Fresh Air - The Dark Secrets Of Johnson & Johnson

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Johnson & Johnson recently lost a bid to settle lawsuits that claimed its talc powder products, including baby powder, caused cancer. Author Gardiner Harris says the company's defense "is beginning to crumble." His book is No More Tears. Also, John Powers reviews the new Apple TV+ series Your Friends & Neighbors, starring Jon Hamm.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Chances are you've got a Johnson & Johnson memory tucked somewhere deep. Maybe it's the scent of baby powder used by our mothers and grandmothers to make us feel a little fresher, a little more put together. Ever since I was a little girl, Johnson's baby powders made me feel soft, fresh, and loved. From the start of your life, it's been a part of your life. A special comfort to you, a loving feeling too. It's a feeling you never outgrow.

Johnson's baby powder is a feeling you never outgrow. If you were Johnson's baby powder from Johnson & Johnson, it's a feeling you never outgrow. Maybe it's that childhood memory of running into the house with a scraped knee reaching for a band-aid from the iconic red and white box, or Tylenol from the medicine cabinet. From pharmaceuticals to medical devices, Johnson & Johnson has been woven into the most tender, vulnerable parts of our lives for generations. But a new book by investigative journalist Gartner Harris challenges that trust.

In No More Tears, The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson, Harris investigates J&J's business practices, the link to its baby powder and cancer, and the urgent questions about the safety of many of its other products. Through court documents, accounts from whistleblowers, and those directly impacted, Harris also writes about the company's aggressive marketing tactics, which he argues helped fuel the opioid epidemic. Just last week, a court rejected Johnson & Johnson's request to approve a $9 billion settlement with tens of thousands of people suing the company over claims that its talcum powder caused cancer.

Gardner Harris is a freelance investigative journalist. He worked previously for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, where he wrote about public health and the pharmaceutical industry. Gardner Harris, welcome to the show. I'm glad to be here, Tanya. Well, Gardner, I really can't wait to delve into the details of this book with you. Number one, Baby Powder. From my memory, I remember only hearing about the dangers of talc a few years ago. So I was really shocked to learn from your book the dangers of talcum powder were first published in the 1920s and then over the decades, research links to cancer grew. But what makes

your writing so astounding is that the growth and popularity of J&J baby powder, it grew as data about the dangers grew. So they were almost like alongside each other as the popularity of the use grew, so did the data showing the dangers. Can you briefly break down for me the links to cancer that were found? Briefly break down for me the links to cancer that were found. So, talc and asbestos have the identical chemical constituents. And it's just a question of time and pressure about whether those chemicals grow into talc on the one hand or asbestos on the other. And in fact, they're so similar that all deposits of talc have at least a little bit of asbestos

in it and all deposits of asbestos have at least a little bit of talc in it. You cannot fully separate the two. And Johnson & Johnson became aware of the presence of asbestos in its talc-based baby powder roughly in the 1940s and 50s. The first documents that are part of the collection of documents that I now include on a website started in the 1950s. And the reason that timeframe is important is that it was around the 1950s that scientists became aware that asbestos was uniquely dangerous amongst minerals, that even tiny microscopic

amounts of asbestos exposure could lead to cancer, most prominently mesothelioma, which is a cancer of the lining of the lung. So in the 1950s and the 1960s, Johnson and Johnson executives start expressing concern internally. Oh no, this is our iconic product. It has asbestos in it, clearly, and there are starting to be concerns about it. But in the early years, you can kind of understand executives pushing off those concerns. Because in the 1960s, asbestos was everywhere in American society.

There was not a car, plane, truck, or boat that didn't have asbestos in it. So the small amounts of asbestos in Johnson's baby powder seemed in those early years as if it wasn't a terrible concern. That would change in the 1970s. So there were research studies done in the 70s. And then moving into the 80s, there was research done that actually tied it to ovarian cancer. Talk a little bit about those studies. So, the research began building up in the 60s and 70s that asbestos was this uniquely dangerous mineral that, again, tiny amounts of it could cause cancer. And then in 1982, a Harvard epidemiologist finally decided to do what researchers had

done 20 years before with smoking, which is to look at a large collection of health records and separate out those who had used talc-based products for a long time from those who hadn't. And what he found was that those women who had used talc-based baby powder, and Johnson and Johnson was by far the most popular, had a significantly increased risk of ovarian cancer versus those women who had not used Johnson's baby powder and other talc-based powders. And to delve a little bit more into that, it was the length and the amount of time that it was used because there's also concerns about it being used on babies. Sure. So that's the thing about asbestos is the mystery of

how it causes cancer continues to this day. Asbestos' particles are so tiny that they actually spear DNA, and that spearing leads to genetic changes that then lead to cancer. But one person can breathe asbestos in large quantities for years, and another person can just be exposed to it for a moment, and that latter person might get cancer, whereas the former person doesn't. But the latency period for asbestos-related cancers, meaning the delay between the exposure in the first instance and the cancer in the other can be decades. In fact, as much as 40 years can pass between the time you're exposed to asbestos and when

you get the disease. And that sets up not only a terrible problem for women who have used this, it also obviously sets up a problem for their babies. About half of American infants during the 20th century had their bottoms dusted with Johnson's baby powder because it was that popular. And so these babies breathed in tiny amounts of asbestos during their infancy. And of course, the mothers did as well. As you know, tiny infants can have diaper changes as many as 12 and even 18 times a

day. And talc is so finely ground that the powder from talc can remain suspended in an air for more than an hour, an hour and a half. So if you're doing a dozen diaper changes over the course of a day, basically you're going to have talc particles and asbestos particles in your changing room's air almost all day. LESLIE KENDRICK It sounds like, though, the challenge in proving that your cancer came from exposure to talc or the constant use of talc, it poses

a problem because it could be many years down the road. It's basically impossible or close to impossible to link a specific case of ovarian cancer with use of Johnson's baby powder decades before. So what lawyers have basically done is show juries the proof, the evidence that asbestos has been in baby powder for all this time, and then show juries the evidence that their clients had used Johnson's baby powder extensively for years, if not decades decades and then asked the juries to kind of make the link. And in some very prominent cases, the juries have been incredibly angry at what Johnson and Johnson did, which is as the evidence of Talke's deadly effects started to build. So that first 1982 epidemiological study was followed by many, many, many more linking talc use on the one hand with cancer on the other hand.

And what Johnson & Johnson did was attack the science, attack the scientists, and deny throughout this period of time that they had ever seen evidence that asbestos was in their baby powder. So while all of that litigation was happening and all of the research was coming out, there is also aggressive marketing towards women to purchase baby powder. You write about how many brands have rational trust, so like Procter & Gamble and Colgate. And then Johnson & Johnson created emotional trust, basically from conception. A mama's implanted with what you call a brain worm, which basically equates trust and intimacy with the brand. And there are several ways that was executed, but I want to play a clip from a commercial brain worm, which basically equates trust and intimacy with the brand.

And there are several ways that was executed, but I want to play a clip from a commercial from 1985. This is three years after that study linked ovarian cancer to baby powder. And in this clip, there's a couple in conversation, and the man is holding the woman's teddy bear that she's had since childhood, which she has named Oscar. And the woman is putting baby powder on her arms as they're talking. Let's listen. Honey. Why do you keep Oscar? We grew up together.

But he's so old. There are some things you just don't give up. Like your Johnson's baby powder? Yeah, like my Johnson's baby powder. It's as soft as there is. Don't you like how it makes my skin feel so smooth and soft? Uh-huh. Well, you wouldn't want to give that up. Never.

Well, I'm not giving up, Oscar. Well, I guess there's some things you never outgrow. The soft feeling of Johnson's baby powder, a feeling you never outgrow. That was a commercial from Johnson & Johnson's Baby powder marketing, 1985. It's marketed towards young women. Gartner, the company continued to use talc even after those studies showed links to ovarian cancer. What was the justification for that when there were other alternatives like cornsteney So other companies, Pfizer among them, Colgate, many other companies used talc powder in their products, in their powders, and nearly all

of those other companies started ending their use of talc because of these dangers and because of the growing literature linking talc use to cancer. Johnson & Johnson didn't do that. Part of the reason was that Johnson & Johnson dominated the space much more than other companies. Another was that Johnson's baby powder was so thoroughly linked with the company and its history. And in fact, the great executive for Johnson & Johnson was Robert Wood Johnson II. And he thought Johnson's baby powder was the company's most important and most valuable product in part, Tanya, because of that extraordinary emotional connection.

As you know, smells are the one sense that is most linked with memory. When you smell something that reminds you of your grandparents' home, for instance, you suddenly are filled with these emotional memories of your grandparents. And that's because your smell center is linked most closely with the emotional center in your brain. And so the two of them combine to create an enormous sense of trust when you become attached to a particular smell. So for decades, Johnson & Johnson executives would start many of their speeches by saying, when I say Johnson's baby powder, how many of you can just smell it? And the entire room would light up.

So that's why the company sort of stubbornly stuck to this product long after the health risks associated with it became very clear and long after nearly every other company abandoned Talc. So Johnson & Johnson just switched over to cornstarch just a few years ago. So this is not that long ago that now you can't really buy baby powder. But does the smell change with cornstarch? It doesn't. So the stubbornness in some ways is sort of hard to understand. But here's the thing. Johnson & Johnson in many ways is a law firm with a drug and a medical device subsidiary attached. The company from very early on has taken a kind of no prisoner's stance to litigation

and to claims against it. It does not settle unless it is absolutely forced to settle. So transitioning from talc-based baby powder to one based upon cornstarch would have seemed to the company as if they were giving in. And that's just not something Johnson & Johnson does. Tell us about the first case brought against J&J over its baby powder. So the first case was filed in 2011-2012 by a lawyer named Alan Smith. He brought it in North Dakota. And his claim basically, he did not have all of these documents that we now have showing

that Johnson's baby powder was filled with asbestos and that the company knew about this since at least the 1950s. He didn't know about those documents because Johnson and Johnson's lawyers refused to provide them. These documents had been requested and Johnson and Johnson's lawyers for decades had defied court orders and simply didn't provide those documents. And so Alan Smith sued. The jury in North Dakota actually found in his favor but didn't award any money to his

client. Meanwhile, a woman got mesothelioma and she filed suit against a company that was linked with Johnson & Johnson claiming that her mesothelioma had happened because she used to do her homework in her father's office who tested talc products. Now, the company again, like it had been doing for 25 years, responded that there was never any documents showing that its talc ever had asbestos in it. But this woman then deposed her father, and her father came in and said that these companies had been lying for decades, that there had been tests showing that there was asbestos in these talcs

and that the companies had been hiding these documents and lying about it ever since. That deposition then led to a whole series of events in which these documents were finally unearthed. Once those documents were unearthed, another lawyer named Mark Lanier sued Johnson & Johnson on behalf of 22 women. The case was heard in a St. Louis courtroom and in 2018, a jury returned an astounding verdict. It found Johnson & Johnson liable for $4.2 billion.

Now on appeal, judges reduced that amount to $2.1 billion, but then Johnson & Johnson appealed that and during the appeal, interest accumulates on that judgment. And so by the time all of the appeals were exhausted, the total amount had risen from 2.1 billion to 2.5 billion. And in fact, interest was accumulating at that point to the tune of $400,000 a day, which was why Johnson & Johnson, when the appeals were exhausted, sent the money to the attorney the very next day, because of course, the interest was accruing at such a shockingly high rate.

Okay. I want to parse a little bit more the legal ease here because I noticed that you have written about how there are something like 93,000 suits against J&J. But I was noticing that J&J says that they have prevailed in 16 or 17 of the Ovarian cases tried in the last 11 years. Right. And they're making the distinction of the last 11 years. Is that true? So that is true. They mostly prevail in court. Now, the problem for Johnson & Johnson is that their defense is beginning to crumble. And the biggest blow to them was in 2019, the FDA, which had been sitting on the sidelines of this dispute for 50 years, decided to do its own test of Johnson's baby powder. And not surprisingly, the FDA found that it was contaminated with asbestos.

But Johnson & Johnson came out with a statement saying that the FDA was wrong. It had gotten its test wrong and that Johnson's baby powder does not have asbestos in it. Nonetheless, the very next year Johnson & Johnson withdrew talc-based baby powder from the American and Canadian markets, and then two years later withdrew it from the rest of the world. Subsequently, more and more and more research has shown that talc cannot be certified as free of asbestos ever, because asbestos will always be present in small amounts. So as that research has built up, Johnson & Johnson's defense has gotten more and more

difficult, which is why Johnson & Johnson has been trying to put this whole thing into bankruptcy court, which has frozen nearly all baby powder lawsuits since 2021, when Johnson & Johnson filed its first bankruptcy claim. Tanya Mosley Our guest today is investigative reporter Gardner Harris. We'll be right back after a break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate. No markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply.

So let me just go back to the testing from the FDA in 2019. If I am reading this correctly though, the FDA had not received any testing results of baby powder danger since the 70s? Since 1973. Okay, so they did their own testing just a few years ago and found that baby powder indeed had asbestos in it. But how could a company go four decades without having to show proof their product was safe with the FDA, especially with the accusations that had been floating around all of this

time? So, the cosmetics office at the FDA is actually part of the food office. The food office has been chronically underfunded for decades. The cosmetic office has almost no funding. The cosmetic office tries to kind of set standards for the industry about the safety of cosmetics, which is what Johnson's baby powder is. It's designated powder is. It's designated a cosmetic.

So those standards are essentially that companies have to test these things themselves and report back to the FDA if any of those test results are concerning. Johnson & Johnson had hundreds of test results that were concerning that showed the presence of asbestos, but the company didn't report a single one of them back to the FDA. And the FDA never really asked for them because, again, that cosmetic office is so massively underfunded, they simply couldn't do anything about it. Do you have any estimates on the number of deaths from ovarian cancer linked to J&J's baby powder? So, the president of the American Epidemiological Society did do an estimate as part of this litigation. And at the time, she estimated from a fairly narrow range of years, around 85,000 women

had died from ovarian cancer exclusively because of their use of Johnson's baby powder. There have been many more years. And so she basically said roughly 15% of the women in the United States who die of ovarian cancer probably got their disease because of Johnson's baby powder. There are roughly 20,000 women every year who get ovarian cancer. As you know, it's an unusually deadly illness because there is no screening for get ovarian cancer. As you know, it's an unusually deadly illness because there is no screening for an ovarian cancer. Usually when a woman finds out about it, she's already third or fourth stage. It's very advanced. My own sister died last year of ovarian cancer. Oh, sorry. of ovarian cancer. She didn't know that she was sick. So ovarian cancer has a roughly

50% mortality within five years because so many women just don't know they're sick until it's too late. I mean, I was even just wondering about other ovarian conditions because I mean, every woman I know has used baby powder to keep fresh at some point. Right. So the funny thing about and sort of the sad thing about Johnson's baby powder and the use of talc for thousands of years is that it's linked with sort of two unfortunate things,

right? One is racism, the other misogyny. Racism because Talke has for thousands of years been a basic skin whitener. In places like India, where I lived for many years, skin whiteners are by far the most popular cosmetic. And the other thing that Talke and Johnson's baby powder in particular was used for was

by women who were concerned about normal vaginal smells. They used this powder in their underwear to cover up those smells, even though, as we know, there is nothing wrong with normal vaginal smells. That's why they would use it every morning. I want to talk about the media. How would you describe J&J's relationship with the media over the years? You tell actually the story about this outlet out of San Diego that wanted to do its own testing of Johnson's baby powder. Right.

What happened in that case? So, there were case after case after case where journalists tackled this story, got labs to test Johnson's baby powder, found that those tests showed the presence of asbestos. They then would contact the company. The company would call the headquarters of those newspaper and TV journalists and say, if you run this story, we will withdraw all of our ads. Now Johnson & Johnson was not only one of the largest pharmaceutical companies, it was also one of the largest medical device companies, and it had among the largest slate of consumer healthcare products like Avino, Tylenol, St. Joseph's Aspirin, countless other products that we all count on on a day-to-day basis.

So it is one of the largest advertisers in the world. If you watch the evening news, for example, you will see ad after ad after ad of prescription medicines. Johnson & Johnson is a huge player in that space. And if you tackle this company, you do so at the risk of the very funds that are used to fund journalism. Right, the loss of that advertising. Let's take a short break.

If you're just joining us, my guest is investigative journalist Gardner Harris. We're talking to him about his new book, No More Tears, The Dark Secrets of Johnson and Johnson. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. Let's get into Tylenol. So one of the things in this book you do is lay out, really you just laid out the pattern of inaction from J&J

after knowing about potential dangers. And Tylenol, which is one of the company's most profitable products, let's go to the 1980s and the incident known as the Chicago Tylenol murders. There was a man who poisoned many of those bottles with cyanide. And then Johnson & Johnson was credited with creating the tamper-resistant packaging that we know today. And it kind of created this halo over the company.

But one of the most enduring narratives is that the tampering of these bottles came out of the blue, which could not be anticipated. And you actually found that that was not true. Sure. There had been multiple prior smaller tampering episodes for years. One of the reasons why Johnson & Johnson could pivot so quickly to having bottles manufactured with all three seals is the company had been considering

a step like this for many years because of the prior contamination episodes. Lyle Ornstein So they were able to come out very quickly with this new tamper-proof bottle. But the FDA's role in this, you say that the FDA ignored, enabled, or encouraged really every disaster in this book. So every FDA commissioner of the modern era has gone to work for pharmaceutical companies after they left government service. Some of them worked for pharma companies before government service. Arthur Hayes Jr., who was the commissioner during the 1982 Tylenol scare, quickly, almost

instantly, forgave Johnson & Johnson any role in the crisis. He almost immediately announced that there was no way that Johnson & Johnson could have known about the poisoning or could have been involved with it, despite the fact that there had been, as we talked about, these prior poisoning episodes. Lyle Ornstein In those early press releases involving the Tylenol murders, you mentioned how it was headed with McNeil Laboratories, which is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

Can you explain the significance of that along with Janssen pharmaceutical acquisitions for Johnson & Johnson? Because that kind of set them in the center of the pharmaceutical industry. It really bolstered the J&J portfolio. In the 1950s, top executives at Johnson & Johnson decided that the company which should really get into the pharmaceutical industry. At the time, drugs were known as the ethical pharmaceutical industry, but there were any number of schlock cures that were widely sold. And the head of Johnson & Johnson at the time, a truly ethical man, Robert W. Johnson II,

didn't want to get into the industry because of its reputation for schlock cures. But he was finally persuaded to buy two companies, one, McNeil Laboratories, a family-owned drug maker based in Philadelphia whose biggest drug at the time was Tylenol, which at the time was available only by prescription. And he bought a Belgium-based drug maker named Janssen Pharmaceutical, which was basically a drug discovery lab owned by Paul Janssen, one of the great drug discoverers in history. Those two purchases were spectacularly successful. Soon after the purchase, McNeil Laboratories got approval from the FDA to sell Tylenol over the counter.

And Paul Janssen discovered a whole wealth of drugs. One of the drugs he discovered, by the way, was fentanyl. Another drug he discovered was Haldol, one of the most popular antipsychotics ever sold. So quickly pharmaceuticals became the biggest moneymaker for Johnson & Johnson. And of course, Tylenol going over the counter turned out to be a bonanza. And one of the most important things for Tylenol was in 1976, the FDA approved over-the-counter sales of extra strength Tylenol. Now, this is acetaminophen at 500 milligram doses, which is a very high dose. And in fact, Tylenol extra strength to this day is

the only over-the-counter medicine where the recommended dose is the same as the maximum dose. If you go over the recommended dose, you very much risk liver failure. Well, I mean, yes, we now look at a bottle of Tylenol and we see that warning label that overuse can cause liver damage. But that was a long fought battle to get those warnings and people actually suffered. Sure. For decades, the FDA at Johnson & Johnson's behest, refused to require any kind of warnings or any kind of real warnings on bottles of Tylenol, which was why Tylenol has long been

the most dangerous over-the-counter medicine, and it's not even close. Deaths from all other over-the-counter medicines combined don't add up to the deaths from Tylenol. And that's because not only is extra strength Tylenol the recommended dose is the maximum dose, but in some people, and you don't know if this is you, they have a special sensitivity to the medicine in Tylenol, which is known as acetaminophen. People who drink the standard amount of alcohol, which is a couple of drinks a day, have a particular susceptibility to acetaminophen. And I'm not talking about drinking while taking acetaminophen. I'm just talking if you drink in your life, you have an extra sensitivity to acetaminophen.

So FDA would consult expert advisory committees again and again and again about what to do. And again and again, these advisory committees told the FDA, you have to strengthen the warning on Tylenol. So I asked you earlier about the first case brought against J&J over its baby powder. Briefly tell us about some of the women that have filed lawsuits. Is there a case that stands out for you? Matthew Feeney One that was personally very important to me was Mary Pasder.

I knew Mary for years because she was married to Rick Pasder, who's the top cancer official at the FDA. Mary herself was an oncology nurse who worked at the National Institutes for Health, which I also covered. She was delightful. She had these two yappy dogs that were terribly actually behaved, and one of them bit me badly when I visited the pastors at their apartment one day. But Mary got ovarian cancer and I was with her as she fought this illness. And in fact, she asked the FDA to approve an experimental use of a particular cancer

compound to treat her cancer and it was her husband, Rick Pasder, who approved that experimental use. But she eventually succumbed to the illness and died. When it came out a few years later that FDA found asbestos in Johnson's baby powder, Rick Pasder, her surviving husband, filed suit against Johnson & Johnson, something almost no one knows. Because Rick Pasier is arguably the most influential oncologist on the planet. He has seen more secret data about cancer drugs than any person alive. He believes that Johnson's baby powder killed his wife because as he says, Mary Paster used Johnson's baby powder every morning when she got out of the shower.

In fact, he tells this story about he always wore black socks to the office and if he ever went into the bathroom after Mary was there, his black socks would turn white because of the amount of Johnson's baby powder that she would sprinkle on herself and that would get on the floor of the bathroom. What came of his lawsuit? His lawsuit is one of 93,000 that were frozen by the many bankruptcy filings that Johnson & Johnson has filed. It will now advance because as you said at the beginning, that last bankruptcy filing was thrown out by a federal judge just last week.

So Rick is waiting for his day in court. Danielle Pletka Gardner Harris, thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Tanya. Investigative journalist Gartner Harris, his new book is called No More Tears, The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson. We reached out to Johnson & Johnson for comment on Harris' reporting, and they issued a statement saying, quote, we stand behind the safety of our products and are focused on what we do best, delivering medical innovation for patients around the world.

Coming up, critic at large John Powers reviews the new TV series, Your Friends and Neighbors, starring Jon Hamm. This is Fresh Air. In the new TV series, Your Friends and Neighbors, Jon Hamm stars as a rich hedge fund guy who loses his job and turns to crime to pay for his exceedingly high bills. The show, which also stars Amanda Peet, has already been renewed for a second season on Apple TV+. Our critic at large, Jon Powers, has seen the first six of the nine episodes and calls it a sharply entertaining series that harkens back to earlier portraits of suburban life,

but gives things an up-to-date spin. In the decades after World War II, America was flooded with novels, movies, and hot-button studies pondering the nature of suburbia, its comfort and consumerism, its safety and soullessness. Nobody explored these themes any better than John Cheever, whose elegantly devastating stories captured suburban life in both its sunlit splendor and shadowy desolation. Take for instance his famous 1956 story, The Housebreaker of Shady Hill. Its hero, Johnny Haake, loses his prosperous job and, needing dough, begins robbing his friend's houses.

You could have 2025 riff on that same idea in the new Apple TV Plus series, Your Friends and Neighbors. Created by Jonathan Tropper, who made his name with a series of novels in the Tom Peratta Nick Hornby vein, this comic drama stars Jon Hamm as a hedge-fund hotshot whose cushy suburban existence goes curfewy. Yet the show isn't merely about the flamboyant crisis of a handsome, privileged guy, but about a culture in which wealth comes lined with rage and melancholy. Ham plays our hero and narrator Andrew Cooper, known as Coop, who gets canned for a sexual

indiscretion and finds his career in ruins. He's already lost his family, which happened when he caught his wife Mel, that's Amanda Peet, in bed with one of his friends, an ex-NBA player. Outwardly Coop pretends that nothing has happened, but internally he's changed. Where he once thought of his luxurious town of Westmont Village as paradise, he's now cynical about its values. He starts breaking into his friend's houses, stealing things like Patek Philippe watches worth $250,000,

and in the process discovering their secrets. From there, the show expands outwards, introducing many other characters, such as Coop's sometime lover Sam, that's Olivia Munn, who's caught in a nasty divorce, his money manager Barney, played by Hoon Lee, his wife's Dominican house cleaner Elena, played by Eme Correro, and his musician sister Allie, that's Tony winner Lena Hall, whom Coop has taken in after her breakdown. They all figure in a storyline chock-full of betrayal, theft, infidelity, and murder. Juicy stuff.

Not to mention Coop's sardonic voiceover, mocking the country club fees and fetishized brands of scotch that define the suburban enclave he now disdains. The show's emotional center is Coop's struggle to cope with his ex-wife and disaffected teenage children. Here he's just dropped his son off after school, when Mill rebukes him because this isn't one of the days he's supposed to see the kids. What are you doing here? I took Connor for some ice cream. That's not Tuesday.

So I've been told. Is Tori here? She's not home yet. What? What? What is the look? I don't give any look. You are giving me the look that there's the look where you're trying not to give me a

look so what's the problem? I think it's a little tricky when you show up on a day that isn't your day. I took him out for ice cream. My God. What do you think for him? Boundaries are there for a reason. Boundaries? You mean like monogamy?

Really, Coop? It's been almost two years. When are you going to stop playing that card? I don't know. What is the statute of limitations on adultery? Boundaries, you mean like monogamy? Really? It's been almost two years. When are you gonna stop playing that card? I don't know. What is the statute of limitations on adultery? If you were even remotely self-aware, you'd realize these things don't happen in a vacuum. I mean you could maybe take a little portion of responsibility for your side of it.

Okay, I'm sorry, but you sleep with Nick. You kick me out of this place. I'm forced to pay for this entire mess, and I'm the one that's not being responsible. I'm not doing this right now. Oh well it's really no fun doing it alone. In recent years we've grown used to shows in which alpha males like Coop all but wear a tattoo that reads toxic masculinity. I'm pleased that Tropper takes the show someplace subtler, juggling the truth that his hero can be at once a wounded soul with whom one often identifies, and a self-centered man who oozes entitlement from his Princeton degree in Maserati to his discovery that the world's unfair, only after it's been unfair to him.

It's a perfect role for Ham, who carries with him our memories of Don Draper's dark-souled charisma, then takes this sort of character in a new direction. Funnier, sadder, and more sympathetic. He's never been better. Although his coup starts out as a self-described jerk, his character grows wiser and more self-aware as the episodes unfold. Trouble is, robbery is a risky business that requires expertise more than self-knowledge. As his fence-lube warns him, nothing is so dangerous as somebody who doesn't know what they don't know. Watching your friends and neighbors, I found myself thinking that in some huge ways today's suburbs are undeniably better than they once were.

They're less exclusively white, and the wives have fulfilling careers. But in other ways they feel worse. Trapper offers little of the tender lyricism that makes Cheever's suburbs so seductive. It's not just that Coop's world is more grossly materialistic than before, with Rolls-Royces and forty grand bottles of wine, but that its denizens are far more cut off from one another and from any sense of nobler values. In The Housebreaker of Shady Hill, Johnny Hakes steals $900 from a friend and spends the story feeling guilty and ashamed that he's become a thief.

In The Far Flashier, Your Friends and Neighbors, Coop suffers little such remorse. Not in the first six episodes anyway. Nor does the show judge him harshly for his thefts. He's got an expensive life to pay for, after all. And besides, his victims are just rich jerks like him. John Powers reviewed Your Friends and Neighbors, which starts streaming Friday on Apple TV+. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock,

Anne-Marie Boldenado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nkundee, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. They a challenger,enger directed today's show. With Cherry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.