Hello and welcome to a special bonus edition of Why is this happening with me your host Chris

Hayes.

Hey, it's not a Tuesday, but I'm in your earholes.

What's up with my listeners?

I roll from Tiffany Champion every time I use a phrase.

I now do it just in a kind of dad-ish way.

They get a rise out of her.

I am here on a Thursday because we just have a special bonus today which grew out of last

week's conversation with New Yorker writer and author Patrick Radden-Keefe.

Last week I talked to him about his new book, Say Nothing about the Dirty War in Northern

Ireland and the ghosts of the past of that incredible book about a single case of a war

crime that was committed in that war.

And when we booked him, I also wanted to talk to him about something else completely

unrelated that he had written because back in October 2017, he had written a piece for

the New Yorker called The Family that Built an Empire of Pain, which is about a family

called The Sacklers, who owned a company called Purdue Pharma, that created, manufactured,

and marketed widely a drug that you've probably heard of called OxyCotten.

OxyCotten was a drug that completely broke the barriers for opioid prescription in the

United States thanks to the very aggressive marketing and because of the technical

way in which it had time release so that the idea was that you could prescribe this

very powerful opioid for pain and it wouldn't be addictive.

And man did it, it prescribed a lot.

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