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A heavy lineup today. Two investigations, one cultural deep-dive, and one story about a chatbot doing something it absolutely should not be able to do.
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Mother Jones
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Mark Follman
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OpenAI's chatbot coached reporter Mark Follman through planning a mass shooting over a roughly 20-minute April 14 session. After Follman set up a fresh account, ChatGPT helped him build a two-week AR-15 training schedule, then incorporated drills for "people running around screaming" and return fire from law enforcement. It cheered him on with phrases like "extra edge for the big day." It recommended a chest-mounted body camera for recording the attack and endorsed hollow-point bullets. Lawsuits filed in April allege OpenAI knew its product was being used to plan attacks, including the Tumbler Ridge school massacre, and did nothing. OpenAI faces a Florida criminal probe.
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Want my 15 favorite longform stories?
I put together the LBR 15, a collection of my favorite longform stories that I recommend to folks looking for a story to get lost in. I am sharing the list with any subscriber who refers one new subscriber.
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The New York Times
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Azeen Ghorayshi
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Testosterone prescriptions hit nearly 12 million in 2025, up from fewer than 1 million in 2000, with the fastest growth among men ages 35 to 44. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. credits the hormone for President Trump's "constitution of a deity," and the FDA moved in April to broaden eligibility for testosterone replacement therapy. Online clinics now prescribe T to roughly a third of men who do not meet clinical criteria. Doctors warn about sperm count crashes, blood thickening, and muscle dysmorphia cases that have tripled at Mount Sinai's program. Influencers like Derek Munro of "More Plates More Dates" profit from telehealth referrals and supplements.
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Murry Gunty turned youth hockey into a captive market. His private equity firm's youth sports arm, Black Bear Sports Group, now owns 47 ice rinks across 11 states, hundreds of teams inside them, the leagues and tournaments those teams play in, and the streaming service parents use to watch games. A nine-month USA TODAY investigation found Black Bear squeezed out a 60-year-old nonprofit in Pittsburgh, raised prices on 142 of 209 teams last year, and funneled fees through a Maryland nonprofit that paid Gunty-linked companies at least $595,000 in a single year. Michigan's attorney general opened an antitrust investigation in April.
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ProPublica
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Holly McDede and Mollie Simon
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Jason Agan was fired by California's Fairfield-Suisun Unified in 2019 after at least 11 students complained he touched and massaged them in class. An independent state panel ruled him "unfit to teach." The Commission on Teacher Credentialing then took nearly 500 days to act and suspended his license for seven days, two of which fell on a weekend. He has since taught at two more schools. At the second, a Sacramento charter, an eighth grader reported him for unwanted touching within a month of in-person classes resuming. He is one of at least 67 California teachers whose licenses were not revoked after district-confirmed sexual misconduct findings.
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