Backfired

When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn’t kill them, they didn’t foresee all the obstacles that lay ahead — or the powerful forces their invention would unleash. Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution to one of the world’s most pressing public health problems—or was this technology doomed to introduce a whole new generation to nicotine, and end up perpetuating an intractable addiction?

Backfired is the latest podcast from Prologue Projects, the award-winning team behind Slow Burn, Fiasco, and Think Twice: Michael Jackson. Backfired is a show about the business of unintended consequences—what happens when solving one problem inadvertently leads to a host of new ones?

In this tale of opportunity, addiction, and good intentions gone awry, hosts Leon Neyfakh and Arielle Pardes offer a definitive account of Juul Labs’ rise and fall, as well as the ubiquitous illegal vape market that sprouted up in its wake. Through dozens of original interviews, they gain access to the key players who got swept up—sometimes unwittingly—in the firestorm that reshaped the culture of nicotine.

For a list of books, articles, and documentaries used in the research for this podcast, please visit bit.ly/backfiredbib.

The senior producer of Backfired: The Vaping Wars was Sam Lee. The editor was Kim Gittleson. Producers were Dustin Desoto, Leon Neyfakh, Arielle Pardes, and Katherine Sullivan. The assistant producer was Arlene Arevalo. Sound design by Andrew Parsons. Archival research and fact-checking by Francis Carr. Theme song and score composed by Emma Munger. Audio mix by Erica Huang. Backfired was co-created for Prologue Projects by Kim Gittleson.