Focus: We Keep Us Safe
by KUOW News and Information
Latest episode
We Keep Us Safe: Circles of Silence
We Keep Us Safe: Circles of Silence
About this podcast
New Season "We Keep Us Safe" starting September 21, 2026.
In the summer of 2020, sixteen-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. traveled a thousand miles to join the racial justice movement of his generation. He arrived in Seattle during the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, known as CHOP. Less than a week later, he was shot and killed there. The case remains unsolved. In this eight-part series, first published on NPR’s Embedded, KUOW’s Will James and The Seattle Times’ Sydney Brownstone track down key figures and eyewitnesses from the night of the shooting and surface crucial evidence that has never been made public.
We Keep Us Safe is a joint production of KUOW, The Seattle Times, and NPR’s Embedded.
Focus is KUOW’s home for immersive audio documentaries. Each season zooms in on a single story that challenges commonly held narratives about life in the Pacific Northwest and reveals something bigger about American society. Series include Adults in the Room and the Peabody-nominated Lost Patients.
Episodes
- We Keep Us Safe: Circles of Silence · 48 min · Season 3 Episode 8As the lawsuit over Antonio Mays Jr.’s death goes to trial, more clues bring us closer to identifying the person who shot him at close range. Will Antonio’s father finally get…
- We Keep Us Safe: The Sentinels · 41 min · Season 3 Episode 7The hunt for Antonio’s killer leads us to a mysterious security group called the Sentinels. For the first time, former members speak about their operation at CHOP and describe…
- We Keep Us Safe: Inside the White Jeep · 36 min · Season 3 Episode 6An interview with a protester who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting leads to a tip that changes the entire investigation.
- We Keep Us Safe: The Chase · 37 min · Season 3 Episode 5What really happened the night Antonio Mays Jr. was killed? Protesters claim he was attacking CHOP and they had to defend themselves. But new evidence from that night turns…
- We Keep Us Safe: Pocket's World · 39 min · Season 3 Episode 4Who was Antonio Mays Jr.? What was he up to at CHOP? A deep dive into Antonio’s last few weeks leads to perplexing rumors, new details about the night he was killed and…
- We Keep Us Safe: This Ain’t Coachella · 34 min · Season 3 Episode 3After police retreat from their precinct, protesters begin occupying roughly eight blocks of Seattle. It's their attempt at a police-free world. But as rumors spread, fear and…
- We Keep Us Safe: The Standoff · 39 min · Season 3 Episode 2EPISODE 2: In the summer of 2020, protests are happening all across the country. But Seattle is different.
- We Keep Us Safe: Who Killed Antonio Mays Jr.? · 36 min · Season 3 Episode 1EPISODE 1: When 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. was shot and killed inside Seattle's CHOP protest zone in 2020, protesters claimed self-defense. For years, that version of events…
- Adults in the Room: The Ultimatum · 1 h 0 min · Season 2 Episode 9In this final episode of Adults in the Room, we uncover how extensive Tom Hudson’s crimes were … and how little we really understood about his death.
- Adults in the Room Live: A behind-the-scenes look at an investigation 25 years in the making · 1 h 21 min · Season 2 Episode 8The team recently gathered to discuss behind-the-scenes moments and decisions from the series—including interviews that didn't make it into the final episodes, the continued…
- Adults in the Room: Bad Apples · 38 min · Season 2 Episode 7A surprise archival interview with a former Garfield High School principal reveals that teacher abuse was more pervasive than Tom Hudson.
- Adults in the Room: The Boy in the Photograph · 30 min · Season 2 Episode 6Isolde discovers a mystery student’s identity from 1994 and interviews him about his time with Tom Hudson.
- Adults in the Room: The Bet · 32 min · Season 2 Episode 5Ella and Isolde, as adults, start investigating the question of Hudson’s guilt. To start their inquiry, Isolde digs out an envelope containing the school district's records on…
- Adults in the Room: Jonathan · 40 min · Season 2 Episode 4One of the students who was closest to Hudson, Jonathan Hill, spends the weeks after his teacher's death trying to ensure his reputation and legacy go untarnished by the…
- Adults in the Room: Blame the Messenger · 36 min · Season 2 Episode 3The school district sends an investigator to Garfield to look into the allegations against Tom Hudson. Isolde and Ella wonder if they did the right thing.
- Adults in the Room: The Price of Belief · 41 min · Season 2 Episode 2Garfield High School is shocked after learning their beloved principal is in an inappropriate relationship with a student.
- Adults in the Room: Mounting Danger · 33 min · Season 2 Episode 1In 1998, a popular teacher at Garfield High School in Seattle falls into a crevasse while mountain-climbing in Olympic National Park. Six of his teenage students then pull off a…
- Coming Soon: Adults in the Room (Trailer) · 3 min · Season 2The production team behind Lost Patients returns on February 24 with a new investigative series: Adults in the Room. Seattle, 1999. At Garfield High School, Mr. Hudson is a…
- Lost Patients Live: First-Person Stories from Seattle's Mental Health Crisis · 55 min · Season 1 Episode 7Lost Patients compares the system for treating mental illness in America to an elaborate house, where every room, hallway and staircase was designed independently by a different…
- Lost Patients: Disease Without Knowledge · 50 min · Season 1 Episode 6"Something is preventing us from building a system that works for people with serious mental illness. In lieu of that, patients are often left to improvise recovery for…
- Lost Patients: The Way Out · 53 min · Season 1 Episode 5After 10 months at Washington State's largest psychiatric hospital, Adam Aurand is discharged onto the streets of downtown Seattle — ejected into a world shaped by decades of…
- Lost Patients: Opening · 46 min · Season 1 Episode 4In the middle of the last century, a movement to free patients from state-run psychiatric hospitals swept the U.S. This movement — deinstitutionalization — is widely blamed for…
- Lost Patients: Nostalgia · 48 min · Season 1 Episode 3After Carrie Davidson learned that her great-grandmother died in a psychiatric hospital, she spent years tracking down details of her life there. Was the asylum a refuge? Or a…
- Lost Patients: Against Their Will · 42 min · Season 1 Episode 2Across the U.S., efforts are underway to make it easier to involuntarily commit people to psychiatric hospitals. It's a reaction to the sight of seriously mentally ill people on…
- Lost Patients: Churn · 47 min · Season 1 Episode 1Heidi Aurand has watched her son Adam spiral from one psychiatric crisis to the next for about eight years, bouncing between emergency rooms, jails, and homelessness. Now, after…
