APM Reports

The New Yorker staff writer David Owen opened a recent piece with a personal story: To hide that she couldn't read, his niece would pretend she was reading, turning pages when her classmates did. Owen joined Sold a Story host Emily Hanford for a live conversation about his December 2025 article “Dyslexia and the Reading Wars.” The event was part of the Eyes on Reading series at Planet Word, a museum in Washington, D.C., dedicated to words and language. This podcast is designed to be heard.

Ryan Riggs died alone by a chain link fence in the backyard of the group home that was paid to take care of him. Disabled by a traumatic brain injury after crashing his motorcycle in 2024, the 44-year-old needed more help than his family could handle. His wife, Julie, moved him to a site run by Fortunate Homes in Brooklyn Center, believing it was the best place for him. About six months later, Ryan Riggs went missing from Fortunate Homes.

Across Alaska’s coastline, from the Indigenous communities of Bristol Bay to the Tlingit and Haida villages of the panhandle, rural harbors that once bustled with commercial fishing boats now sit unused and empty. Abandoned boats covered with mold and algae line the shores of one Southeast town; others have seen their fleets sold off and relocated. In the Indigenous village of Metlakatla, though, it’s a different story.

Officer Jessica Heinzen heard the call come in from Brooklyn Park dispatch about a man “likely on drugs” threatening his roommates. She recognized the man’s name and the address of the group home where he lived, and she was not surprised. Arriving at the house, a group home worker told her the man had walked off after acting erratically for days. His case manager recently quit and he was skipping his antipsychotics for street drugs, the worker explained.

Listen: ICE agents are trained in CPR. They didn’t use it on Renee Macklin Good 0:00 | 00:05:08 An analysis of videos, 911 calls, fire department records and dispatch logs conducted by MPR News and APM Reports raises questions about whether the federal agency that mortally wounded Renee Macklin Good did enough to try to save her life. It took more than 10 minutes after Macklin Good was shot by a federal immigration officer before someone gave her CPR.

A company federal prosecutors claim was used to launder money for the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme owns properties throughout the Twin Cities where taxpayer-funded group homes operate. GAK Properties LLC owns at least five houses that function as group homes for Minnesotans with disabilities. Federal prosecutors allege that Gandi Abdi Kediye used the same company to launder nearly $1 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds during the pandemic.

Early in her teaching career, Margaret Goldberg was skeptical of the science of reading. Today, she is working with neuroscientist Reid Lyon to bring it into more classrooms. Lyon and Goldberg joined Sold a Story host Emily Hanford for a live conversation about the challenges of translating research into practice. The event was part of the Eyes on Reading series at Planet Word, a museum in Washington, D.C., dedicated to words and language. This podcast is designed to be heard.

Politically prominent Northern Nevada GOP activist and donor Robert Beadles has taken credit for hiring a private investigator who tracked Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve three years ago, ending a yearslong legal saga to unmask him as the client despite his attempts to remain anonymous. Schieve and former Washoe County Commissioner Vaughn Hartung sued over the matter, alleging that tracking devices placed on their cars were an invasion of privacy.

EPISODE 8 The Impact For decades, schools all over the country taught reading based on a theory cognitive scientists had debunked by the 1990s. Despite research showing instructional techniques based on that theory made it harder for some kids to learn, the concept was widely accepted by most educators — until APM Reports exposed its flaws in a series of radio documentaries and the podcast Sold a Story.

In 2017, after the Tubbs Fire blazed through parts of California’s wine country, a Santa Rosa resident returned home to one of the few structures left standing in his fire-scarred neighborhood. He turned on the tap and reported that the water smelled like gasoline. Sampling identified the source of the odor as benzene, a compound found in petroleum products. One sample contained 8,000 times the amount of benzene the Environmental Protection Agency allows in drinking water.