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THE WEEKLY REVEAL
Saturday, September 27, 2025
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The Secret Story of FTX’s Rise and Ruin
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Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty
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Sam Bankman-Fried was once called the “crypto king.” But in November 2022, his company, FTX, imploded within a matter of days. All around the world, customers of the cryptocurrency exchange were suddenly cut off from their money.
“I tried to withdraw an amount, you know, and it would spin and say, your, your withdrawal is pending,” says Tareq Morad, an investor from Canada. “I remember myself doing that around 7, 8 o’clock at night, checking back, going to look: Okay, did it go through? Did it go through? No. No. No.”
Meanwhile, inside the company, employees were panicking. “All that we were told was there's been a run on the bank and, somehow, money is missing and we don't know who to trust,” remembers Caroline Papadopoulos, part of FTX’s accounting leadership at the time.
This week on Reveal, through prison interviews with Bankman-Fried, his parents, FTX insiders, and customers, we take you through the frantic week of FTX’s collapse and the controversial and less well-known bankruptcy that followed. At a cost of nearly $1 billion, it has become one of the most expensive in history.
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🎧 Other places to listen: Spotify, Overcast, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Baltimore Mayor to Trump: Don’t Send Your Troops
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When Brandon Scott took office in late 2020 as one of the youngest mayors in Baltimore’s history, he pledged to reduce the number of homicides and incidents of gun violence.
That year, there were 335 reported homicides in the city of roughly 600,000 people, making it one of the most dangerous cities per capita in the US. Scott began implementing a violence prevention strategy designed to get at the root causes of gun violence.
Over the last few years, Baltimore has been witnessing a remarkable drop in violent crime, especially homicides. But that progress doesn’t seem to matter to the White House. Last month, President Donald Trump listed the city as one of several led by Democratic mayors where he’s considering sending the National Guard.
On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Scott talks to host Al Letson about what he thinks is really driving the Trump administration to send troops to Democratic-led cities, why the city’s strategy to reduce gun violence appears to be working, and what his political future might look like.
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Find this episode wherever you listen to Reveal, and don’t forget to subscribe:
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