Short Run

Introducing Beyond All Repair, a new WBUR podcast from producer emeritus of Dear Sugars, Amory Sivertson. This series tells the story of a murder, but also the woman who was accused of that murder, Sophia.

Sophia was newly married and 6 months pregnant when she was charged with murdering her mother-in-law in 2002. She gave birth to a son in jail that she hasn’t seen since, and for the last three years, she’s been telling me her story in hopes of getting justice for her mother-in-law, of having a chance of meeting her son, and of finally being believed.

This is the first chapter of Beyond All Repair. Episode 2 is already waiting for you. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Point's special series 'Elements of energy: Mining for a green future,' explores the environmental and human cost of mining, and asks what it would take for the U.S. to meet the Biden administration's green energy goals.

Growing up, host Alain Stephens bonded with his dad over guns — an interest Alain still holds today. But more than a decade ago, his family experienced a terrible loss.

In this episode, Alain examines how that loss has shaped his career — and what it means for the gun industry to be inextricable from the American government, and for many, American identity. With more than 100 Americans dying from shootings every day, how do we begin to calculate the cost of our country's current relationship with guns?

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is supposed to regulate the gun industry and protect the American public from gun crime. But the ATF often falls short of that mandate. This is no accident.

This episode of The Gun Machine draws on host Alain Stephens’ seven years of reporting on the ATF to chronicle how the gun lobby and its Congressional allies worked to limit the agency’s enforcement powers and resources.

Stephens speaks to Steve Dettelbach — the ATF’s first permanent director in seven years — about the challenges agents face trying to do their jobs. Stephens also talks to retired ATF agent David Chipman about how controversial episodes like the Ruby Ridge standoff and the Waco siege turned public opinion against the agency, paving the way for budget cuts and legislative restrictions.

In 1999, at the end of a decade in which Gary, Indiana, had endured being labeled as the “murder capital of the nation,” then-Mayor Scott King filed a suit against gun manufacturers he believed were knowingly flooding his city with illegal guns. But soon, the NRA would help ensure that such lawsuits were nearly impossible.

When criminals have access to some of the most powerful weapons in the world, how will police match or outgun them? What role does the gun industry play?

The byproduct of producing the world's most lethal guns is that criminals have them, too. We go back to the birthplace of the industry, Springfield, Mass., where nearly every young person we speak with has a story about big guns and the terror they cause in their community.

The Gun Machine host Alain Stephens and producer Grace Tatter dig into the scandal-ridden biography of the man who cracked the mass civilian market for guns, and who helped create an iconic genre defined by falsehoods that are misremembered as facts today.

In episode two of The Gun Machine, host Alain Stephens travels down to Florida to attend the Pew Party, where he talks to Black gun owners about why they carry and examines the link between our nation’s fraught history and why it’s so easy to sell us guns today.

Our country would look very different without the gun industry. And without the federal government? The gun industry might not exist at all. The premier episode of The Gun Machine introduces the story of how the U.S. has shaped, and been shaped by, the gun industry — and how we all play a role.