Gooned

Episode 12: The Big Question If not the Troubled Teen Industry, then what else? Where can families, caregivers, schools, the justice system, and the courts look for effective support for struggling teens? Learn what survivors, activists, and lawmakers see in the future for the TTI, and what steps must be taken to change our understanding of youth mental health. Find Gooned at goonedpodcast.com and...

Episode 11: Lipstick on a Pig It all started with Paris Hilton: since 2020, legislation passed to regulate and oversee the Troubled Teen Industry has outpaced the previous 50 years combined.  Hear aboutthe past, present, and future of regulation, activism, and legislation around the TTI, efforts to abolish the industry, and the unexpected influence of America’s favorite socialite.  Find Gooned at...

Episode 10: Afterwards Many survivors can remember their very first day out – often, it’s their 18th birthday, a much-anticipated day when, suddenly, they are free. But where do you go from there? Hear from survivors young and old about the lasting effects of the TTI, from the day they got out to the trauma that endures decades later.  Find Gooned at goonedpodcast.com and on TikTok @ goonedpodcast...

Episode 9: Pray the Gay Away Conversion therapy has been disavowed by nearly every major medical organization in the United States, but survivors and staff say it is still a prevalent practice in the Troubled Teen Industry. Hear from LGBTQ+ survivors about conversion therapy, forcible detransition of transgender youth, homophobia, and transphobia in the TTI. Find Gooned at goonedpodcast.com and on...

Episode 8: The System Gone Mad Parents aren’t the only ones who can send kids away. Learn about the government’s role in putting juvenile offenders, foster youth, and other wards of the state into the TTI, and how lackluster regulation can make starting a TTI facility all too easy. Find Gooned at goonedpodcast.com and on TikTok @ goonedpodcast . For bonus and behind-the-scenes content and early ac...

Episode 7: NATSAP Emma goes undercover at a conference for members of NATSAP, the preeminent trade organization for troubled teen industry programs and directors, to discover the culture of those at the head of the machine. Find Gooned at goonedpodcast.com and on TikTok @ goonedpodcast .To see the notes and materials from the NATSAP conference and read the study that was presented, head to Patreon...

Episode 6: Money Talks The TTI is a multi-billion-dollar industry whose funding is nearly untraceable by design. Tracking where this money comes from and whose pockets it lines is crucial to understand how an industry built around victimizing the vulnerable has continued to thrive for so long. Find Gooned at goonedpodcast.com and on TikTok @ goonedpodcast . For exclusive bonus episodes, behind the...

Episode 5: Straight, Inc. Straight, Incorporated was one of the earliest troubled teen industry programs to take hold in the United States, garnering support from the media and the likes of Nancy Reagan and Princess Diana. Hear from a survivor of Straight, Inc. about the program that became a blueprint for the industry’s current practices. Find Gooned at goonedpodcast.com and on TikTok @ goonedpod...

Episode 4: Drinking the Kool-Aid So, what’s the pitch? Despite growing public scrutiny towards the troubled teen industry, tens of thousands of parents and caregivers still send their children away every year. Hear from Sharon, who sent her son into a TTI program, and listen in as the host contacts admissions directors posing as a curious parent. Find Gooned at goonedpodcast.com and on TikTok @ go...

Episode 3: Level Zero Troubled Teen Industry programs use a system of points and levels that award or revoke basic needs based on compliance and submission. Necessities like food, water, and social interaction are privileges that can be taken away at any time, and constant surveillance means nothing goes unseen. Inside a TTI facility, you live and die by your level. Find Gooned at goonedpodcast.co...

Episode 1: The EdCon Educational consultants, or EdCons, are a first step in the pipeline into the Troubled Teen Industry. Meet Nancy, Emma’s 57-year-old alter-ego, and Sharon, the mother of a child currently in a wilderness program, to learn how consultants use parents’ desperation to funnel kids into the TTI. Find Gooned at goonedpodcast.com and on TikTok @ goonedpodcast . To see the parent hand...

Episode 2: The Hard Way With just a few clicks and a phone call, anyone can hire “goons,” or legal kidnappers, to take their child away in the middle of the night. Emma goes undercover as Nancy, a fictional mother looking to transport her daughter to a wilderness therapy program, and discovers just how easy it is for the average parent to hire a pair of goons to abduct their child under the cover...

Gooned is a deep dive into an industry with blood on its hands.  The Troubled Teen Industry (TTI) is a network of profit-incentivized behavior modification facilities for youth, ranging from wilderness programs to therapeutic boarding schools. The decades-old industry uses predatory tactics to capitalize on families in crisis and victimize hundreds of thousands of children and teens every year.  G...