On today's episode, I'm joined by a pro-publica investigative journalist who has conducted

ground-breaking reporting on toxic uranium ghost towns in America.

He goes into detail about the public health hazards caused by the uranium mining industry,

how the nuclear arms race may have led to irreversible consequences for local communities,

and why the state of journalism is facing an existential crisis.

So without further ado, here is my conversation with Mark O'Lalday and this is uncovering

the truth.

Mark, I just wanted to ask and start out by, you know, what was the catalyst that compelled

you to dedicate a year of your life to breaking this story about uranium ghost towns in New

Mexico and also if you don't mind explaining what is a uranium ghost town?

Absolutely.

You know, for me, a lot of my work is focused on frontline communities that are living

adjacent to the side on top of around kind of heavy extractive industries and so when

I caught wind of a company that was literally tearing a town down and moving hundreds of

people away as opposed to dealing with years and years of water contamination and public

health concerns about cancer and things like that, it seemed like an obvious thing that

needed more attention.

And so, you know, this was a vibrant community that was kind of disappearing in the face

of a uranium bill.

And so, yeah, the story here was as the US shifts away from uranium as the nuclear industry

doesn't seem to potentially have a massive kind of domestic resurgence on the horizon.

We have to figure out what do we do with all this old infrastructure and so we just set

...