Kansas City police Officer Matt Masters first used a Taser in the early 2000s. He said it worked well for taking people down; it was safe and effective.

“At the end of the day, if you have to put your hands on somebody, you got to scuffle with somebody, why risk that?” he said. “You can just shoot them with a Taser.”

Masters believed in that until his son Bryce was pulled over by an officer and shocked for more than 20 seconds. The 17-year-old went into cardiac arrest, which doctors later attributed to the Taser. Masters’ training had led him to believe something like that could never happen.

This week on Reveal, we partner with Lava for Good’s podcast Absolute: Taser Incorporated and its host, Nick Berardini, to learn what the company that makes the Taser knew about the dangers of its weapon and didn’t say.

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More To The Story: Last week, US forces entered Venezuela, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a nighttime raid. On Monday, they were arraigned in US federal court, pleading not guilty to narcoterrorism charges. The military action followed a monthslong pressure campaign that included a number of deadly strikes on boats off the Venezuelan coast that the Trump administration alleges were used for drug smuggling. Many legal experts, human rights groups, and lawmakers have called the strikes illegal. The US has a long history of exerting power and influence in South America—sometimes violating international law in the process. The latest moves by the Trump administration appear to signal a new era of foreign policy for America meant to send a message to countries in the region and around the world. On this week’s More To The Story, host Al Letson sits down with Emma Ashford, a Foreign Policy magazine columnist and senior fellow at the Stimson Center, to examine the implications of Maduro’s ouster, how she defines what Trump is now calling the “Donroe Doctrine,” and what the US’s latest actions could mean for the region and the world.

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

Read: A New Theory Explains Why Trump Keeps Threatening Global Takeovers (Mother Jones)
Listen: Trump’s New World (Dis)order (Reveal)
Read: Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates (Georgetown University Press)

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In 2023, Marlena Arjo adopted a one-eyed kitten with a penchant for destruction. She named him Otto, and over the next eight months, Otto grew into his own little chaotic personality.

“ He’s laying on houseplants, he’s tearing books out of the bookshelves, ripping the calendar off the wall…I wasn’t prepared for having a criminal in my home,” Arjo joked.

Within months, Otto got sick and stopped eating. Arjo rushed him to a vet and learned he had feline infectious peritonitis, better known as FIP, a disease that kills nearly all cats that contract it.

The vet said there was nothing the clinic could do. But there was something Arjo could do.

“I shouldn’t tell you this,” Arjo recalled the vet telling her. “But by the way, you can get drugs for this if you go to this Facebook group.”

This week on Reveal, in partnership with the Hyperfixed podcast, we tell the story of the cat drug black market, why it was even necessary, and how cat lovers fought for big changes to make the black market obsolete.

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