duPont-Winning Podcast, “Sold a Story,” Launches a Season 2

By Sophie McDougall, 2026-27 duPont Fellow

In 2022, Emily Hanford premiered Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong, a six-part podcast series that exposed how America’s most popular reading curricula was scientifically flawed, leaving millions of kids without basic reading abilities. Through her reporting, Hanford revealed that fluent readers need to understand phonetics – a skill that needs to be explicitly taught. Instead, schools across the country were, often unknowingly, following reading programs that ignored this evidence. As a result, millions of American children were reading far below grade level.

Hanford’s podcast sparked a national conversation. After the release, more than half of states passed new reading legislation. The “science of reading” law - which requires public schools to teach reading through evidence-based methods - was enacted in 46 states, including Washington D.C. Hanford was recognized as a duPont-Columbia winner for her reporting in 2024.

But Hanford isn’t done examining this important issue. “After season one, teachers wrote to me and said: it’s not just reading,” said Hanford in the trailer for the upcoming season. Math and science, apparently, have been approached in a similar way.

In her next batch of reporting, Hanford looks at an approach to teaching that has been largely rejected by the education system despite evidence that it works. 

The first two episodes of Sold a Story Season 2: What Happened to Teaching? premiere October 15th.

To listen to Hanford’s award winning reporting in season 1, listen here.

To watch the trailer for season 2, click here: