Hello WhistleStop listeners, I'm working away on a new episode deep down in the minds,

but I'm here to give you something special.

In the meantime, it's the first episode of Charge, the new narrative podcast mini series

from our dear friend and colleague Emily

Baselon. For more than a year Emily has been reporting on a special gun

court in Brooklyn that was designed to fast-track gun possession charges and be a speedy machine for harsh punishment.

And while she was reporting, something interesting happened.

The politics outside the courtroom started to change as a new generation of activists and insiders,

started challenging the old system.

The show really dives into a current shifting ideas about criminal justice.

Charge tells you not only a compelling human story, but it also poses the big tough questions

that are at the center of our national conversation about reform. What exactly

makes someone a criminal? Can you ever really outrun that label of being called a criminal?

And if you're going to take apart the machine we've built in America to punish people,

well, what do you replace it with?

I hope you like the show as much as I do to get the full series.

Subscribe to Charged in its own feed.

You can find links to do that in the description of the podcast

or description of this podcast, I should say,

or just search for

charged in your favorite podcast app okay here's episode one of

charged I hope you enjoy a bit of housekeeping before we get started

...