Why Don’t We Know Podcast
Detajet e Kanalit
Why Don’t We Know Podcast
From school safety, to secret police, to environmental toxins, Why Don’t We Know the information we need to keep us safe? To make our systems more just? To protect ourselves from the things that are hurting us? How is privacy being weaponized to protect those doing harm, instead of those who are bei...
Episode të Fundit
30 episode
We actually won a FERPA appeal
We close out Why Don't We Know with a huge victory - a win against the abuse of FERPA, the federal privacy law that often leads to harmful secrets in...
The unintended consequence of police in schools
The complicated and misunderstood history of having police officers in schools, and one group of students first-hand stories of what it means to have...
Why do children end up in juvy?
In our final drop of episodes for Why Don’t We Know, we explore the secrecy of the juvenile justice system, starting with how kids are often punished...
Whistleblower
What happens when a police officer breaks the silent code and speaks out about misconduct? This is the story of Cariol Horne, a former Buffalo cop who...
Why Is Data Collection So Darn Difficult?
In May of 2015, shortly after the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer, former President Barack Obama tr...
Who Are Body Cameras Really For?
After the nationwide protests following George Floyd’s death, we did a little experiment to see if we could get body worn camera footage from officers...
Welcome to Season 2 - The Criminal Justice System
Season 2 of Why Don’t We Know starts here, with a preview of our season about secrecy in the criminal justice system. Host Sara Ganim starts by explai...
”Police Say”
In the moments after 21-year-old Kevin Peterson Jr. was killed, Clark County Sheriff Chuck Atkins took to a podium to defend his deputies.
Alth...
Special Episode: Jason Leopold - Ultimate Transparency
In this special episode, we bring you a live taping of the first-ever Brechner Speaker Series, co-hosted by the Brechner Center for Freedom of Informa...
Special Episode: ’Gag order’ against sexual assault
In this special episode, taped live at SXSW EDU in Austin, Texas in March, we discuss how schools are bullying young sexual assault accusers into waiv...
EXTRA: Why don't we know where all the lead pipes are?
In April, President Joe Biden announced an infrastructure plan that includes removing and replacing all of America's lead drinking water pipes. It's a...
EXTRA: The Human Toll Of Missing Data
Depending on where you look, you can find a statistic that will tell you any number you want to see about how often students are bullied in school. Wh...
Any Other Law
In the season one finale of, we're unpacking a season full of secrecy in public education - answering the final 'WHY' of Why Don't We Know -- which is...
EXTRA: Why Don't We Know how many kids are attending virtual learning?
This was the most disruptive academic year in modern history, and we have collected very little data to help our students recover from it. This Extra...
EXTRA: Attacked
When it comes to physical attacks on teachers in the classroom, it appears, we don't want to know. This episode explores the missing data regarding vi...
Misplaced Fear
We assumed that, since school shootings are such a known public safety concern, there would be really detailed data on how many weapons are brought in...
What the heck is FERPA?
A step back and a look at the history of FERPA, the privacy act we’ve now spent quite a bit of time dissecting. How did we get here? We start in 1974...
Education Records
From sexual assault, to school yard injuries, to public safety, to political campaign contributions to racial bias, a federal privacy law called FERPA...
Secret Outcomes
Why Don't We Know how Title IX cases are handled at many universities? The answer is combination of two things: a real concern for privacy and the com...
BONUS: Secrecy and the Coronavirus
Government agencies everywhere, not just schools, are using COVID19 as an excuse for not sharing information. FOIA office phone lines were disconnecte...
Up In Flames
Off-campus housing is often the only choice for certain students attending college, but finding safe housing can be a real challenge. In addition, we...
Public, Not Public
It's estimated that 75 percent of public universities use non-profit foundations to do certain work in secret that would otherwise be done in public....
The Portal
It's designed to be hidden. Public universities are turning to private portals to shield information that otherwise would be part of the public record...
EXTRA: When speech isn’t free, but it should be
Unconstitutional speech policies aren't just for college athletes. In the midst of a global pandemic, we found that resident assistants are also told...
What is a FOIA Anyway?
The ability to request records from public institutions is part of the law, and in theory, should take a few weeks, at best. But after nine months, wh...
The Blame Game
Why Don’t We Know how to stop hazing deaths? It’s one of those sadly persistent stories, with no real progress being made toward a solution. Host: Sar...
A Deadly Reversal
There’s a hidden and deadly danger inside many public university buildings, but no one is talking about it, no one is regulating it, and it’s nearly i...
More Than Just a Code of Silence
Our research found that many major public universities have policies that silence athletes, robbing them of their first amendment rights. The policies...
Invisible Injury
Ever since Junior Seau propelled the horrors of chronic traumatic encephalopathy into the general public, we’ve repeatedly heard a singular narrative...
Why Don't We Know
We expect government secrecy from the Pentagon or the CIA — not from our universities and our schools.
But in many cases, institutions designed...