An English teacher at Middletown High School in New York State gave students video cameras back in the 1990s, and told them to tell compelling stories. Result: They uncovered illegal dumping of toxic wastes tied to the mob, and then made films about it - which shook the community and triggered government investigations. A documentary about their real-life drama, Teenage Wasteland, is making the rounds of film festivals and generating rave reviews. The teacher who guided the project, Fred Isseks, joins us with two of his former student investigators, Rachel Raimist and Jeff Dutemple. And they say the most important outcome was bigger than exposing illegal dumping: They learned how to ask tough questions, challenge government officials, and sort facts from lies.

Shekar Krishnan just got re-elected to the New York City Council, with more than twice as many votes as his opponent - which is good news for Zohran Mamdani, the newly-elected mayor, because he'll need progressive allies like Shekar to back his agenda. As you'll hear in our chat with Shekar from two years ago, he's the rare kind of politician who shows how politics and government can actually make people's lives better. He fights for immigrant taxi drivers and minorities who need good low-income housing, and for the LGBTQ community; he got arrested side-by-side with Mamdani at a protest, and got smeared by the Proud Boys. Oh - and Shekar's getting ​the city to fix potholes ​a​nd improve parks, too.

Now that Judge David S. Tatel has retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, he feels freer to warn us all: the Supreme Court is threatening America's democracy by inventing spurious legal doctrines and grabbing more power for itself. There are also lighter moments in this revealing interview, as David pulls the curtain aside and tells us how the judges on this powerful court really do their work. Spoiler alert #1: It used to involve a red children's sand pail. Spoiler alert #2: Because David is blind, he used to hire "readers" who rattled off every word of laws, books and briefs out loud to him, at such mind-boggling speeds that most people couldn't understand them.