Episode 15 drops Friday.

Linda Taylor committed welfare fraud. Ronald Reagan described her as collecting $150,000 a year under80 names. Most of those details weren't in any record. By 1980, the welfare queen was American political reality — and thirty years of federal policy was built on her.

Episode 15 of Committed toMisunderstanding documents the full chain: from minstrel theater in the 1830s to the 1988 Willie Horton ad to forty years of local news crime coverage that manufactured fear rather than reported crime. With the clinical framework for why the mechanism worked, and why it still does.

Two commissions documentedthe press's failure: 1947 and 1968. Both were ignored.

The receipts exist. Friday.

Committed to Misunderstanding | Chuck Lenahan | Tri-state licensed mental health therapist