(upbeat music) - Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine. It is my privilege today to be joined by the excellent journalist, Jordan Sheridan. He is the author of the new book, We The Poisoned, the Flint water crisis cover-up, and the poisoning of 100,000 Americans is also a journalist with status coup news. Jordan Sheridan, welcome to Current Affairs. - Hey, thanks for having me. - Well, I suppose the first question is, you know, the Flint water crisis began over a decade ago now. You've just come out with a book about it. Some might say you're revisiting, but I think you would say that you are reporting on a story that has not yet ended. So tell us a bit about why you thought it was so important to do all of the work that you have in documenting this crisis in this book and putting it out now. - Yeah, I mean, the book might have come out this year, but it's kind of just the manifestation of eight years of ongoing reporting and really besides getting the story and building the sources and getting the reporting, the biggest challenge has been keeping this in the news as an active ongoing disaster, because like so many other stories, I mean, hell, we have mass shootings in this country and the media stops covering them after a day or two. The media stopped covering this about eight years ago for the most part, so I have stayed on it and it's clear to me based on my reporting and just my eyes and ears, this is still an unfolding disaster. I don't even like the word crisis 'cause people are kind of numb to that word. It's a disaster. I mean, I was just there two weeks ago, people are still showing me rashes. They're getting from the water on their skin. People are still showing me images and video of brown water coming out of their taps. People have cancer. Cancer is through the roof right now in Flint. Some studies are showing certain types of cancer are up 300% compared to before the water switch. So this is not, as the media kind of described it, some tragedy from the past that's now in recovery, it's an ongoing disaster and it's an ongoing cover up. A lot of people, particularly older Americans, kind of have nostalgia for Watergate as like the quintessential government cover up. In my view, this is the actual Watergate because nobody died from Watergate. It was just a couple of knuckleheads breaking into an office. If the president wasn't involved, I don't really think anyone would care. In this case, people are actively dying. People died. And there are a lot, I mean, this is a massive cover up. We'll get into it, but I'm talking heinous things and it's the federal government, the state government, the city and local government, including Wall Street banks as well. - Well, yeah, it's shocking. I mean, there are so many revelations in your book that leave the reader's jaw on the floor, but I want to just dwell for a moment on what you were saying there about the media's lack of sufficient coverage of this. Because one of the interesting things is you, early on in the book, you talk about your history in the mainstream media, in fact. So you've seen the inside of Fox News of MSNBC and you'll know sort of how stories are chosen and the kind of a morality and it's kind of incredibly disturbing. And you mentioned in the book proposing to do a pretty solid, just story interviewing the homeless and MSNBC producer just shooting that down because being very explicit about the fact that's not going to get ratings. It's really extraordinary just how all of your, your most cynical takes on how the inside of the media works and how stories are chosen, those are kind of true, which is why you're an internet journalist now. - Yeah, when I started at Fox, first of all, I didn't even know that much about politics, I just needed a job. So I just said, "Hey, it's a TV network." And I thought it was great. I quickly learned it was, you know, the Republican National Convention. But I mean, when I started at Fox, they were covering Natalie Holloway and her disappearance non-stop 24/7. I'm not saying it was unfortunate that a young woman, you know, was kidnapped and killed, but they certainly don't cover, you know, black children missing like they did her. So they covered her relentlessly. I remember when I was at MSNBC, there was a Georgetown student at Rush Limbaugh called a slut, Sandra Fluke. They covered that relentlessly for, you know. - And do it snessantly. Everyone knew her name by the way. - Right. Meanwhile, you know, I was walking to MSNBC in New York City and it was just rampant homelessness that I remember talking to my executive producers saying, "You know, you should send me out as a producer." I wasn't on camera at the time. But I really think it would be interesting to talk to almost people and get their stories. Yeah, that's not gonna rate, but good for you to, you know, care. - That's gonna rate. - And the same thing has happened with Flint, by the way. I mean, I cannot tell you, I could write a whole book just on the media bearing this. I pitched Mother Jones back in the day. I remember I had a story about, it's in the book, but I obtained evidence that the former governor of Michigan and his top officials just deleted their phones right before the launch of the Flint Criminal Investigation, kind of a big deal. And they asked me, is there a Trump angle to this? So I had a friend who worked at NBC. She put me in touch with an editor. I was pitching a story on, I got evidence that the former governor's right hand man, kind of like, I think Tony Sopranos, Consigliary, was going around Flint offering payoffs to sick Flint residents, which is in the book. And NBC News editor basically told me in a nice way, yeah, for the amount of resources we'd have to put into this, we don't think there's enough, what do they say, return, meaning we don't think there'd be enough clicks for interest. I tried explaining to her, actually there's a lot of interest, just most people don't know. I'm actually building an independent outlet based on these stories where people are paying five, 10 bucks a month because I'm covering these stories. So basically outlets for a lack of better word, we're saying people don't care. I mean, even trying to get a publisher, I had several bigger publishers tell me, we really admire your work. I'm glad someone's doing this, but we don't think this is commercially viable. - Mentionally, yeah. - So it's really a disaster, 'cause to me, we live in a tribal country and everything is team red, first team blue. There's one thing that should not be, 'cause like, you kinda need water to live and conservatives need it and liberals need it and progressives need it and nope, people without labels need it, but the media has kinda, not just Flint, they have failed to investigate and cover water contamination, air pollution, soil contamination. And with all these stories, it's not just the contamination, it's toxic government that's covering all these things up. - Well, and just to underline the point you've been making there separate from the question, obviously I think a lot of editors and producers are a little bit foolish about what they think people want versus what people actually want. I think the right that there is interest in, I don't know, exposés of government killing you. I think people wanna know, I think people wanna know about wrongdoing in their country at the highest levels of power. I think they actually would like to find out about that. But also, as you point out, people look at Watergate as the classic, blowing the lid off of corruption. But what happened in Flint was so outrageous, like so despicable that it's like even separate from ratings. Okay, let's agree that the Flint story might not even be popular. I think it would be because I think as I say, people wanna know when their government is killing them, but even separate from that, like of all the stories that a journalistic outlet should cover, like corruption, homicide, coverups, financial malfeasance, I mean, you know, the poisoning as you point out, as sometimes your book points out, the poisoning of 100,000 people. I emphasize this just to say, like, just to like scream, like this is what we're talking about here. The human stakes of this story that you covered are huge. - And by the way, like, it is sexy. It's got all the elements that like, I don't even think the best filmmaker could come up with. I mean, we're talking about political payoffs. We're talking about destruction of evidence. We're talking about witness tampering. This is all on the book. We're talking about, I mean, residents, the top activists having their breaks cut from their car after they were a little too loud against the government. We're talking about evidence that the governor himself knew about the deadly water and was in on a coverup for 16 months to bury it, including phone calls at 4 a.m., two days of phone calls between the governor, his chief of staff, the health director, 22 phone calls in two days. At the same time, the Legionnaires outbreak, which killed a lot of people, is spreading. I mean, we're talking about so many things that even one of those things I just told you, the payoffs, destruction of evidence, is a story on its own. But when you group it all together, along with the human suffering, I mean, in the book, I have stories of mothers, you know, poor mothers who wanted to call child protective services on themselves to get clean water for their kids. I have stories I'm sitting on porches with seven or eight-year-olds who can't count to 10 anymore or can't, you know, are forgetting the alphabet. So you see the damage up close. I saw it and I tried to express it in the book. You're having stories of people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, dropping like flies, dying. And for me, it was the moment that kind of radicalized music journalist, 'cause I'm seeing all this. I've been there over 20 times. And then you go back to like your hotel and you put on TV and it's like Don Lemon talking about Trump's latest tweet, you know, in 2016 or whatever it was, it's such an alternative reality. I saw this as Standing Rock too. I mean, I covered Standing Rock and you have, you know, police shooting at Native Americans for banging on drums. And then you go back and like CNN's covering Trump's tweets. It's just total cognitive dissonance, alternate reality. And at the end of the day, I don't want to get biblical. I'm not religious, but like water is in the Bible. Water is life, as the Native Americans say. And there is something as simple as if your government harms you, whether it's intentional or just gross negligence, you would expect the government to try and make it right. You would expect the media to treat it as a public health emergency. And even if they didn't think it would get sky high ratings, you know, children are being poisoned, elders, adults, continue to cover it. Hell, the media cares about clout and awards. I mean, I am a good journalist, but this could have been broken by the New York Times. It could have been broken by others if they just had a will. There were sources out there begging for coverage, willing to give up a lot of this information. I got thousands of confidential documents from the Flint water investigation. Hell, in 2020, this is a story that will drive you crazy. I drove to Michigan, this is at the beginning of COVID, nobody knew anything. I drove to Michigan. I met with a top editor for the Detroit Free Press in a parking lot. We rolled down our windows. I hand him very confidential documents that I obtained. They basically showed that the governor of Michigan was on the phone for two days, with his cheapest staff, the health director, 22 times in two days on the phone with a health lobbyist who was tied to the hospital where this outbreak was going on. I had documents showing that criminal prosecutors believe this was the governor of Michigan covering up the deadly Legionnaires outbreak. Two weeks before I was up for reelection, the Detroit Free Press editor said this is gold. I even offered to throw one of their reporters' names on it in front of me 'cause I know they want the credit 'cause it wasn't about credit for me. And two days later, his boss, whatever. Yeah, we don't have the resources for this. - But isn't there some evidence that also the governor tried to put pressure on media in Michigan to not cover this story? - Yeah, it's in the book, but I believe that there is sufficient evidence that the governor's office was huffing and puffing at any media that was covering this. They were trying to control the narrative, which obviously government officials do all the time. PR people do all the time, but at least in one instance, a local ABC station, they had gotten documents six months after the water switch in 2014 that a local hospital had a Legionnaires outbreak. Legionnaires is basically a deadly form of pneumonia. It comes from water. And sometimes it's misdiagnosed as pneumonia, but it's much worse than basic pneumonia. They had documents showing this that there was a Legionnaires outbreak in the hospital. The hospital was increasing its cleaning procedures. It was known that, I mean, residents were showing up at the city hall with brown water and they killed the story. They didn't run the story. It would have saved countless lives. That station has dodged me for years me asking, why did you not run this? They would have saved lives, probably won some awards too. I believe that they were contacted by the governor's office and that's why they didn't run it. There's many stories like that. Hell, I mean, I just broke a story around the same time the book came out. I got the mayor of Flint on tape, basically saying that a private foundation was pulling all the strings behind this, that the private foundation was basically selected, the unelected emergency managers. That's part of this story, by the way. - Yeah, that's a crazy revelation in the book. - And nobody in Flint, no Flint outlet covered it, no Michigan outlet covered it. So I can't get in their heads, but I do believe the media is partly to blame for why A, people falsely believe this is over and fixed and B, why no one has been held accountable. - Yeah, I do want to go back because just to refresh our audience on exactly what happened in Flint and when it began, could you give them just the kind of brief rundown of how this all started, how the people of Flint came to be poisoned? - Sure, so I want people to really think right now, you're getting bombarded with fundraising emails and super PAC ads about democracy. Democracy is at stake. And whatever you think of that, this is an example of democracy actually being removed. So in 2011, the governor of Michigan, Republican, he declared a financial emergency in Flint. It's arguable whether that was even necessary. He declared a financial emergency and he just appointed unelected emergency managers, just like Zars to run this city. He did it in Detroit and other cities, majority black cities, by the way. And these Zars, they had their power topped the power of the elected mayor and city council, i.e. people's votes were canceled. So these Zars, their first order of business was let's try and privatize the water system. And what they did, Flint got its water from Detroit for 50 years. So the water came from the Great Lakes, there was some of the best water in the world, and Detroit treated it and then sent it to Flint. And Flint gave it to its residents. But Detroit had been kind of price gouging Flint for many years. So local politicians, residents were complaining about the prices. So there was a narrative and a campaign, well, let's just build our own water system. Oh, okay, that sounds good. Well, they decided we'll just build our brand new water system along the same exact path. In engineering terms, this is kind of unheard of. They built a duplicative water pipeline along the same exact path from Detroit to Flint. This new pipeline was gonna be raw water, whereas the water Flint got was already treated. Well, what do you need a lot of raw water for? Fracking, the governor of Michigan was fracking the hell out of Michigan. You need a ton of raw water for that. Farming, auto industry, industry. They called this, it's gonna be the blue economy because of all the water business could use for a cheaper cost. Most of the water in this new pipeline was not actually gonna be for residents. It was gonna be for business. At the last minute, Detroit, 'cause they didn't wanna lose Flint, Flint was its biggest customer, they offered to cut Flint's rate in half. So think about like you're going to the store 50% off. Pretty good. If Flint would have just stayed on Detroit, they would have been saving money. But this new water system was never about saving money. It was a for-profit privatization scheme because Detroit was a public asset, public water system. And this new regional system was by all intents and purposes gonna be privatized. And what they did was while they were building this new water system, first of all, they Flint was broke. It had no credit rating. But to fund this new water system, the county, the local politicians needed Flint to be in on the bond deal. So they needed Flint to be one of the cities to fund construction. It was a $230 million, almost $300 million pipeline. So Flint was legally broke, could not legally borrow any more money. So the governor's unelected king and Zars, along with JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, orchestrated a fake emergency that allowed Flint to borrow $100 million to help fund a completely unnecessary water system. And oh, by the way, in the two years they were gonna build this boondoggle, this totally unnecessary water system, we'll use the Flint River, which General Motors, Dow Chemical, DuPont, and every corporate criminal you could think of had been dumping their waste in for 100 years. And oh, by the way, we'll use the Flint water plant, which is the equivalent of these bowing planes falling apart mid-air. The Flint water plant did not even have the necessary equipment in the plant when they switched the water to add the proper chemicals. So the media has always reported it, they fail to add the corrosion control chemicals. They did not have the equipment to do it. They did not have a lot of equipment. It's in the book, but two weeks before the water switch, it was so understaffed they didn't have enough workers, they moved people from the garbage department in Flint to the water department. So what you have here is basically for politicians, Wall Street banks who issued the bonds to help fund this construction, a private foundation who is involved, and the Republican governor and his unelected cronies, basically created a cabal to in debt Flint, basically use the residences guinea pigs for a totally unnecessary privatized water system. - You're listening to Current Affairs. Current Affairs is a nonprofit left media organization supported entirely by its readers and listeners with no corporate backers or advertising. We depend on your subscriptions and donations. If you're enjoying this program and you're not a monthly subscriber already, please consider becoming one at patreon.com/currentaffairs. And if you are a podcast subscriber, check out everything else Current Affairs offers, including our flagship print magazine, which comes out six times a year and is loaded with beautiful art and insightful essays. We also offer a twice weekly news briefing service that will keep you up to date on everything happening in the world and the stories you won't find in your morning newspaper. You can sign up for those at currentaffairs.org/subscribe. And if you just want to help us keep building independent progressive media because you understand how vital that project is, go to currentaffairs.org/donate where you can read more about our work and make a monthly or one-off contribution. Current Affairs is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and donations are tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. Now back to the program. - So that's important 'cause what you said that people, but the way people might have heard about this is as a mistake as well, you know, they switched the water from the Detroit supply to the Flint supply, the Flint river wasn't clean, the water, and then they were too slow and they covered it up. What you're describing, the preliminary process that set the stage for this is not just the poisoning of the people, but the robbery of the people. This is an act of robbery as well as poisoning. - Yes, and the book details it, I believe pretty meticulously. - Yes. - First of all, legally you're supposed to test the water when changing a water source. You're supposed to test it for a year before you send it out to residents. They didn't do that. That's not a mistake. They knew they were supposed to, legally you have to test the water for a year before sending it out. Number two, legally, if you are serving a city over 50,000 people, you have to add corrosion controls. Our pipes underneath us all across America are between 50 and in a lot of cases over 100 years old. So cities with populations over 50,000 people, you have to add these chemicals that help prevent lead and other heavy metals from peeling off of the pipes into your water. They didn't do that. I have a whole chapter on the plant. They were workers in the plant as early as a year before screaming, hell no, I quote, hell no, we can't do this. We don't have the staff, we don't have the equipment. The plant had not been used as a full-time water treatment plant for half a century. The governor of Michigan, I show in the book, he was warned a year before the water switch by his own environmental people that there's a bacteria risk from using the Flint River. There's a carcinogen risk, cancer-causing chemicals warned a year before. So either all of these people were asleep at the switch or they just didn't care and said, let's roll with it. It can't be that bad, we'll figure it out as we go, and that's what they were doing. Literally, I have emails in there where the governor's chief of staff, a year into this in writing is saying, I think we could make the river safe. Well, at the time they were telling the residents it was safe, but they're privately saying we could make it safe. So when I say, you know, listen, in this screwed up media environment, people don't remember something that happened 10 hours ago, much less 10 years ago. But when I say like, this is the biggest government cover for the 21st century, I can't think of anything that involves the EPA, state government, city government, county government, private foundations, a Wall Street bank, and the media, I mean, and people are dying. That's the part that people don't really get, because the media in this country, I'm sorry to tell you, not all, but a lot of the big corporate funded ones, they basically just regurgitate what agencies tell them. If the EPA says Flint's water levels are meeting regulations, check, we'll report that and move on. But the problem is, I'm not one of these government conspiracy people, I'm not saying government lies all the time, but I found in the case of Flint, they were manipulating the data and they were cherry picking the data. I knocked on over 400 doors. It's one of the chapters in the book. I found that the governors was sending in his environmental officials to run people's water and then put the sample bottles in. But she's totally illegal, 'cause you're just flushing out the lead. - Flushing, yeah. - And then you're putting the sample bottle in and while the governor of Michigan now, a Democrat Gretchen Whitbur, acknowledged on camera my reporting that they manipulated the water testing, yet still went with the water levels or meeting EPA regulations. This is not just Flint, by the way, this happens elsewhere. So, bottom line, this was buried, swept under the rug by state, federal, the media through their laziness and just choosing to go cover the Trump circus. They basically abandoned the city. And again, I was just there. I did a documentary in April. I was just there for the book release. I mean, when I say it's a disaster, that's not to be dramatic. I'm telling you, the water is still bad. It's not as bad as it was in 2016, but you have brown water coming out. You have smelly water in many homes. Residents are showing rashes they're still getting. Residents are still losing hair. And from a just a plumbing and engineering perspective, it's common sense, 10 years later, they have not replaced all of the damaged pipes. If you haven't replaced the damaged infrastructure that was badly corroded by essentially acid water, it doesn't matter if the water is coming clean as Jesus blessed the water from the plant. If it's going through busted pipes, shit's gonna peel off. - Yeah, and not to, let's see. I don't want to diminish the quality and quantity of the original scoops that you have gotten through your reporting, but in some ways it strikes me reading your work that you just went and did the work. It's not like the stuff is deeply, deeply buried. I mean, yes, you had to get access to confidential documents, but also you can go and talk to, you could just knock on doors in Flint and you can find out that what you're seeing, being told, isn't true because you just talk to residents and they'll say things like, yeah, I can't be in the shower or I touch myself and the water burns. And so the information is out there waiting to be found and the only way that it isn't reported is if you choose not to go and report it. - Listen, I mean, I love the people of Flint, but I don't consider it a vacation spot. I went because the people from the Detroit Free Press an hour down the road were not. I went because the national outlets were not and I cared and I'm passionate about it, but yeah, I mean, it's not easy. You do have to build sources, build trust. People need to take a risk, leak documents to you, but this was all, I mean, residents were begging reporters way bigger than me and just handing them scoop after scoop after scoop. So this could have been reported much earlier by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press. I mean, we could go down the list. It was not. When outlets did report it, they significantly watered it down. And there's, I believe there's many reasons for that, but at the end of the day, I'm not some like incredible otherworldly, scholarly journalists. I just gave a damn and kept going. And that's kind of what you're supposed to do as a journalist, but unfortunately we have a system now that's based on scaling up and ratings and clicks and this and that it's no longer, journalism is no longer considered a public good. It is a for profit billion dollar industry. And if I believe out of touch cosmopolitan editors in New York and DC, they are the ones making the decisions whether to send people to Flint, whether to continue covering Flint. And to me, these are very disconnected people that I don't think they're bad people. I don't think they wake up and say, hey, let's just ignore people dying and being poisoned. I just think it's out of sight, out of mind. And this is the Rust Belt. This is flyover country. If this happened on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I'm pretty sure they would have stuck with the story a little longer. If it happened in a more cosmopolitan, different class, I think this is a story of class and race. I know there's a liberal debate between is it class, is it race? I mean, in East Palestine, Ohio, there's something happening right now after Norfolk Southern blew up five cars of toxic vinyl chloride. People are sick there. It's the same exact playbook. The EPA does some BS testing. They say everything's fine. I got sick five months ago there. I'm talking to residents who are sick. These are poor white people. So poor black people, poor white people, it's the same playbook being used and the media is not reporting it because they want to cover the horse race. They want to cover politics. They want to kind of treat politics as sport. And it's too depressing or it's not sexy to cover, people being poisoned and slowly dying. But to me, I don't know. I really don't, everybody has their issue. Journalists, obviously we're humans. We have particular issues that draw us more than others. I really don't know of a bigger issue than the number one necessity for living water if it is being threatened and if people are being harmed, even if you want to give the government the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't intentional, we spend nearly a trillion dollars a day on, excuse me, a year on national security, national security. I'm pretty sure your water being poisoned by your government's a national security issue. - Well, and people, our readers and listeners may remember a time when their water was shut off for a day or two and how you realize very quickly how much you depend upon consistent access to clean water because the moment your water gets shut off after a storm or something, you realize life without water can't be lived. And then, you know, you have people and then you talk about Flint day after day, month after month, year after year, you know, you're trying to get your kids a bath and imagine being in the situation where you want to keep your kids clean without knowing whether you're going to kill them by trying to keep them clean. I mean, it's such an evil thing to do to people to put them in that situation. And as you pointed out, this is ultimately a, I don't think it's understanding it to say this is a murder case because people died in Flint of Legionnaires disease. We don't know quite how many I don't think, but we know that it's a dozen at least people who are dead because of this. I mean, it really is, as you say, I just insist. - Well, it's also cancer. I mean, cancer is through the roof. - Oh yeah, of course, long term. - And it is, I mean, heavy metals cause all sorts of cancers, kidney failure. People are dying of kidney failure, liver disease. So between the heavy metals, the lead, the bacteria, the PFAS, I mean, it's really a horrible mixed bowl of things that these people were contaminated by. And it's not, you know, in the beginning of COVID, we had the death count live on TV. So we knew how many people were dying per day and it was awful. Well, we don't have an accurate count of how many people have died from this because they didn't even have a health registry for many years. And the population is 20,000 less than it was when this happened because so many people have left. So when I say it's an ongoing coverup at an ongoing disaster, I can tell you every time I go there, I am hearing about more people, not just elderly people. I'm talking people 40s, 50s, 60s, dying of cancers, liver problems, kidney problems. And also I really think people need to realize this is not just the Republicans involved. The Republicans presided over it. They were involved in the lead up to it. And while the water was contaminated, they were covering it up in real time. With that said, the people of Flint were overjoyed to vote for Democrat Gretchen Whitmer. They were overjoyed to vote for Democrat Attorney General Dana Nestle because those two ran on justice for Flint. Gretchen Whitmer ran on opening up the water stations that the Republican governor had shut down. That's where the residents got free water. The Attorney General ran on. She said that the investigation before her was basically incompetent. Well, my reporting shows she fired those prosecutors. They were building a case against the Republican governor for involuntary manslaughter. You mentioned murder. They were building a case against a governor. This would have been a historic event for involuntary manslaughter because he knew about the deadly legionnaires outbreak and did not notify the public. She fired them and she sabotaged the investigation, I believe, so that they didn't file the money. She is right now. I'm saying it's ongoing. Right now, she is refusing freedom of information requests from yours truly. I'm trying to get the documents. Her predecessors were building a racketeering case. Rico, which was used in the 70s. That's when it was created to go against organized crime. They were building a racketeering case based on that fraudulent financial scheme I told you about. First, her office told me they didn't have the documents. I knew that was not true. Then I publicly threatened to sue them. Then they saw Jesus and told me they'll look again. And then they told me they found them, but they can't give them to me. So I'm telling you, it is not a conspiracy. There were Wall Street banks involved with this. She fired prosecutors that were heading in the right direction that were going to charge people over the financial fraud. Then she charged lesser crimes, the Democratic Attorney General. And she did not follow through on that financial investigation. I'm independent. I don't care who you vote for. If you're Democrat, liberal doesn't matter to me. But the bottom line is, Republicans caused this and Democrats, it seems, are helping sweep it under the rug. Yeah. Well, I would strongly encourage all of our readers and listeners to follow you, to subscribe to status coup news, because, and to pick up this book, We the Poison, the Flint water crisis cover up, and the poisoning of 100,000 Americans, if you think you know this story, let me tell you, you don't know the story and tell you have read Jordan Jareden's book, because I thought I knew this story. I didn't know this story. I didn't know the financial angle, the Wall Street angle. You know, I saw it as a story of government incompetence. I didn't know how early it began, the things that set this thing in motion. You really, or about, you know, how long it had been going, and what is still going on now. So we really, here at current affairs, appreciate and respect your reporting, Jordan. You know, you're one of the best in the business, and people really, if you want, want to emphasize this, if you want journalism to live, to survive, if you want stories to be broken, you can't just pick up the New York Times, you can't just subscribe to The Washington Post, you need to follow independent journalists like Jordan Jareden. So Jordan, thank you so much for joining us. People can find you where they go to what's the website? Status coup on YouTube, that's COUP. And if you want to support us, that's statuscoup.com/join. And yeah, We The Poisoned is available online. It's in a lot of bookstores, and the audio version will be out on September 27th. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your work, Jordan. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. The current affairs podcast is a product of current affairs magazine. If you're not subscribed to current affairs magazine, visit currentaffairs.org/subscribe today, and get our glorious print edition. The current affairs podcast is released regularly every week on patreon.com/currentaffairs. Thanks for listening. [Music]
