s Rolling Stone article “Don Blankenship: The Dark Lord of Coal”

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/don-blankenship-the-dark-lord-of-coal-country-184288/

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In July 1979, just months after a nuclear accident at Three Mile Island gripped the nation, the largest radioactive spill in U.S. history quietly unfolded on a Navajo reservation in Church Rock, New Mexico — and almost no one noticed. A dam at a uranium mine tailings pond burst, causing 94 million gallons of toxic waste to flood a nearby river, poisoning the water, livestock, and people. Through the eyes of an activist who worked at the mine, we reveal how decades of corporate cover-ups and government indifference turned the ‘yellow dirt’ on America's largest Native reservation into something dangerous.

Featured in this episode: 

Larry King

Sources:

Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed by Judy Pasternak

The River that Harms documentary

Marley Shebala’s Navajo Times article “Poison in the earth” https://navajotimes.com/news/2009/0709/072309uranium.php 

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On New Year’s Eve 2024, an Uber driver named Jonathan Rinderknecht allegedly started a fire in the Pacific Palisades. The fire was quickly contained, but it lingered on underground as a “zombie fire.” Days later, fueled by Santa Ana Winds, it exploded into the Palisades Fire, the most destructive conflagration in Los Angeles history. A second fire, ignited just hours later, destroyed much of neighboring Altadena. In the aftermath, angry residents wanted accountability – but who is to blame for a fire when the earth is now a tinderbox?

Featured in this episode:

Brad Weisshaupt, LA County Fire Department

Traci Park, LA City Council

India Bradley

Nic Arnzen, Altadena Town Council

Daniel Swain, University of California

Sources:

The Los Angeles Times

KTLA 5 News

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Chemical manufacturers like DuPont and 3M have invented nearly 15,000 synthetic compounds called PFAS, better known as “forever chemicals” because of how slowly they break down. They’re in the soil, our food, even our bodies. When the towns of Parkersburg, West Virginia and Hoosick Falls, New York found PFAS in their water supply, they fought to hold the chemical companies accountable – and exposed just how long DuPont scientists had known about the risks.

Featured in this episode:

Mariah Blake

Sources:

This episode relied heavily on the new book, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, by Mariah Blake

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/554198/they-poisoned-the-world-by-mariah-blake/  

And Ms. Blake’s 2015 article in the HuffPost Highline, “Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia: Home to one of the most brazen, deadly corporate gambits in U.S. history”

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/welcome-to-beautiful-parkersburg/ 

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In 2017, Hurricane Maria, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, battered the island of Puerto Rico. In the aftermath, big banks, crypto bros and other ‘disaster capitalists’ swooped in to take advantage of the crisis. No one realized the full scope of death and destruction until a scrappy team of journalists started to investigate. They exposed a corrupt system that continues to threaten Puerto Rico’s power grid, its people and the environment.

Featured in this episode:

Carla Minet

Sources:

The investigative journalism of Carla Minet and her team at the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo

https://periodismoinvestigativo.com/ 

Naomi Klein’s book The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists 

and her Intercept article “There’s Nothing Natural About Puerto Rico’s Disaster”

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-disaster-capitalism/ 

Yalixa Rivera and Jonathan Levin’s Bloomberg article “Can Crypto, Cannabis, and Nicolas Cage Boost Puerto Rico’s Economy?”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-10/can-crypto-cannabis-and-nicolas-cage-boost-puerto-rico-s-economy 

David Yaffe-Bellany and Laura N. Pérez Sánchez’s New York Times article “The Unraveling of a Crypto Dream”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/technology/brock-pierce-crypto-puerto-rico.html 

Fernando Tormos-Aponte’s In These Times “How an Investigative Journalism Center Helped Oust Puerto Rican Gov. Rosselló”

https://inthesetimes.com/article/investigative-journalism-rossello-puerto-rico-protests

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In 2011, the people of Ecuador shocked the world by winning a multibillion judgment against Chevron for failing to clean up its oil operations in the Amazon. But back in the U.S., Chevron responded by suing their most prominent legal adversary, Steven Donziger. And as the oil giant challenged the Ecuadorian verdict, Donziger found himself trapped in his own Kafkaesque legal nightmare, one that threatened to overshadow the plight of the people he was trying to help.

Featured in this episode:

Steven Donziger

Pablo Fajardo

Sources:

William Langewiesche’s Vanity Fair profile “Jungle Law” https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2007/5/jungle-law

Patrick Radden Keefe’s New Yorker article “Reversal of Fortune” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of-fortune-patrick-radden-keefe

Joe Berlinger’s documentary “Crude”

Paul M. Barrett’s book Law of the Jungle

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