Robert Benincasa

At the Pittsburgh Sword Fighters club, members are asked to leave their politics at the door, a rule that has led to closer relationships and more learning from one another.

A Bastrop, Texas, man was working in a trench when it collapsed. He died a week later.

An NPR investigation finds thousands of veterans were pushed into high-cost mortgages by a program that was meant to help them. A rescue plan being rolled out by the Department of Veterans Affairs is excluding many vets who need help.

NPR looks at grocery inflation and politics in Pittsburgh, a focus of both major presidential campaigns in their quest to woo voters in must-win Pennsylvania.

More than 250 people have died since 2013 when trenches they were working in caved in. In most cases, the employers failed to follow basic government regulations for making trenches safe.

A joint investigation by NPR, Texas Public Radio and the program 1A finds that more than 250 workers have died in trench cave-ins over the last decade. Deaths that were preventable, experts say.

Karen McDonough of Quincy, Mass., was enjoying her tea one morning in the dining room when she saw something odd outside her window: a group of people gathering on her lawn. A man with a clipboard told her that her home no longer belonged to her. It didn't matter that she'd been paying her mortgage for 17 years and was current on it. She was a nurse with a good job and had raised her kids there. But this was a foreclosure sale, and she was going to lose her house. McDonough had fallen victim to what's called a zombie second mortgage. Homeowners think these loans are long dead. But then the loans come back to life because they get bought up, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, by debt collectors that then move to collect and foreclose on people's homes. On today's episode: An NPR investigation reveals the practice to be widespread. Also, what are zombie mortgages? Is all this legal? And is there any way for homeowners to fight the zombies? You can read more about zombie second mortgages online at: npr.org/zombie This episode was hosted by Chris Arnold and Robert Smith. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Jess Jiang with help from Bob Little. And it was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Robert Rodriguez with an assist from Patrick Murray. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

An NPR investigation finds that many people with VA loans who got a COVID forbearance are at risk of losing their homes. The VA has a fix, but it could be too late unless it halts foreclosures.

Miners and their advocates testify in favor of new silica regulations aimed at preventing black lung disease

At a hearing miners asked regulators to crack down on silica dust which causes lung cancer. They want rules to require more air monitoring and contain specifics about citations and fines.