storychaser

Michael Lynch will tell you exactly what addiction is: using despite negative consequences. And he'll tell you what it isn't: a choice, a moral failing, or something prison can fix. He knows because he lived it. Foster care to gangs to prison to building a multimillion-dollar brand while destroying himself from the inside. The outside looked good. The inside was not. Police saved him witho...

What happens when someone is medically ready to leave the hospital but has nowhere safe to go? Nick D'Agostino is a licensed social worker in New York City. Every day, he stands in that impossible space: between a system that says patients are ready to discharge and a reality that has no room for them. He's worked with nine-year-olds in foster care, unhoused people navigating the court sys...

She walked out of the operating room mid-case thinking, If I can’t be a surgeon, I want to die Dr. Frances Mei Hardin was medicine’s ideal success story—until it nearly destroyed her. In this episode, she exposes the reality of malignant medical training, the moment she left clinical medicine, and why she’s now fighting to change the culture through the Hippocratic Collective. A raw conversation a...

One in four American men under 35 report feeling lonely. When they go online seeking answers, some find communities that can turn pain into ideology. We speak anonymously with a 27-year-old man caught in that tension: he identifies as a feminist, struggles with social cues, and has spent years in incel-exit and incel-reform communities. A conversation about how autism intersects with the male lone...

2024 marked the highest number of Muslim civil rights complaints in CAIR's 30-year history. Zahra Billoo leads the Council on American-Islamic Relations' San Francisco Bay Area chapter—the nation's oldest—fighting battles from detention centers to the courts. When speaking up becomes dangerous, what happens to freedom of speech in America? We discuss in this weeks episode of storychase...

From the challenges of local news to the rise of crypto, Erika Lee joins us to unpack the future of storytelling. We dive into representation in journalism, the hurdles of reporting in a fast-paced digital world, and breaking down complex topics like crypto in plain terms. Check out Erika's new book: Reporting from the Trenches

In the first episode of StoryChaser , host Tara Ruff sits down with former NAACP Press Secretary Alicia Mercedes to confront the weight of racial injustice, the power of story to spark change, and the personal cost of carrying both.

Welcome to Storychaser , a podcast that takes you beyond the headlines. Hosted by Emmy-winning former journalist Tara Ruff, StoryChaser dives into the human stories that don’t always make it on air, voices too often overlooked, perspectives that shift how we see the world. We're so glad to have you!!!