Listener supported WNYC Studios.

Hey, caught listeners.

This is Kai Wright, long time, no chat.

I'm here because I want to tell you about a podcast from journalist Emily Bazelon, who is known for

work in the New York Times and as a co-host of Slate's political gab fest. And now she's produced

a really great investigative podcast series called Charged. And I think if you like Caught,

you're really going to like this too. For more than a year, Emily has been reporting on a gun court in

Brooklyn that was designed to just be a speedy machine for harsh punishment. Charged tells not only

a compelling human story, but it also poses the big, thorny questions at the center of our

national conversation about criminal justice reform, the same kinds of questions

that we've been asking here on Caught. Like, what exactly makes someone a criminal? Can you ever really

outrun that label? And if you're going to take apart the machine we've built to punish people,

what do you put in its place? I'm going to play you the first episode, and after that, to hear the full

series, searched for charged in your Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Thanks, and enjoy.

A bit of housekeeping before we get started. This podcast is a coal production of Slate and the

appeal, a new publication about the justice

system. And it's a companion to my new book, also called Charged, and available wherever you buy

books. Okay, thanks for listening. Here's the show. It's an elementary rule of politics.

Any elected mayor has to have the police on their side.

But from the day Bill de Blasio took his seat at City Hall in New York, his relationship with the police went from bad to worse to catastrophic.

First, de Blasio cut way back on the practice of stop and frisk, the cop's favorite tool for shaking down people on the street.

Then, a white officer killed an unarmed black man on a Staten Island sidewalk. That death

...