Lies, whistle blowers, secrets

This American Life

#419: Petty Tyrant 58:43 11/6/11
In Schenectady, NY, a school maintenance man named Steve Raucci works his way up the ranks for 30 years, until finally he's in charge of the maintenance department. That's when he starts messing with his employees. Teasing them at meetings. Punishing them with crummy work assignments. Or worse things, like slashing their tires, planting fire bombs.

The State We're In - Faking It 52:12 11/11/11

• A small lie lands a promising politician in prison. Jeff Smith's article in the blog “The Recovering Politician”.
• A Dutch artist on the joys of forging works by great painters. 
• A Nigerian man on how he scams women into love relationships just to swindle their money. 

Spilling secrets 52:13 12/3/10

• An Indonesian man survives the extermination of his village by Dutch forces and why he's not vengeful, Dutch soldiers talk about their participation in the massacres. A black page in Dutch history.
• A man blows the whistle on Swiss banks and their shady dealings with Holocaust victim.

Whistleblowers 


In 1998 and 1999, Shiv Chopra, co-workers: Drs. Margaret Haydon and Gerard Lambert, testified to the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry that they were pressured by senior supervisors to approve multiple drugs of questionable safety, including Bovine Growth Hormone (rBST). Prior to the mad cow disease crisis in Canada, Chopra warned the government that the current handling of feed to cows was inadequate.