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Hi, it's NPR's Book of the Day.

I'm Andrew Limbaugh.

There's a whole history of wealthy families using philanthropy to burnish their name,

maybe clean up their reputation a bit. The Sacklers are big on this. You can find their name on

museum wings and university buildings all across the world. They're the family behind Purdue Pharma,

the creator and maybe more importantly promoter of the painkiller Oxycontin.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, you know, the biggest art museum in the country,

along with members of the Sackler family recently announced that they're taking the Sackler name off seven spaces named after them.

This isn't a small thing.

The Sackler name carries a lot.

To get a better sense of it, we wanted to play you

this interview with Patrick Radin-Keefe. His book, Empire of Pain, was one of the biggest books of

2021, and it traces the family's history and their connection to the opioid crisis. And as you'll

hear him tell NPR's Elsa Chang, the Sacklers have never admitted to any wrongdoing. Because, as

Radin puts it, it might just be too much for any human conscience to bear.

...