The Sunshine Place
The Sunshine Place is a documentary podcast about the 1980s drug war and the controversial teen rehab program Straight Incorporated. Season 2 examines how Straight promised to help troubled teenagers through tough love but, according to survivors, became a site of abuse, torture, and brainwashing. The series explores the program's impact on parents and children and its connections to power, money, and politics. It also links back to Synanon, the subject of Season 1. The podcast is executive produced by Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, and Emily Barclay Ford of Team Downey with Josh McLaughlin of Wink Pictures, and is an Audacy original.
Episodes
Welcome to The Sunshine Place
Once called “the miracle on the beach,” Synanon began in the 1960s as an experimental rehab facility in Santa Monica, California with a radical claim: It could cure heroin addiction. Before long, it would make an even bolder claim: It could cure any of your problems. All you had to do was move in. What started in a house on the beach, soon spread to compounds across the country. The man who made t
S1|E1: The Kidsnatchers
Welcome to Synanon. If you're wondering what Synanon is, then you're asking the same question as Celena and Mike, whose lives change forever the moment they arrive. It's the 1970s, and Synanon is a community, a utopia, a cautionary tale, and a cult. But more than anything else, it's a person, the founder of Synanon, a man named Charles E. Dederich, who most people call, Chuck.
S1|E2: The Miracle on the Beach
Chuck Dederich hits rock bottom as an alcoholic in the beachside slums of Los Angeles. It's 1958, and he's got nothing but an idea, but it's one that would save countless lives. He calls it Synanon. Others call it the Miracle on the Beach. Through sheer force of will, Chuck's idea becomes national news, and Synanon becomes a household word.
S1|E3: The Trip
Legend, ritual, religion, LSD. Chuck experiments with all of it on his followers in Synanon.
S1|E4: The Punk Squad
Chuck breaks one of his two rules for Synanon, no violence, beginning with his youngest followers.
S1|E5: The Breeders
Chuck declares that there will be no more children born in Synanon, and he goes to great lengths to make sure of it.
S1|E6: Changing Partners
After Chuck's wife Betty passes away, he quickly finds a new partner, and he instructs his followers to find new ones too, whether they want to or not.
S1|E7: The Holy War
Chuck is consumed by paranoia and Synanon erupts in violence.
S1|E8: The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Chuck Dederich's story reaches its conclusion. Whether or not Synanon does is up for debate.
Introducing: The Sunshine Place, Season 2
Welcome to the 1980s, where the war on drugs rages on and America's teenagers are caught in the crossfire. Enter Straight Incorporated, a controversial new rehab program that promises its tough love approach can set kids back on the straight and narrow. But for the survivors of Straight, their experience tells a horrifyingly different story — one of abuse, torture, and brainwashing. Season 2 of “T
S2|E1: Intake
On Halloween of 1982, a Florida teenager named Valerie is kidnapped from her home, by her own mom. She ends up at an experimental drug rehab called Straight Incorporated. Valeries quickly realizes that at Straight, therapy is more like torture, and rehabiliation happens through indoctrination. When Valerie doesn’t know yet is that Straight is connected to something much bigger and more sinister th
S2|E2: The Seed
To understand Straight, we have to look back at its predecessor: The Seed. This Florida-based rehab center was founded by Art Barker, a former alcoholic and stand-up comedian turned rehabilitation guru. In the 1970s, he took his new act on the road, performing not in empty comedy clubs, but in packed warehouses filled with teenagers and their desperate parents.
S2|E3: Start Again
The Seed is heading down a dark and dangerous path, but nobody seems to realize it, except for the kids. As The Seed grows, so does the ego of its founder, Art Barker. The bigger the program gets, the more rumors start to spread about what is really happening behind closed doors. When people start asking questions they are alarmed by the answers.
S2|E4: Drug Warriors
As Straight Incorporated makes plans to expand across the country, the program’s founder recruits a powerful ally with connections to the White House. But in order to secure a presidential endorsement, Straight will have to answer one glaring question. Is the program brainwashing kids?
S2|E5: The Mayflower Group
Straight Incorporated sets its sites on the next prime market. The suburbs of Washington, D.C., with its population of wealthy and powerful parents who are also desperate and vulnerable to Straight’s propaganda. But one of the kids there comes up with a daring plan that threatens to upend Straight’s expanding empire.
S2|E6: Poster Child
Princess Diana graces Straight Incorporated with her presence at the invitation of the First Lady, Nancy Reagan. Their visit puts the program in the international spotlight. Enrollment numbers explode, but more teenagers to rehabilitate means more parents to indoctrinate. At Straight, adults take their cues from kids, no matter how vicious the mandate. Whether you call it rehabilitation or brainwa
S2|E7: KIDS
It’s the 1990s, and the rehab landscape has changed, but into this new environment enters a familiar opportunist. Dr. Miller Newton, the personification of the evil at Straight Inc., resurfaces with a new program and a new scheme to con parents. When the next generation of teenagers fall under his influence, it seems like they might never recover.
S2|E8: Survivors
By the early 2000s, the “troubled teens” of Straight Incorporated have grown up, and they’re no longer victims, they’re survivors. Many of them embark on a quest for answers, but the architects of their pain and suffering have moved on to bigger, more insidious things. So the survivors look to one another for meaning, but their newfound connection reveals a profoundly dark secret. Together, they d
Introducing: What We Spend
Imagine if you could ask someone anything you wanted about their finances. On What We Spend, people from across the country and across the financial spectrum are opening their wallets—and their lives—to tell you everything: what they make, what they want, and—for one week—what they spend.
