The US government outlawed debtors' prisons in the 1830s, the Supreme Court ruled they're unconstitutional more than 40 years ago, and you'll find sentences like this on the internet: "Today it is illegal to put someone in prison because of a debt." So how is it that courts across the country lock up thousands of low-income people each year, according to estimates, because they haven't paid up their traffic tickets, garbage collection bills and other minor violations? Lisa Foster, a former judge and co-founder of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, says many courts have become "a place of oppression" because they "make the measure of justice the measure of someone's wealth. That is fundamentally un-American and it is unjust," Lisa tells us. "But our system does it every day."

So much for the "greatest country on earth." Recent studies show that if Americans died at the same rate as people do in average European countries, which Trump derides, at least half a million Americans who die each year would likely have lived. And the biggest difference is among people younger than 65. Our guests - epidemiologist Jacob Bor at Boston University and Katherine Newman, executive vice president of the University of California - say that the U.S. is way behind not just because it has a worse health care system: The nation already has far worse housing, education, unemployment benefits and other social supports for middle- and low-income people than many other developed countries do. So what might happen to death rates under the Trump regime?

America's prisons house a "staggering number" of convicts who didn't commit the crime but said under duress that they did - so says our guest, lawyer Alan Hirsch, who testifies in trials across the country as one of the leading expert witnesses on false confessions. He took the stand not long ago in the chilling case of teenager Brooke Skylar Richardson, who was pressured by police to say that she'd murdered her baby, who was actually stillborn, and then burned the body; the jury acquitted her after forensic studies showed that the baby had never been burned at all. Alan says one problem is that police learn to lie about evidence and use clever interrogation methods that break down suspects' defenses, whether they're actually guilty or not. Some states are requiring police to film their whole interrogations - a step forward but not a panacea.

When you learned ​in school about the fabled drama of Robert E. Peary and Frederick Cook​ - how they raced each other to reach the North Pole first - did your teachers explain that this was an early example where public figures lied to gain glory? Plus, both The New York Times and New York Herald enabled them, by spreading the explorers' fake news - although critics still debate whether the publishers knew the stories were fake or didn't bother to corroborate the explorers' stories. Journalist Darrell Hartman tells us life and death tales from his fascinating book, Battle of Ink and Ice, that shed light on the perils of vanity and competition for fame and profit.

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.

In this moving episode, David Tatel, who retired last year from the U.S. Court of Appeals, describes with his wife Edie how he gradually went blind - and struggled to hide it from friends and colleagues alike. David tells about tricks he would use, like counting rows and seats in a movie theater and following the clicks of high heels down sidewalks; Edie shares, among other things, why David's denial caused tension at home. David became an accomplished lawyer who fought landmark civil rights cases - and an inspirational father. You can read their full story in David's book, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice. David will return in Part 2 to take us behind the scenes of the second most important court in the nation - and to warn how the Supreme Court threatens "the integrity of our democracy."