Hey everyone, John Hyalman here and welcome to Hell in High Water, my podcast for the

recount about politics and culture on the edge of Armageddon with big ups to my pal Rizza,

the presiding genius behind the sound of Houtain Klan and producer of our dope theme music.

Over the past eight weeks on Hulu, a truly spectacular, heartbreaking, limited series

has been unfolding that deals as compellingly and truthfully and therefore also tearfully

and enragingly as any piece of popular art that I have come across with one of the central

crises plaguing America in the 21st century, the opioid epidemic.

The series is called Dope Sick and a deal specifically with one particularly infamous

opioid, oxycontin and the equally infamous company Purdue Pharma and widely reviled family,

the saculars, that inflicted oxycontin, incessantly, insidiously, greedily, deceptively and

indeed criminally on this country.

Dope Sick features a stellar cast, Michael Keaton, Peter Sarsgard, Rosario Dawson, Michael

Stulberg and Caitlin Deber, the astonishing 24-year-old breakout star of the Netflix

mini-series unbelievable all at the top of their game.

First two episodes directed by the legendary Barry Levinson, but the singular voice and

animating spirit behind Dope Sick is our guest today, the writer who took Beth Macy's

devastating book Dope Sick, dealers, doctors and the drug company that addicted America

and imagined it for the screen, writing or co-writing seven of the eight episodes in the

series and directing two of them including the finale which drops this week on Hulu,

and a guy who has some news for you if you're one of the many people who believe that the

worst of America's opioid nightmare is behind us, and that would be the one and only Danny

Strong.

...