Webinar Speaker & Information

Ben Westhoff is a best-selling investigative journalist, speaker, and filmmaker focused on drugs, culture, and poverty. His books are taught around the country and have been translated into languages all over the world.

Westhoff’s Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic is the bombshell first book about fentanyl, which is causing the worst drug crisis in American history. Westhoff was interviewed about the book for Fresh Air and Joe Rogan, and has written about the fentanyl crisis for The New York Times, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, and many others. Since the book’s publication, Westhoff has advised top government officials on the fentanyl crisis, including from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the U.S. embassy in Beijing, and the U.S. State Department. He now speaks at conferences and summits around the country about the opioid crisis, and is the 2023 Norman E. Zinberg Memorial Lecture awardee from Harvard Medical School.

His new book Little Brother: Love, Tragedy, and My Search for the Truth tells the story of his relationship with Jorell Cleveland, his longtime mentee in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. When Jorell was murdered at age 19, and the case went cold, Ben used his skills as an investigative journalist to find the killer. It’s a three-year investigation set in the northern suburbs of St. Louis that uncovers a heartbreaking cycle of poverty, poor education, drug trafficking, and violence. The Common Reader calls it “important and a must-read.”

Westhoff’s 2016 book Original Gangstas: Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and the Birth of West Coast Rap is one of the best-selling hip-hop books of all time. It received raves from Rolling Stone and People, and a starred review in Kirkus. S. Leigh Savidge, Academy Award nominee and co-writer of Straight Outta Compton said it “may be the best book ever written about the hip hop world.”

Westhoff‘s work has appeared in The New York Times, the Library of Congress, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, Daily Beast, New York, Forbes, Vice, Oxford American, Pitchfork, and others. He’s been honored by the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Entertainment Journalism Awards, Religion Newswriters Association, Best Music Writing, Best of Southern Food Writing, L.A. Press Club, and the Missouri Press Association.

He has been interviewed as an expert commentator for CNN, BET, A&E, and ITV, and is the former L.A. Weekly music editor and Voice Media Group Senior music editor. He’s a contributor to the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap, and his 2011 book on southern hip-hop, Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop continues to be a strong backlist title.

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This event was pre-recorded at the 2023 Champions for Youth Summit. 

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