NPR Had an In-House Cocaine Dealer, According to Wild New Tell

NPR Had an In-House Cocaine Dealer, According to Wild New Tell-All

Kathryn Wilkens Jun 11th, 2025, 9:51 am

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Veteran journalist Steve Oney has spent the last decade reporting out his new book, On Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR . On this week’s episode of , he peeled back the curtain on NPR’s early years, describing a newsroom awash in sex, drugs, and countercultural fervor.

Oney called the organization’s early staff “radio revolutionaries,” and described “a culture of openness and experimentation” in its newsroom. But it wasn’t just flower power and idealism driving NPR’s founding generation. There was, according to Oney, actual powder.

“There was a cocaine dealer at NPR in the late ’70s, early ’80s,” he told Mediaite editor Aidan McLaughlin . “H