Reveal

More To The Story: Last month, Duane “Keffe D” Davis was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of rapper Tupac Shakur. The verdict came 30 years after Tupac was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas that for decades remained cloaked in conspiracy theory and mystery. It’s impossible to overstate rapper Tupac’s influence on music and culture in the 1990s. One of the era’s bestselling musical artists, he helped define West Coast hip-hop through vulnerable, introspective lyrics and Black power politics. By his own admission, sports writer Jeff Pearlman is not the rapper’s likeliest biographer. But as he waited for what he called “the big, fat biography” of Tupac, his impatience and long-standing fascination with the rapper got the best of him. So he set out to write it himself. On this week’s episode, Pearlman talks about his book Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur; discusses how Tupac’s Black Panther mother, Afeni Shakur, shaped her son; and examines the nuance and mystery that surrounded Tupac’s life and death for decades. This episode first aired in June 2026. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: The 24 Best Books We Read in 2025 (Mother Jones) Listen: Baltimore Mayor to Trump: Don’t Send Your Troops (More To The Story) Read: Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur (Mariner Books) Note: If you buy a book using our Bookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism. Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Six years after Ferguson, St. Louis hasn’t seen a single substantive police reform. A group of young Black leaders have instead set their sights higher: taking control of city politics. In 2014, then-Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown. His death sparked reports, blue-ribbon commissions and countless police reform efforts. But so many of those reforms fell short of their stated goals. Today, St. Louis leads the nation in police killings per capita.  As the nation continues to grapple with how to save Black lives from police violence, we’re partnering with The Missouri Independent to examine why police reform efforts so often fail. We follow a new generation of leaders who, as a part of the Ferguson movement, are finding new ways to change policing in the St. Louis region. Reporters Trey Bundy and Rebecca Rivas follow local activist Kayla Reed, who went from attending protests to organizing them. After years of frustratingly slow progress toward reform, Reed transformed herself into a political powerbroker who is upending city politics. And there’s no way to talk about police reform without talking about the power of police unions. We look how the St. Louis Police Officers Association, the city’s main union, formed to protect white police officers from accountability after beating a Black man. And we talk with James Buchanan, one of the city’s few Black police officers in the 1960s, who went on to help start the Ethical Society of Police, a union founded by Black officers to fight for racial equity in the department and community. This show is guest hosted by Kameel Stanley, executive producer of Witness Docs, a documentary podcast network from Stitcher and SiriusXM.  Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

When Mia Farina got seriously ill in 2014, she thought she had a bad case of pneumonia. But it turned out to be far worse: It was the start of chronic lung disease related to the months she spent working in and around ground zero after 9/11.  Back then, Farina was a rookie cop, present when the second Twin Tower came down. She and her Brooklyn squad ran to escape the burning debris. “At one point, you couldn’t run because the stuff that was collapsing was so deep,” she said. “So it would go up to my thigh, and you would feel people’s hands and feet because…they’re all under the rubble.”  Farina lives on Long Island, surrounded by other responders who also are sick and dying from their work at ground zero 25 years ago. She and tens of thousands of other 9/11 responders and survivors were promised care through the World Trade Center Health Program, a federally funded lifeline meant to treat the long-term medical consequences of that day. But funding has never kept up with the number of people who continue to get sick.  This week on Reveal, reporter Lynn Hallarman, a Long Island doctor turned journalist who once treated 9/11 responders, explores the community of responders around her, their reliance on a program that’s been unstable for decades, and the science behind why people are still getting sick. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Tennessee Rep. Justin J. Pearson first caught national attention when he was expelled from the state’s House of Representatives after demonstrating in support of gun law reforms. Today, he’s the Democratic candidate for Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District. It’s an area newly transformed by redrawn voting maps and sprawling data centers, putting Pearson at the center of some of the country’s biggest national fights. On this week’s More To The Story, Pearson talks about how redistricting has upended Tennessee and the many ways gun violence has become a deeply personal issue for him. He also looks back at the opposition to his 2023 demonstration for gun law reform when he was dubbed part of “the Tennessee Three.” Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: How Redistricting Is Upending America’s Midterms (More To The Story) Read: Republicans Don’t Need to Win Elections Anymore. They Just Need Their Judges. (Mother Jones) Listen: Not All Votes Are Created Equal (Reveal) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

The graffiti says it all: “This is a bad place.” Why do states send children to facilities run by Sequel, after dozens of cases of abuse? The vacant building that once housed the Riverside Academy in Wichita, Kansas, was covered in haunting graffiti: “Burn this place.” “Youth were abused here … systematically.” “This is a bad place.” The facility, run by the for-profit company Sequel Youth & Family Services, promised to help kids with behavioral problems. But state officials had cited the facility dozens of times for problems including excessive force by staff, poor supervision and neglect.   Riverside was just one residential treatment center run by Sequel. In a yearlong investigation, APM Reports found the company profited by taking in some of the most difficult-to-treat children and providing them with care from low-paid, low-skilled employees. The result has been dozens of cases of physical violence, sexual assault and improper restraints. Despite repeated scandals, many states and counties continue to send kids to Sequel for one central reason: They have little choice. For much of its 20 year history, Sequel was able to avoid public scrutiny. But that changed recently in Oregon, when State Senator Sara Gesler began to investigate the conditions of kids the state placed under the company’s care. What she found led to Oregon demanding change and eventually severing ties with Sequel.  This is an update of an episode that originally aired on 11/21/20.

In medical school, Aaron Baugh, like most doctors in training, was taught that Black people have smaller lungs than white people. His professors explained that it came down to evolution and body proportions. A spirometer measures lung capacity and helps doctors diagnose and treat most lung diseases, including asthma, COPD, and cystic fibrosis. And for generations, it had a so-called race equation built into it. When a patient breathes into the machine, their lung capacity is compared to what is considered normal for their age, gender, and race. For Black patients, that normal range was 10 to 15 percent lower than for white patients. For years, doctors believed that a race “correction” made the test more accurate. But after becoming a pulmonary and critical care physician, Baugh discovered that historical assumptions embedded in the spirometer were not only wrong, but were based on racist science that can be traced back to American slavery. And they were leading to misdiagnoses in thousands of Black patients, including military veterans.  “This is not a small test,” Baugh says. “It is used in diagnosis of lung disease. It is used for job hiring. It is used for disability assignments. It is used for different medical treatments. So it can touch people in a lot of important ways if you’re doing this wrong.” This week on Reveal, we team up with The Race Equation podcast series from the New England Journal of Medicine to examine a standard medical test with a brutal history that is harming Black patients and is still being used in hospitals across the country. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Ben McKenzie might seem like an unlikely choice to launch an investigation into the complicated world of cryptocurrency. But the television actor known for shows like The O.C. and Gotham did exactly that. His documentary film, Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, is a deep dive into the people and companies at the heart of crypto. The film focuses on McKenzie’s journey to discover why people continue to invest in digital currency even while knowing the risks of this highly under-regulated market.  On this week’s More To The Story, McKenzie shares his concerns for what he calls the cult-like behavior of those investing in digital currency, talks about his interview with disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried just months before his arrest, and discusses the poignant conversations he had with everyday people who trusted the power of digital currency and lost everything—yet are still crypto believers. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read:Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud (Abrams Press) Watch:Everyone Is Lying to You for Money (The Forge) Listen:The Secret Story of FTX’s Rise and Ruin Part 1 (Reveal) Listen: So You Don’t Understand Crypto. Buckle Up. (More To The Story) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

In 1971, a 22-year-old named Robert Rosenthal got a call from his boss at The New York Times. He was told to go to Room 1111 of the Hilton Hotel, bring enough clothes for at least a month and not tell anyone. Rosenthal was part of a team called in to publish the Pentagon Papers, an explosive history of the United States’ political and military actions in Vietnam that shattered the government’s narratives about the war. Former military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the secret papers to the press. In this episode, we hear the experiences of both Ellsberg and Rosenthal.  When Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, he was turning his back on a long career close to power, immersed in government secrets. His work as a nuclear war strategist made him fear that a small conflict could erupt into a nuclear holocaust. When the Vietnam War flared, Ellsberg worried his worst fears would be realized. He wonders if leaking the top-secret report he’s read could help stop the war. Soon, he was secretly copying the 7,000-page history that would come to be known as the Pentagon Papers and showing them to anyone he thought could help. President Richard Nixon wakes up to the biggest leak in American history. But his first reaction is a little surprising: The Pentagon Papers might make trouble for the Democrats – this instinct starts a chain reaction that helps bring down his presidency. This episode was originally aired in May 2016.

The loss of land for Black Americans started with the government’s betrayal of its “40 acres” promise to formerly enslaved people—and it has continued over decades.  Today, researchers are unearthing the details of Black land loss long after emancipation.  “They lost land due to racial intimidation, where they were forced off their land [to] take flight in the middle of the night and resettle someplace else,” said Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, an assistant professor of Africana studies at Morehouse College. “They lost it through overtaxation. They lost it through eminent domain…There's all these different ways that African Americans acquired and lost land.” This week on Reveal, we dive into the examination of American history happening at the state, city, even county level as local government task forces are on truth-finding missions. Across the country, government officials ask: Can we repair a wealth gap for Black Americans that is rooted in slavery? And how? This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Sen. Adam Schiff is often on the receiving end of President Donald Trump’s rage online. It should be no surprise. Back in 2020, the California Democrat was the lead prosecutor during the first Trump impeachment trial as a member of the House of Representatives. Now a senator, Schiff has been laying out a different strategy for how Democrats might challenge the president if they reclaim Congress. Much of that strategy focuses on how the president has enriched himself in the White House—all at the expense, Schiff argues, of the American people. On this week’s More To The Story, Schiff describes what it’s like to be an ever-present target of Trump’s ire, how the Israeli government has pushed longtime supporters like himself to criticize it more openly, and lays out his proposals for rebuilding America’s institutional guardrails in a post-Trump era. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: The Gaza Flotilla Story You Didn’t Hear (Reveal) Read: 10 Ways to Enrich the Trumps and the MAGA Movement(Mother Jones) Listen: Al Gore: Trump Administration Is the Most Corrupt in History (More To The Story) Watch: Cost of Corruption: Ten Ways Trump Is Profiting off the Presidency While You Lose (YouTube/C-SPAN2) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Skidaway Island, Georgia, is home today to a luxurious community that the mostly white residents consider paradise: waterfront views, live oaks, and marsh grass alongside golf courses, swimming pools, and other amenities.  In 1865, the island was a thriving Black community, started by freedmen who were given land by the government under the 40 acres program. They farmed, created a system of government, and turned former cotton plantations into a Black American success story. But it wouldn’t last. Within two years, the government took that land back from the freedmen and returned it to the former enslavers.  Today, 40 acres in The Landings development is worth at least $20 million. The history of that land is largely absent from day-to-day life. But over a two-and-a-half-year investigation, journalists at the Center for Public Integrity unearthed records that prove that dozens of freed people had, and lost, titles to tracts at what’s now The Landings.  “You could feel chills to know that they had it and then they just pulled the rug from under them, so to speak,” said Linda Brown, one of the few Black residents at The Landings. This week on Reveal, with the Center for Public Integrity, we also show a descendant her ancestor’s title for a plot of land that is now becoming another exclusive gated community. And we look at how buried documents like these Reconstruction-era land titles are part of the long game toward reparations.   This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Lettuce contaminated with cyclospora. Cruise ship passengers contracting a deadly form of hantavirus. Legionnaires’ disease (yet again) in big cities. RFK Jr. refusing any responsibility for measles outbreaks. That’s just a brief list of public health stories in America this summer. And we haven’t even mentioned Dr. Anthony Fauci being held in contempt of Congress during a hostile Congressional hearing over the Covid-19 pandemic. Public health stories are everywhere right now. So that’s why we invited epidemiologist and science communicator Jessica Malaty Rivera back onto the show. Malaty Rivera fills a vital role through her work translating medical breakthroughs and sorting through conflicting health advice. It’s a role she says the public needs now more than ever. On this week’s More To The Story, Malaty Rivera talks through the ongoing efforts to link vaccines and autism at the highest levels of the Trump administration, which produce we should (and shouldn’t) be eating right now, and the many ways the federal government’s response to public health crises today are driven by politics rather than science. Producers: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Intern: Joni Binder | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: Covid Truthers Are Claiming Fauci’s Diary Was ‘Scrubbed’ (Mother Jones) Listen: The Covid Tracking Project (Reveal) Listen: How RFK Jr. Is Dismantling America’s Health Policies (More To The Story) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

In the summer of 1969, a young woman was found dead off a remote mountain trail in Harlan, Kentucky. She’d been stabbed multiple times. Her identity was a mystery, so locals referred to her as Mountain Jane Doe. Decades later, a woman from the area takes up the cause of identifying the murdered woman, and her quest for answers leads investigators to a hillside grave and a DNA lab, bringing some long-awaited answers.  Mountain Jane Doe is one of more than 13,000 in a national database of unidentified dead. There are no national laws requiring coroners or law enforcement to use the database, and as a result, cases fall through the cracks and family members are left in the dark about their loved ones.  An exhumation leads to a series of unexpected revelations about who Mountain Jane Doe was and why she might have been killed. Her case speaks to the complexity – and importance – of opening cold cases and using DNA science to try to solve them.  But as one mystery is solved, another remains unanswered: Who killed her? This episode originally was broadcast April 1, 2017. We updated this show Jan. 26, 2019.

Patricia Bailey’s four-bedroom home sits high among the trees in lush Edisto Island, South Carolina. It’s a peaceful place where her body healed from multiple sclerosis. It’s also the source of her generational wealth. Bailey built this house on land that was passed down by her great-great-grandfather, Jim Hutchinson, who was enslaved on Edisto before he was freed and became a landowner.  “I know this is sacred land here,” Bailey says, “’cause it's my ancestors and I feel it.”  Union General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Orders, No. 15—better known as 40 acres and a mule—implied a better life in the waning days of the Civil War. Hutchinson is among the formerly enslaved people who received land through the field orders, which are often thought of as a promise that was never kept. But 40 acres and a mule was more than that.  It was real. Over a more than two-year investigation, our partners at the Center for Public Integrity unearthed thousands of records once buried in the National Archives. In them, they found more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people who were given land by the federal government through the field orders—and then saw that land taken away.  None of the land Bailey lives on today is part of Hutchinson’s 40 acres. Instead, her family’s wealth is built on her ancestor’s determination to get and keep land of his own, after losing what he thought he had gained through the field orders. This week on Reveal, with the Center for Public Integrity, we’re revisiting our three-part series in which we tell the history of an often-misunderstood government program. We explore a reparation that wasn’t—and the wealth gap that remains. This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Boston University professor Quinn Slobodian discusses his book “Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed,” which he co-authored with Ben Tarnoff. They outline how Elon Musk’s background and political views have reshaped capitalism and coin new terms to describe the unique ways Musk has been able to forge a close and symbiotic relationship with the government. On this week’s More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Slobodian about how the world’s richest person has reimagined the relationship between business and government, his unique brand of futurism, and how Musk’s early life in apartheid South Africa ultimately shaped his worldview. Producers: Joni Binder and Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis  | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed (Harper) Read: Elon Musk’s Reward for Calling for a Race War? Becoming a Trillionaire. (Mother Jones) Listen: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping Our Country (More To The Story) Learn more: Quinn Slobodian's website Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

From anti-vaxxers to QAnon, we look at how misinformation spreads online – and the lives it disrupts.  There are lots of reasons people give for not getting a COVID-19 vaccine – lack of access, personal choice or general distrust. Then there are the conspiracy theories, which have spiked during the pandemic. The World Health Organization calls it “an infodemic,” where dangerous medical misinformation sows chaos and mistrust. So how do conspiracy theories spread? Reporter and episode host Ike Sriskandarajah unravels the history of the lie that there is a tiny microchip in each vial of the COVID-19 vaccine.  Then reporter Stan Alcorn digs into the origins of “Stop the Steal.” In 2016, it was the name of a right-wing activist group that spread the idea that the United States’ democratic institutions were rigged against Donald Trump. In 2020, it re-emerged as a hashtag attached to baseless Republican claims of voter fraud, gained huge audiences on social media and became a rallying cry among the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol building Jan. 6.  We close the show with a conversation between a mother and son who are divided over conspiracy theories. Lucy Concepcion is one of roughly 75 million Americans who believe the results of the presidential election were illegitimate. She also believes in QAnon. Her son, BuzzFeed reporter Albert Samaha, believes in facts. Samaha describes what it’s like when someone you love believes in an elaborate series of lies, and we listen in as he and his mom discuss their complicated and loving relationship.

Access to medication abortion in the years since Covid and the fall of Roe v. Wade has completely reshaped the abortion access landscape in America. “There's this irony that's actually happened,” says Dr. Angel Foster, an abortion provider and researcher. “Tragically, 33 to 40 percent of women of reproductive age now have less of a right to an abortion. But access for many people has increased.”   Foster is the founder of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, a clinic whose work is one major player in why abortions are up. Massachusetts and almost half the states in the US have passed shield laws that legally protect abortion providers. The one Foster operates under allows her to prescribe abortion pills to patients in states with abortion bans.    And while the battleground may be shifting as medication abortions grow more common, the war is far from over.  This week on Reveal, we explore post-Roe America through the eyes of three women with three very different missions: Foster, who offers medication abortions nationwide; a courier who risks arrest to stockpile abortion pills for an uncertain future; and a conservative activist whose life’s work is trying to stop them both. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: A photo went viral on Independence Day this year. It showed a Black woman on a Metro train in Washington, DC, surrounded by members of Patriot Front, a far-right white nationalist group. The picture, taken on America’s 250th anniversary, seemed to encapsulate not only the continuing story of race in America, but also this current moment when right-wing groups seem louder, prouder, and more public than they’ve been in decades. Mary McCord has been working to prosecute groups like Patriot Front for years. Following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, the Georgetown University law professor and former federal prosecutor successfully won a consent decree that banned the rally’s lead organizer from planning future paramilitary activity in the city. Still, McCord says right-wing militias are benefiting from a friendly administration that has stretched back to Donald Trump’s earliest days campaigning for the presidency. On this week’s More To The Story, McCord sits down with host Al Letson to talk about Patriot Front’s origins, a decade of growing white nationalism in America, and the troubling direction of the US Department of Justice under the Trump administration. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: America’s New Era of Violent Populism Is Here (More To The Story) Read: Trump’s White Nationalist Agenda, Explained (Mother Jones) Listen: Main Justice (MS NOW) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Last fall, life for the Perez children was turned upside down. Their father, Romeo Sr., was picked up on his way to work and sent to immigration detention. A few months later, their mother, Olga, was detained, too. Her daughter was driving when they were pulled over. Romeo Sr. and Olga were both undocumented and had lived in the United States for decades; their children are US citizens. “I just remember after he had started banging on the window, like, telling me that I have to put the windows down so my mom and my uncle can give their IDs,” says 21-year old Eliza Perez. She told the officer, “You took my dad, and now you're taking my mom.”  With their parents gone, Eliza, Jessica, Romeo Jr., and Cynthia had to fend for themselves in Lake Worth, Florida. Eliza, a college student, took charge of the household and the family’s landscaping business.  The Perezes are not alone. An estimated 205,000 kids have had a parent detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the last year and a half. It’s happening all over the country and, in some cases, to the same families who were separated at the border during the first Trump administration. = This week on Reveal, filmmakers Max Maldonado and José Jesús Zaragoza and Mother Jones reporters Samantha Michaels and Isabela Dias look into the lives of two families fighting to stay together as the Trump administration’s deportation agenda rips them apart.

This week, we’re bringing you a special episode from Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. Gladwell’s show recently investigated the story of what was once the biggest secession movement in the US since the Civil War: the movement by disillusioned residents in Staten Island to secede from New York City. The Staten Island Problem, Revisionist History’s newest five-part series, reconstructs the battle for New York during the turbulent early 1990s—the rise of Rudy Giuliani, the peak of the homicide rate, the Wu-Tang Clan, young Donald Trump, and the first Black mayor of New York—all through the prism of the city’s oft-forgotten borough. Why tell this story now? Because the island’s secession movement is an early example of the politics of resentment that dominates America today. The first episode of The Staten Island Problem tells the story of David Dinkins, the first Black mayor of New York, facing off with the borough president of Staten Island all while trying to hold his city together. Revisionist History and The Staten Island Problem are produced by Pushkin Industries. Check out their podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Listen: The Staten Island Problem (Revisionist History) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

When the cryptocurrency exchange FTX imploded, customers around the world lost access to their money. Founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and sent to prison. But the story didn’t stop there. For the past three and a half years, FTX has been in bankruptcy, a legal process that determines who will be paid back and how much they’ll receive.  From the start, some customers and FTX insiders have criticized the bankruptcy. Legal experts and a bipartisan group of senators objected to the law firm tapped to run it, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest. But the bankruptcy court and an independent examiner signed off on the firm’s appointment as lead counsel.   Customers are now receiving compensation for their losses, but many say they’re being shortchanged. Instead of being paid in cryptocurrency, they’re receiving cash, with their claims pegged to the value of crypto when the market was at an all-time low.  “Under this plan, my contractual rights and my ownership rights have been trampled; my property rights have been disregarded,” says Lidia Favario, an Italian artist who argued in court that customers should be repaid in crypto, not cash. This week on Reveal, in the second part of our series on FTX, we examine the decisions that shaped what’s become one of the most expensive bankruptcies in US history.  Read the FTX bankruptcy estate’s on-the-record statement to Reveal.  This is an update of a show that originally aired in October 2025. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: OpenAI and its revolutionary chatbot ChatGPT have single-handedly accelerated AI’s boom and threatened to upend much of how we work, create, learn, and communicate in the process. But when OpenAI was founded a decade ago, the company’s approach to artificial intelligence wasn’t taken seriously in Silicon Valley. Tech journalist Karen Hao has been covering OpenAI’s astounding rise for years and is the author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. She says that while many in Silicon Valley warn of AI’s sci-fi-like threats, the real risks are already here. (The Center for Investigative Reporting, which produces Mother Jones, Reveal, and More To The Story, is currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.) On this week’s More To The Story, Hao sounds the alarm about the risks to the planet from AI’s growth, examines the Trump administration’s efforts to deregulate the industry, and explains why the version of AI being developed by Silicon Valley could destabilize democracy. This episode first aired in October 2025.  Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: America’s Worst Polluters See a Lifeline in Power-Gobbling AI—and Donald Trump (Wired) Listen: Is AI Pushing Us Closer to Nuclear Disaster? (More To The Story) Read: Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI (Penguin Press) Read: The Center for Investigative Reporting Sues OpenAI, Microsoft for Copyright Violations (Mother Jones) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

If we want to quickly combat climate change, we need to deal with “the other” greenhouse gas: methane. Methane leaks are heating up the planet and harming people who live where gas drilling takes place.  Reporter Elizabeth Shogren introduces us to a NASA scientist who’s devoting his career to hunting down big methane leaks. Riley Duren and his team have figured out how to spot methane pollution from airplane flyovers, and in an experiment, his data was used to make polluters plug their leaks. Scientists have answers to the methane problem. The question is whether governments will step up to fund a comprehensive methane monitoring system.  Next, Shogren zooms in on Arlington, Texas, a community that bet heavily on drilling for methane, the main ingredient in natural gas. There are wells all over Arlington, next to homes and shopping centers, even day cares and schools. Arlington’s children have unwittingly been part of an experiment to see what happens when gas wells and people mix. We end the show with a story from Reveal’s Brett Simpson about a serious source of methane that is often overlooked. Cows and other livestock produce 14% of the world’s methane emissions, in many places belching more of the gas than oil and gas wells. We meet a scientist who’s figured out how to reduce methane emissions from cows by 80%.

Sam Bankman-Fried was once called the “crypto king.” But in November 2022, his company, FTX, imploded within a matter of days. All around the world, customers of the cryptocurrency exchange were suddenly cut off from their money.  “I tried to withdraw an amount, you know, and it would spin and say, your, your withdrawal is pending,” says Tareq Morad, an investor from Canada. “I remember myself doing that around 7, 8 o’clock at night, checking back, going to look: Okay, did it go through? Did it go through? No. No. No.” Meanwhile, inside the company, employees were panicking. “All that we were told was there's been a run on the bank and, somehow, money is missing and we don't know who to trust,” remembers Caroline Papadopoulos, part of FTX’s accounting leadership at the time.  This week on Reveal, through prison interviews with Bankman-Fried, his parents, FTX insiders, and customers, we take you through the frantic week of FTX’s collapse and the controversial and less well-known bankruptcy that followed. At a cost of nearly $1 billion, it has become one of the most expensive in history.  Read the FTX bankruptcy estate’s on-the-record statement to Reveal.  This is an update of a show that originally aired in September 2025.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Last month, the Supreme Court issued a number of landmark opinions involving transgender rights, campaign finance, executive power, and immigration. Those decisions were issued in the traditional way many of us recognize: pages and pages of arguments and citations, with each justice on the record voting yea or nay. But over the last decade, the court—led by Chief Justice John Roberts—has increasingly relied on a fast-track way of making decisions that was once rarely used. It’s known as the shadow docket. Few reporters have done more to shine light on the shadow docket than New York Times investigative journalist Jodi Kantor. Along with her colleague Adam Liptak, Kantor recently published a number of previously undisclosed memos detailing the shadow docket’s unprecedented expansion under the Roberts court. On this week’s More To The Story, Kantor talks to host Al Letson about what’s driving the Roberts court to bypass the traditional ways of issuing decisions and how that’s affecting public trust in the court. Plus, Kantor looks back at her Pulitzer Prize–winning reporting on sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein that helped set off the #metoo movement and argues that obituaries for the movement almost 10 years later are dead wrong. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: This Is All John Roberts’ Fault (Mother Jones) Listen: Why Conservatives Are Trying to Kill the Voting Rights Act (More To The Story) Read: The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court (The New York Times) Read: She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement (Penguin Books) Read: How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work (Little Brown and Company) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis Police officer last year sparked a wave of social justice protests, including ones targeting monuments that celebrate segregationists, slave-owners, conquistadors and Confederate leaders. Since then, about 160 monuments have come down, but roughly 2,000 remain standing.  We teamed up with Type Investigations to visit dozens of Confederate monuments and found that for devoted followers, they inspire a disturbing – and distorted – view of history: Confederate generals as heroes. Slaves who were happy to work for them. That twisted history is also shared with schoolchildren on class trips. And you won’t believe who’s funding these sites to keep them running.  Then, reporter Stan Alcorn follows the story of New Mexico’s great monument controversy. In 1998, the state was set to celebrate its cuarto centenario: the 400th anniversary of the state’s colonization by the Spanish. But a dramatic act of vandalism would turn the making of a monument in Albuquerque into a fight over history the city didn’t expect. This show is an update from a 2020 episode that was based on reporting originally broadcast Dec. 8, 2018.

When Bryan Stevenson moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1980s, the city—one of America’s most prominent slave trading spaces before the Civil War—had dozens of Confederate monuments and memorials, but nothing commemorating slavery.  Today, thanks to Stevenson’s efforts, the city looks much different. Over the last decade, the executive director of the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative has transformed parts of Montgomery through markers acknowledging the legacy of slavery while building the Legacy Sites, a museum and memorials that commemorate the nation’s history of lynching, enslavement, and racial terror across the South.  “We have to now fight to correct the historic record, to have an honest accounting of what happened to our parents and grandparents and their parents,” Stevenson says. “Because without an honest accounting, we will not make it to the next step.” This week on Reveal, host Al Letson travels to Montgomery to interview Stevenson as America marks its 250th anniversary. He talks about the importance of memorializing the nation’s darkest chapters as the Trump administration attempts to erase slavery from America’s museums and explains why he sees today’s narrative struggle for racial justice as a generational battle. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1980s and ’90s, a daughter and granddaughter of social justice activists, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein fell in love with math and the physical sciences and developed a profound curiosity about the cosmos (though the smoggy night sky of her childhood blocked her view of the stars). She soon developed a detailed plan for her life that led to a career writing and teaching about physics and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Today, Prescod-Weinstein’s work stands out for the ways she weaves her identity as queer, Black, and Jewish into her work. In her latest book, The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie, Prescod-Weinstein brings a Black feminist lens to cosmology, quantum physics, poetry, and popular culture to help unlock the mysteries of the physical universe. On this week’s More To The Story, Prescod-Weinstein talks about the need for diversity and inclusivity in the sciences and puts science fiction’s various hypotheses for space travel to the test with host Al Letson. Read: The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie (Pantheon) Read: Has America Lived Up to Its Founding Promise? (Reveal) Watch: How We Could Solve the Dark Matter Mystery (TED Talks) Read: The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (Bold Type Books) Learn more: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s personal website Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Elizabeth Freeman was an enslaved person living in Massachusetts when the Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago. The document’s famous words “all men are created equal” did not apply to her, but she thought they should.  “She is somebody who heard the words of the declaration, knew that they were real in her life, and argued for that to be true,” says Errin Haines, editor-at-large at The 19th. Eventually, Freeman fought to abolish slavery in Massachusetts. This week on Reveal, as America marks 250 years since its founding, we share stories of people who were denied equality and the battles they fought to attain it. In addition to Freeman’s story, we hear about one of the first Native American communities to encounter white settlers more than 400 years ago and learn why the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment for women continues to this day. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

The second Trump administration has made tearing down parts of the federal government a priority. And some of those efforts have been literal. In October, President Donald Trump ordered the demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for the construction of a massive 90,000-square-foot ballroom. He’s also overseen a now-problematic overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, given the White House a gilded makeover, bulldozed the famed Rose Garden, and even has plans for a so-called “Arc de Trump” that mirrors France’s Arc de Triomphe. So what’s behind all of this? Art historian Erin Thompson—author of Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments—says that whether it’s Romans repurposing idols of leaders who had fallen out of favor or the glorification of Civil War officers in the American South, monuments and public aesthetics aren’t just about the past. They’re about symbolizing power today.  On this week’s More To The Story, Thompson sits down with host Al Letson to discuss why Trump has decked out the White House in gold (so much gold), the rise and recent fall of Confederate monuments, and whether she thinks the Arc de Trump will ever get built. This is an update of an episode that first aired in December 2025. Producers: Josh Sanburn and Artis Curiskis | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: Fancy Galleries, Fake Art (Reveal) Listen: Will the National Parks Survive Trump? (Reveal) Read: Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments (W. W. Norton & Company) Read: America’s Tech Right Is Obsessed With Building Giant Statues (Bloomberg) Read: Nearly 100 Confederate Monuments Were Toppled in 2020. What Happened to Them? (Mother Jones) Note: If you buy a book using our Bookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism. Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

The World Cup is here.  For the first time, the tournament is happening in three countries at once: the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It’s bigger than ever, with more teams, more games, more viewers, and more money on the line. This special World Cup episode of Reveal looks beyond the spectacle of the beautiful game to the organization behind it: FIFA. The global soccer body stands to take in billions from the tournament, while fans face soaring ticket prices and host cities pay massive sums for transportation, security, and infrastructure.   “Sport is this incredible glue that brings people together,” human rights advocate Mustafa Qadri tells Reveal. But he says that also makes it “highly vulnerable to cynical people coming in and exploiting it for their own gain.”   This week, reporters Alex Shephard, Tim Murphy of Mother Jones, and Reveal producer Artis Curiskis follow the money, power, and politics behind the World Cup—and ask who gets to be part of the world’s biggest game. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: When Bryan Stevenson moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1980s, the city—one of America’s most prominent slave trading spaces before the Civil War—had dozens of Confederate monuments and memorials, but nothing commemorating slavery. Today, thanks to Stevenson’s efforts, the city looks much different. Over the last decade, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative has transformed parts of Montgomery through markers acknowledging the legacy of slavery while also building the Legacy Sites, a series of museums and memorials that commemorate America’s dark history of lynching, slaveholding, and racial terror across the South.  On this week’s More To The Story, Stevenson talks about the importance of memorializing America’s full history as the Trump administration attempts to erase slavery and lynching from the nation’s museums and why he sees today’s narrative struggle for racial justice as a generational battle. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: Trump’s War on History (Mother Jones) Listen: Mississippi Goddam: The Ballad of Billey Joe (Reveal) Read: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (One World) Learn more: Equal Justice Initiative Learn more: The Legacy Sites Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Decades before Covid-19, the AIDS epidemic tore through communities in the US and around the world. It has killed some 40 million people and continues to take lives today. But early on, research and public policy focused on AIDS as a gay men’s disease, overlooking other vulnerable groups—including communities of color and women.  This month marks 45 years since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published its first report about a mysterious illness that would eventually be called AIDS. So we’re bringing back Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows, from reporters Kai Wright and Lizzy Ratner, which chronicles the first years of the HIV epidemic in New York City.  One of the most influential activists for women with AIDS was Katrina Haslip, a prisoner at a maximum-security prison in upstate New York. In the 1980s, Haslip and other incarcerated women started a support group to educate each other about HIV and AIDS. Haslip took her activism beyond prison walls after her release in 1990, even meeting with CDC leaders. One of the main goals was to change the definition of AIDS, which at the time excluded many symptoms that appeared in HIV-positive women. This meant that women with AIDS often did not qualify for government benefits such as Medicaid and disability insurance.  The podcast series Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows is a co-production of The History Channel and WNYC Studios.  This is an update of an episode that originally aired inFebruary 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Heather Cox Richardson is one of today’s unlikeliest social media stars. The Boston College historian has been teaching and writing about 19th-century America, Reconstruction, and the Civil War for decades. But it was only in 2019 that her work took off when she began writing her daily newsletter, Letters from an American, a no-nonsense analysis of the news through the lens of US history. The newsletter became one of the most popular on Substack. And today, Richardson has millions of loyal fans who rely on her to make sense of American politics and provide a little sanity and democratic reassurance even as she herself is concerned about the direction of the country today. On this week’s More To The Story, Richardson talks about the decades-long failure to hold corrupt American leaders accountable, the still-resonant death of Reconstruction, and what she sees as the tragic hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Daniel King | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: Trump’s War on History (Mother Jones) Listen: As the Trump Administration Erases History, These Writers Are Keeping It Alive (Reveal) Read: Letters from an American (Substack) Read: Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (Penguin Books) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Every week, a group of men in their late 60s meets at the Corner Cafe in Elizabethtown, North Carolina. One important reason for these meetups is to discuss what’s going on in their community.  Local news has virtually dried up in their rural county, as well as neighboring counties, and some residents say they’re being left in the dark and don’t feel equipped to make informed decisions. “I’m not gonna vote if I can’t get the information,” says Penny Abernathy. Like in much of the country, roughly two-thirds of North Carolina’s counties are considered news deserts. And the lack of local journalism isn’t just making it harder for people to stay informed; it’s exacerbating a crisis of trust in the news media.  This week on Reveal, we partner with the podcast Scene on Radio and its hosts John Biewen and Chenjerai Kumanyika to understand how American journalism got here and what can be done to repair the cracked foundation of the Fourth Estate.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: It’s impossible to overstate rapper Tupac Shakur’s influence on music and culture in the 1990s. One of the era’s bestselling musical artists, Tupac helped define West Coast hip-hop through vulnerable, introspective lyrics and Black power politics. By his own admission, sports writer Jeff Pearlman is not the rapper’s likeliest biographer. But as he waited for what he called “the big, fat biography” of Tupac, his impatience and long-standing fascination with the rapper got the best of him. So he set out to write it himself. On this week’s episode, Pearlman talks about his book Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur; discusses how Tupac’s Black Panther mother, Afeni Shakur, shaped her son; and examines the nuance and mystery surrounding Tupac’s life and death almost 30 years later. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: The 24 Best Books We Read in 2025 (Mother Jones) Listen: Baltimore Mayor to Trump: Don’t Send Your Troops (More To The Story) Read: Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur (Mariner Books) Note: If you buy a book using our Bookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism. Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

In 2015, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and repression were trying to reach safe havens in Europe. From his home in Norway, Tommy Olsen decided to travel to Greece, a major gateway for migrants and refugees. He joined hundreds of volunteers  helping the new arrivals and later created an NGO, the Aegean Boat Report, which monitors the plight of asylum seekers in Europe. Today, Olsen is a wanted man in Greece, caught up in a crackdown on refugees and people trying to defend their right to asylum. “I didn’t know what I walked into,” Olsen says. Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, has condemned Greece’s harsh migration policies and the way its government is targeting activists like Olsen. But she says Europe as a whole is also to blame. “The whole notion of migration is a dirty word now,” she says. “The whole notion of refugees is a dirty word now.” This week on Reveal, reporters Dinah Rothenberg and Viola Funk from the Berlin podcast studio Slowly Media take us to Greece, where refugees and human rights defenders face legal and sometimes physical attacks from authorities trying to seal the country’s borders. This is an update of an episode that originally aired in January 2025. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Instagram

More To The Story: The Voting Rights Act is widely considered one of the most effective laws in prohibiting racial discrimination in voting. One of its key provisions has long allowed states to take race into account when drawing voting maps to ensure that nonwhite voters have electoral power. But earlier this year, the Supreme Court narrowed that provision. In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan described the court’s decision as the “now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.” “The notion that everyone deserves equal access to the ballot, that everyone deserves equal access to elections, that one person ought to mean one vote, and that there ought to be some measure of political equality has never really sat well with the political right in this country,” says Jamelle Bouie, a political columnist for the New York Times. On this week’s More To The Story, Bouie and host Al Letson talk about how the Voting Rights Act has been defanged by the Supreme Court, why the Democratic Party is made up of “a bunch of weenies,” and why he believes the country is experiencing a constitutional emergency. This is an update of an episode that originally aired in August 2025. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: How Trump Exploits Working-Class Pain (More To The Story) Read: Republican Gerrymandering Schemes Target Minority Voters and Their Representatives (Mother Jones) Listen: Not All Votes Are Created Equal (Reveal) Read: The Nation’s Landmark Voting Rights Law Just Turned 60. It May Not Survive Trump. (Mother Jones) Watch: Blame John Roberts for Destroying the Voting Rights Act (Mother Jones) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

The 911 system functions as a sort of promise: Call for help and someone will be there to respond quickly. But in many American cities, it’s a broken promise. Thanks in part to a widespread understaffing crisis across 911 dispatch centers, hundreds of thousands of callers are left waiting on hold during their most harrowing moments every year. Reporter Byard Duncan has spent more than a year reporting on America’s flailing 911 system and what it might take to fix it. This week on Reveal, in partnership with Type Investigations, he traces the issue from California to Wisconsin and a final stop on Capitol Hill. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: When Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, went looking for government agencies to axe last year, one of its first targets was the US Agency for International Development. Established during the Cold War to counter Soviet influence, USAID spent billions of dollars on food aid, public health, and emergency relief for some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. In return, the US hoped to gain allies and goodwill. Call it a decades-long exercise in soft power. But since President Donald Trump returned to office, soft power is out. And so is USAID, which has been slashed and reorganized. The Trump administration is trying to close the agency altogether by September. This has led to some horrific consequences for the people who relied on USAID to survive. On this week’s More To The Story, ProPublica’s Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy join host Al Letson to talk about their on-the-ground reporting from Africa and how the Trump administration’s aid cuts are leading to devastating, even deadly, consequences. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: Russell Vought Raided USAID Budgets He Helped Gut to Pay for His Own Security (Mother Jones) Listen: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping Our Country (More To The Story) Read: Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera. (ProPublica) Listen: Paper Trail (ProPublica) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Virginia might be for lovers, but more recently, it’s for data centers. The state has more data centers than anywhere in the world, and companies are pushing to build more of them, including around some of the most hallowed ground in the country: the Manassas National Battlefield Park.  “The amount of surface land that is being displaced by data centers and everything that goes with that, I don’t think people understand what’s really happening,” says Elena Schlossberg, a leading activist against data center development in Northern Virginia. “There’s NIMBY and there’s NOTE, and NOTE is ‘not over there, either.’” This week on Reveal, we look into our AI future and the local machinations that are pitting neighbor against neighbor. And we listen in as our “tech lords” talk about the future they are planning for us, whether we want it or not.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Voters are heading to the polls for this year’s midterms, but the electoral maps are shifting under their feet in real time. Last month, the Supreme Court narrowed a provision in the Voting Rights Act that allowed states to consider race when redrawing maps. That decision set off a mad scramble by GOP state legislatures to alter their maps ahead of November’s elections, a move that could disenfranchise Black voters. Meanwhile, Democrats were dealt a major blow last week when their own redistricting efforts in Virginia were struck down by the state Supreme Court. On this week’s More To The Story, Mother Jones national correspondent Tim Murphy and host Al Letson try to make sense of this unprecedented midterm season, gauge the Democrats’ chances of taking back Congress, and examine how President Donald Trump’s threats to the electoral system could play out in November. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: Stop the Steal Never Stopped (Reveal) Read: The Future in Texas Is Bright and Terrifying (Mother Jones) Read: Can James Talarico Convince Democrats He’s the Fighter They Need? (Mother Jones) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

When the FBI showed up at a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, to seize hundreds of boxes of 2020 election records this past January, County Commissioner Dana Barrett thought it looked less like a criminal investigation and more like political theater.  It’s been more than five years since the election, the results already had been investigated multiple times, and the ballots had been counted, recounted, and recounted again. The lie that the 2020 election was stolen has persisted. And the “Stop the Steal” movement’s most ardent believers now hold unprecedented positions of power, including on the once-sleepy State Election Board in the important swing state of Georgia. A lawyer known for his willingness to take on long-shot election cases has gone from a little-known private practice attorney to a role in the White House, overseeing the country’s election integrity effort—despite being sanctioned by a court for making “unequivocally false” assertions around voting. And everyday members of the movement are trying to change what they fervently believe is a broken system—at the risk of actually breaking it in the process. This week on Reveal, Mother Jones reporter Abby Vesoulis and Reveal’s Najib Aminy examine how the long shadow of doubt over the 2020 elections is being weaponized and what it means ahead of the 2026 midterms.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: In 2002, journalist Vicky Ward—then a writer for Vanity Fair magazine—was assigned to investigate a mysterious New York City financier named Jeffrey Epstein. During her reporting, she stumbled upon sexual abuse allegations against Epstein by Maria and Annie Farmer whose account was ultimately cut from Ward’s piece, titled “The Talented Mr. Epstein.” That decision sparked recriminations between Ward and then-Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter that have continued for more than a decade. On this week’s episode, Ward looks back at the editorial decisions surrounding her 2003 Vanity Fair profile of Epstein, the role Ghislaine Maxwell played in Epstein’s crimes, and shares what she thinks about the circumstances surrounding the convicted sex offender’s death. Following our interview with Ward, we reached out to Maria and Annie Farmer for comment. Portions of their response appear in this week's episode, and their full comment can be read here. We also reached back out to Vicky Ward. Her response to the Farmer sisters’ statement can be found in full here.  RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800-656-HOPE Producer: Josh Sanburn with help from Ashley Cleek | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Daniel King | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: I Analyzed 1,500 “Pizza” Mentions in the Epstein Files. Here’s What I Found. (Mother Jones) Listen: Inside America’s Race to Hide the World’s Money (Reveal) Read: The Talented Mr. Epstein (Vanity Fair) Listen: Chasing Ghislaine (Audible Original) Read: Why Didn’t Vanity Fair Break the Jeffrey Epstein Story? (The New Yorker) Read: Graydon Carter on Vanity Fair, Jeffrey Epstein and an editor’s power (The New York Times Magazine) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Last fall, hundreds of activists from all over the world crowded onto several dozen boats and set sail for Gaza. Their goal: Break through Israel’s blockade of the territory and end one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet. They thought that by sharing their journey through social media, they could capture the world’s attention.  At first, it was easy to dismiss the Global Sumud Flotilla—until it wasn’t. Before reaching Gaza, the flotilla was attacked by drones, and activists were arrested by the Israeli navy.  “We were at gunpoint; like, you could see the laser on our chest,” says flotilla participant Louna Sbou.   They were then sent to a high-security prison in the middle of the Negev desert. “You have no control, you have no information, and you have no rights,” says Carsie Blanton, another participant. “They could do whatever they want to you.” This week on Reveal, as a new flotilla recently set sail for Gaza, we’re bringing back our story about the Global Sumud Flotilla from last fall for a firsthand look at what activists faced on their journey and whether their efforts made any difference.  This is an update of an episode that first aired in December 2025.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: When President Donald Trump returned to office last year, he promised to largely steer America clear of foreign entanglements. But over the last year, his administration has captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, threatened to take over Greenland, openly talked about making Canada the 51st state, and most recently attacked Iran. In some ways, it might appear that Trump is trying to revive the American empire. Not so, says Daniel Immerwahr, a Northwestern University history professor and author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. What Trump is really doing, he says, is undermining the international system itself. On this week’s More To The Story, Immerwahr sits down with host Al Letson to examine Trump’s attack on Iran, why Trump is ripping apart the post-World War II international order, and the long-term consequences of the president’s impulsive foreign policy. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: Al Gore: Trump Administration Is the Most Corrupt in History (More To The Story) Read: Trump’s New Nuclear Nightmare in Iran (Mother Jones) Read: How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Picador) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

The forest floor was nothing but patches of brown. No ferns, no brush, no flowers, and definitely no wildlife. Everything was dead except for rows of hand-planted baby trees. This is what reporter Nate Halverson found while mushroom foraging in the California wilderness near Lassen Peak. He would learn the area had been sprayed with the controversial weed killer glyphosate, more commonly known by its brand name, Roundup. This week on Reveal, Halverson’s yearlong investigation reveals that the US Forest Service and timber companies are spraying glyphosate in record amounts in California’s forests in an effort to regrow timberland that’s been decimated by years of megafires. “The wedding of the chemical industry and the Forest Service has got to be seriously and deeply looked at,” Craig Thomas, a fire restoration expert, says about the spraying. The Forest Service is “addicted to herbicide use and glyphosate, and we need to get them into rehab.” Read: We Are Bombarding America’s Forests With Roundup (Mother Jones) Watch: The Secret Plan to Cover the World in Herbicide (Mother Jones) Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: As NASA’s Artemis II journeyed into space earlier this month, one of the astronauts took a photo of Earth lit by the moon known as “Hello, World.” It’s the first published photograph of our planet taken by a human since 1972. The Artemis mission has reinvigorated mankind’s awe of our planet. But for Earth to remain a habitable place for humans to flourish, it requires us to take care of it. On this special Earth Day episode of More To The Story, we’re featuring interviews with three influential environmental leaders: former Vice President and founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project Al Gore; longtime activist Catherine Coleman Flowers; and journalist, author, and activist Bill McKibben. All three acknowledge the challenges of fighting climate change to protect our planet, especially at a time when the Trump administration is rolling back federal environmental protections. But they’re surprisingly hopeful about our capacity to protect the Earth for future generations. Listen: The Great Arizona Water Grab (Reveal) Read: Rooftop Solar Is a Miracle. Why Are We Killing It With Red Tape? (Mother Jones) Read: Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (W.W. Norton & Company) Read: Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope (Spiegel & Grau) Learn more: The Climate Reality Project Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

In June, a sharp-suited Austrian executive from a global surveillance company told a prospective client that he could “go to prison” for organizing the deal they were discussing. But the conversation did not end there. The executive, Guenther Rudolph, was seated at a booth at ISS World in Prague, a secretive trade fair for police and intelligence agencies and advanced surveillance technology companies. Rudolph went on to explain how his firm, First Wap, could provide sophisticated phone-tracking software capable of pinpointing any person in the world. The potential buyer? A private mining company, owned by an individual under sanction, who intended to use it to surveil environmental protesters. “I think we’re the only one who can deliver,” Rudolph said. What Rudolph did not know: He was talking to an undercover journalist from Lighthouse Reports, an investigative newsroom based in the Netherlands. The road to that conference room in Prague began with the discovery of a vast archive of data by reporter Gabriel Geiger. The archive contained more than a million tracking operations: efforts to grab real-time locations of thousands of people worldwide. What emerged is one of the most complete pictures to date of the modern surveillance industry.  This week on Reveal, we join 13 other news outlets to expose the secrets of a global surveillance empire. This is an update of an episode that originally aired in October 2025.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook, andInstagram

Earlier this year, Daniel Holz from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that its experts were moving the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds before midnight. The hands have been moved only 27 times since the clock’s creation in 1947, and they’re now the closest they’ve pointed to imminent global destruction. On this week’s More To The Story, in an update of an episode that first aired in July 2025, Holz sits down with host Al Letson to talk about the history of the Doomsday Clock, why we’re closer to destruction than ever before, and what we can do to reverse course. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: Weapons With Minds of Their Own (Reveal) Learn more: NUKEMAP Read: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Read: Why Iran’s Nuclear Program Is So Essential to Its Identity (The Guardian via Mother Jones) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Alessandro Chesser is a 40-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He’s married with two kids and was the first in his family to attend college. His grandfather immigrated from Sicily and worked as a school janitor so his family could have a better life.  Skip forward a few generations, and Chesser is noticing the way wealthy investors hide their money to avoid paying taxes. He’s outraged and wants to upend the tax system, which he thinks is unfair to the everyday American worker. In Chesser’s mind, the realistic solution isn’t to reform the tax code, but to make it easier for average Americans to access one of the best-kept secrets of the superrich: trusts. Trusts have become big business in the US. They are now an industry worth trillions of dollars. But no one knows the exact number, because the trust industry is extraordinarily private. Trusts can last forever (literally), but there is no public registry for them. In fact, they are one of the main reasons why watchdog groups consider America to be the most secretive financial jurisdiction in the world. This week on Reveal, journalists Sally Herships and Leah McGrath Goodman investigate America’s shadowland of trusts. As the nation’s wealth gap keeps growing—and Americans brace for Tax Day—we uncover what’s at stake as US states race to become the most trust-friendly jurisdictions in the world. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Earlier this year, parts of Minneapolis resembled a war zone. The Minnesota city had become the violent epicenter of President Donald Trump’s immigration raids as thousands of masked agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol roamed the streets in what was known as Operation Metro Surge. Thousands of immigrants, many of whom had no criminal record, were detained. Children were arrested. High schoolers were pepper-sprayed. And two US citizens—Renée Good and Alex Pretti—were shot and killed by immigration agents. Following weeks of protests, the White House reversed course and ramped down immigration enforcement. But hundreds of agents are still there as state officials like Attorney General Keith Ellison are left to clean up the mess.  On this week’s More To The Story, Ellison talks with host Al Letson about the economic damage from the Trump administration’s ICE raids and persistent fears within immigrant communities, his congressional confrontation with Sen. Josh Hawley over a Covid-19 fraud scheme, and why he refuses to back down from the what he describes as the “Trump onslaught.” Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Josh Sanburn | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: How Minneapolis Taught America to Fight Back (Reveal) Read: Top Trump Official Says FBI Won’t Investigate Killing by ICE Agent (Mother Jones) Watch: Minnesota and Immigration Enforcement Officials Testify Before Senate Committee (C-SPAN) Read: Transcript of Feeding Our Future/Keith Ellison Audio Recording Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Here at the Center for Investigative Reporting, we excel at finding things: government documents, paper trails, the misdeeds people have tried to hide. It’s serious work. But that gave us an idea: What would happen if we used these skills for things that are less about accountability and more about joy? If we turned our energy toward personally meaningful questions?  That was the spark for our first-ever Inconsequential Investigations hour. We turned our journalistic strategies on our own biggest questions to see where the trail led. This week on Reveal, we take up Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes’ quest to find the first short film he ever made, even though it was lost to the early 2000s internet. Yowei Shaw of the podcast Proxy brings us along as she meets her doppelganger and discovers the truth behind how people see her. And Reveal reporter and producer Ashley Cleek untangles her own unsolved mystery: Did reclusive rock star Jeff Mangum really call into her college radio show, asking her for a favor?  We plan to do more Inconsequential Investigations like this. If you have a personal mystery that needs looking into, please email Inconsequential@revealnews.org.  This is an update of an episode that first aired in October 2025. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Few political figures occupy the sort of space in American history that Al Gore does. A longtime member of Congress before becoming vice president, Gore lost the presidency in 2000 to George W. Bush after a highly controversial decision by the Supreme Court. But in the years that followed, Gore didn’t slink into history. Instead, he worked to sound the growing alarm on climate change, most notably with his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which came out 20 years ago. A year later, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Today, he’s still at it and in many ways more adamant than ever that now is the time to act on global warming, especially as the Trump administration rolls back environmental protections and condemns climate science. But he also has more on his mind than the state of the planet, namely the state of democracy and the direction of the country under President Donald Trump. On this week’s More To The Story, the former vice president admonishes the White House for making an “astonishing mistake” in its attack on Iran, looks back at his groundbreaking climate change documentary, and talks about why he believes political will in America is still a renewable resource. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: Something Unexpected Is Happening With Norway’s Polar Bears (Vox via Climate Desk) Listen: A New Year, a New War (Reveal) Visit: The Climate Reality Project Read: The Assault on Reason: Our Information Ecosystem, from the Age of Print to the Age of Trump (Penguin Books) Note: If you buy a book using our Bookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism. Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Last year, arts organizations and cultural institutions across the US received an alarming message: Their federal grants had been canceled. The letters said their projects no longer aligned with new federal priorities and that money was being redirected toward the Trump administration’s agenda. The grants had funded museum exhibits, public art programs, historical research, and community arts initiatives.  Angela Sutton and a team of archaeologists were in the middle of excavating a long-forgotten Black neighborhood in Nashville when she got the news: “Just got an email out of the blue saying, ‘Please stop. You're done.’” This week on Reveal, reporter Jonathan Jones travels to Nashville and beyond one year after the cancellations to meet the people living with the fallout. From musicians to visual artists, historians, and arts administrators, they’re confronting a new reality: Federal support now depends on the shifting political priorities in Washington. Some organizations are scaling back their work. Others worry artists will censor themselves just to survive. But many are fighting back. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Back in November, two National Guard members were shot just blocks from the White House. One was killed. The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is an Afghan national who came to the US through a Biden-era humanitarian parole program and had applied for a special immigrant visa, which allows Afghans who worked with the US military to obtain a green card. In the shooting’s aftermath, President Donald Trump halted the visa program and called for a review of all Afghans who have come to the US. Dozens of American organizations have formed in the past decade to help Afghans with the complicated visa application and resettlement process.  Jeff Holder is a pastor with one of them, an organization called Tarjoman Relief that’s made up of military and civilian volunteers. On this week’s More To The Story, Holder talks with host Al Letson about the Afghan allies now in limbo, the extensive vetting process they undergo to come to the US, and what he sees as lies about America’s Afghan communities being told by people in power. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: Trump Has Turned the National Guard Into Mall Cops. Cost? $1 Million a Day. (Mother Jones) Listen: How Minneapolis Taught America to Fight Back (Reveal) Read: Trump is “Basically Shutting Down the Legal Immigration System” (Mother Jones) Read: Neighbors in Faith (Jeff Holder) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

As news broke that Iran’s supreme leader had been killed, prominent critic Arash Azizi found himself trying to make sense of a moment he had long imagined. For years, Azizi studied Iran’s political system and hoped for change from within. Now, with the man who defined that system gone, Azizi was left with questions: What comes next for Iran? And who gets to decide? This week on Reveal, reporters Najib Aminy, Kiera Butler, and Nadia Hamdan follow the ripple effects of the war in Iran. Expats like Azizi wrestle with what the war could mean for Iran’s future, an influential group of Americans celebrate the conflict as a prophecy foretold, and residents of Lebanon grapple with the spiraling effects of the conflict.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

Take a trip to Mr. Rogers’ real life neighborhood in this special episode that celebrates the life and work of public media’s most famous defender. Reveal goes to WQED in Pittsburgh for a look at how Fred Rogers, the host of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, championed public television throughout its decadeslong struggle to survive Washington politics. Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

More To The Story: Over the last half-century, Mother Jones magazine has broken some of the era’s defining stories, including some of the earliest reporting about the dangers of Big Tobacco, its investigation into the exploding Ford Pinto, and Mitt Romney’s now-infamous line about 47 percent of Americans viewing themselves as “victims” who are “dependent on government.” Monika Bauerlein has been part of Mother Jones’ story for half of its existence, first as an editor and now as the CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, which produces Mother Jones, as well as the public radio show Reveal and its sister podcast, More To The Story. This week, Bauerlein joins host Al Letson to look back at the magazine’s Bay Area origin story. Plus, they examine how the politics of the 1970s are strikingly similar to today and look forward to what the next 50 years might bring for independent nonprofit news in the US. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: Are You Driving the Deadliest Car in America? (Mother Jones) Read: My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard (Mother Jones) Read: SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters (Mother Jones) Listen: Trump’s “Pincer Attack” on Journalism Is Working. But There’s Hope. (More To The Story) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Note: This episode contains descriptions of violence and suicide and may not be appropriate for all listeners.  In 1989, Chuck Stuart called 911 on his car phone to report a shooting.  He said he and his wife were leaving a birthing class at a Boston hospital when a man forced him to drive into the mixed-race Mission Hill neighborhood and shot them both. Stuart’s wife, Carol, was seven months pregnant. She would die that night, hours after her son was delivered by cesarean section, and days later, her son would die, too. Stuart said he saw the man who did it: a Black man in a tracksuit.  Within hours, the killing had the city in a panic, and Boston police were tearing through Mission Hill looking for a suspect.   For a whole generation of Black men in Mission Hill who were subjected to frisks and strip searches, this investigation shaped their relationship with police. And it changed the way Boston viewed itself when the story took a dramatic turn and the true killer was revealed. This week on Reveal, in partnership with columnist Adrian Walker of the Boston Globe and the Murder in Boston podcast, we bring you the untold story of the Stuart murder: one that exposed truths about race and crime that few white people in power wanted to confront.   To hear more of the Boston Globe’s investigation, listen to the 10-part podcast Murder in Boston. The HBO documentary series Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Reckoning is available to stream on Max.  This is an update of a show that originally aired in May 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Instagram

More To The Story: In January, the federal government released updated dietary guidelines for Americans that reimagine the nation’s longtime food pyramid by literally turning it upside down. The guidelines, which once prioritized foods like grains while minimizing fats, now recommend red meat, whole milk, proteins, and healthy fats. It’s one of the most unmistakable ways that US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brought the Make America Healthy Again movement into the federal government. Over the last year, RFK Jr. has reshaped the country’s vaccine advisory committee with vaccine skeptics, fired thousands of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, and revised the CDC’s stance on the unfounded link between vaccines and autism. The moves, often influenced and cheered by folks in the MAHA movement, are ones that infectious disease epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera says are not merely misguided, but dangerous. On this week’s More To The Story, Rivera examines how Big Ag has influenced the nation’s latest dietary guidelines, whether the US is on the cusp of a national measles outbreak, and why the CDC dropping vaccine recommendations could have potentially long-term and deadly consequences. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: Measles Cases This Year Near 1,000. That We Know Of. (Mother Jones) Listen: Why Trump Deemed Basic Sanitation Illegal DEI (More To The Story) Read: RFK Jr. Wants to End the “War” on Unproven Treatments Like Stem Cell Therapy (Mother Jones) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Two veteran journalists set out to document Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health care system: hospitals attacked, medical workers killed, doctors detained and held for long periods without criminal charges. The BBC had commissioned the film.  But their Palestinian sources in Gaza and the West Bank were skeptical.  “We really had to try and persuade them…to talk to us because they didn’t—and don’t—trust the BBC,” says reporter Ramita Navai.  One source doubted the BBC would air the film. “And I was quite shocked he felt that way,” says reporter Ben de Pear. “But actually, he was 100 percent right.” Over the last couple of years, big media organizations have been criticized—from the left and the right—about their coverage of the war in Gaza. But it’s rare to get the chance to peel back the curtain to see what exactly was happening inside one of those organizations to learn whether political pressure played a role in journalistic decision-making. This week on Reveal, we’re partnering with the KCRW podcast Question Everything to tell the story of a film the BBC wouldn’t air and what it says about the future of journalism. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: US and Israeli military strikes against Iran that killed several of the country’s top officials, including longtime supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have ushered in a new and unpredictable era in the Middle East. Within hours, Iran retaliated, striking US allies across the Persian Gulf, including US embassies and a military operations center in Kuwait. At least six US service members had been killed. In Iran, days of military strikes have reportedly killed hundreds of people, including dozens of girls at an elementary school.   Davar Ardalan knows Iran inside and out. She lived in the country before the Islamic Revolution, when it was ruled by the shah, and afterward, when it was run by the country’s ayatollahs. For more than two decades, she was a journalist at NPR, where she produced major stories about the country. She’s also the author of My Name Is Iran: A Memoir, which highlights three generations of women living in both Iran and the US during times of revolution. On this week’s episode, Ardalan examines how Iranians inside the country are reacting to the ever-widening conflict, the long history of outside intervention in the region, and who might lead the country moving forward. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: What a War Powers Resolution Vote on Iran Actually Means (Mother Jones) Listen: Jeffrey Goldberg on Signalgate, Pete Hegseth, and the Risk of WWIII (More To The Story) Read: My Name Is Iran: A Memoir (Holt) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

The schools in Steubenville, Ohio, are doing something unusual—in fact, it’s almost unheard of. In a country where nearly 40 percent of fourth graders struggle to read at even a basic level, Steubenville has succeeded in teaching virtually all of its students to read well.  According to data from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, Steubenville has routinely scored in the top 10 percent or better of schools nationwide for third-grade reading, sometimes scoring as high as the top 1 percent. In study after study for decades, researchers have found that districts serving low-income families almost always have lower test scores than districts in more affluent places. Yet Steubenville bucks that trend. “It was astonishing to me how amazing that elementary school was,” said Karin Chenoweth, who wrote about Steubenville in her book How It’s Being Done: Urgent Lessons From Unexpected Schools. This week on Reveal, reporter Emily Hanford shares the latest from the hit APM Reports podcast Sold a Story. We’ll learn how Steubenville became a model of reading success—and how a new law in Ohio put it all at risk.  This is an update of an episode that originally aired in April 2025. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Just a few years ago, historian and activist Ibram X. Kendi seemed to be everywhere. At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, he became one of the leading voices on racism in America—and particularly what he described as antiracism. But over the last few years, as a backlash grew against the BLM movement, Kendi also came under attack. His ideas urging people to be actively antiracist were often the target of conservative critics fighting against DEI policies and the teaching of critical race theory. Kendi was also accused of mismanaging an antiracism center at Boston University, which laid off much of its staff before closing last year (BU cleared Kendi of financial mismanagement.)  On this week’s More To The Story, Kendi responds to the criticism he faced at BU and argues that the Trump administration’s policies are harming both white and Black Americans. This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2025. Producer: Josh Sanburn, with help from Zulema Cobb and Julia Haney | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: Black in the Sunshine State (Reveal) Read: I’m Racist. You’re Racist. We’re All Racist. Here’s How to Fix It. (Mother Jones) Read: Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age (One World) Read: Malcolm Lives! (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

One of the unmistakable throughlines of the second Trump administration is how it’s overhauling policies that directly affect African Americans, most notably by targeting programs and initiatives that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI.  For journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, it’s an attempt to take the country back to an era before the civil rights movement. “A lot of folks are saying, you know, that this administration is rolling back the ’60s, but I’m like, he—this administration’s actually going back further than that.”  The administration is also removing references to Black history from the nation’s museums, parks, and schools. When history itself is being erased at the highest levels, who’s left to tell us where we’ve been and where we’re headed?  This week on Reveal, as part of Black History Month, we’re bringing you conversations from our sister podcast, More To The Story, with three prominent Black writers who are fighting to tell a more inclusive American story. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Sixteen years ago this month, the radio show State of the Re:Union, created by Al Letson, produced an award-winning episode looking at civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. The episode was called “Who Is This Man?” because while Rustin was not well known, his work supported the likes of Martin Luther King Jr.  Rustin was a man with a number of seemingly incompatible labels: Black, gay, Quaker—identifications that served to earn him as many detractors as admirers. Although he had numerous passions and pursuits, his most transformative act, one that certainly changed the course of American history, was to counsel MLK on the use of nonviolent resistance. Rustin also helped engineer the 1963 March on Washington and frame the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott.   This week on More To The Story, we bring you an important piece for Black History Month, a reflection on Rustin. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: Can He Really Do That? Black History Month in the Age of Trump (Mother Jones) Listen: Nikole Hannah-Jones: Trump Is Erasing Black History (More To The Story) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Cecelia Lizotte owns Suya Joint, a celebrated Nigerian restaurant in Boston. She’s a rising star in the city who was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2024 and operates two restaurants and a food truck. But last year, a key employee—who happens to be her brother—was detained by ICE.  “I'm not able to operate the establishment, basically,” Lizotte said. “It's just, it's crazy.” Lizotte’s experience got us wondering what it's like to run a restaurant, or any business, when a key employee suddenly disappears.  This week on Reveal, producer Katie Mingle and reporter Julia Lurie tell stories about the people swept up in President Donald Trump’s mass deportations and the families that are left behind. We also talk to LA Taco reporter Memo Torres about how immigration raids continue across Los Angeles almost daily, even though the national spotlight moved on months ago.  The first two stories are updates from an episode that originally aired in September 2025.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: During the 2024 presidential campaign, a conservative playbook emerged. Created by the Heritage Foundation, this 900-plus-page document was a roadmap written for a future conservative president. And while some Republicans tried to distance themselves from Project 2025, the authors and the concepts they wrote about have been embraced by President Donald Trump. Our guest on More To The Story this week is journalist David A. Graham, who did a deep dive into the concepts of Project 2025 for his book, The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America. He talks with host Al Letson about what’s already been implemented—like mass deportations, the replacement of federal workers with Trump loyalists, and the elimination of DEI initiatives—and what other policies might be coming.  Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: The EEOC’s Identity Crisis (Reveal) Read: The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America (Penguin Random House) Read: Project 2026: Trump’s Plan to Rig the Next Election (Mother Jones) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

The future of warfare is being shaped by computer algorithms that are assuming ever greater control over battlefield technology.  Will this give machines the power to decide who to kill? The United States is in a race to harness gargantuan leaps in artificial intelligence to develop new weapons systems for a new kind of warfare. Pentagon leaders call it “algorithmic warfare.” But the push to integrate AI into battlefield technology raises a big question: How far should we go in handing control of lethal weapons to machines? We team up with The Center for Public Integrity and national security reporter Zachary Fryer-Biggs to examine how AI is transforming warfare and our own moral code.  In our first story, Fryer-Biggs and Reveal’s Michael Montgomery head to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Sophomore cadets are exploring the ethics of autonomous weapons through a lab simulation that uses miniature tanks programmed to destroy their targets. Next, Fryer-Biggs and Montgomery talk to a top general leading the Pentagon’s AI initiative. They also explore the legendary hackers conference known as DEF CON and hear from technologists campaigning for a global ban on autonomous weapons. Machines are getting smarter, faster, and better at figuring out who to kill in battle. But should we let them?

In a Minnesota town outside the Twin Cities, Emily is a nurse who treats many immigrant patients. She can’t locate a patient who just had a test result that shows they might have cancer. The patient was recently detained by ICE; situations like these have forced the clinic to adapt, making house calls and triaging care. “I'd love to know how well somebody's kidneys are functioning today,” Emily said, but “I'm gonna wait till three months because I don't want them to come in for a lab appointment that's not critical.” Emily is one of many Minnesotans mounting a quiet, secretive resistance to the Trump administration's hard-nosed and often violent immigration agenda. Across the state, neighbors are helping neighbors and communities are building grassroot systems to support immigrant families.  This week on Reveal, our Minnesotan reporters Nate Halverson and Artis Curiskis report on how Minnesota is teaching the country to resist federal agents who have arrested children, killed citizens in the street, and pepper-sprayed high schoolers. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: This weekend, American football fans will be glued to their TVs to watch the New England Patriots play the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl. From the NCAA to the NFL, sports are a dominant aspect of American culture. But the sports industry is also rife with controversy. From financial scandals to transgender rights, DEI, and Bad Bunny, there’s no shortage of sports stories to tell. However, investigative sports journalism is a shell of its former self. That’s where Pablo Torre comes in. A longtime sports journalist and now host of the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out, Torre prides himself on digging into the important stories that are often unnoticed or underreported. On this week’s More To The Story, Torre sits down with host Al Letson to discuss what it’s like investigating the complicated world of sports.  Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: How Sports Became a Battleground Over Trans Rights (Reveal) Read: How Right-Wing Superstar Riley Gaines Built an Anti-Trans Empire (Mother Jones and Pablo Torre Finds Out) Watch: What Is Riley Gaines Hiding? We Investigated (Pablo Torre Finds Out) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Sports, theater and concert fans are excited venues are opening up again. So are clever ticket sellers who’ve figured out ways to cash in on unsuspecting customers shopping online.  Reveal’s Byard Duncan starts with an examination of the tricks and traps that await fans who try to buy tickets online, at the hands of some of the largest companies in what’s known as the secondary ticket market.  Then Reveal’s Ike Sriskandarajah visits his favorite theater in Oakland, California, which went dark in March because of the pandemic. Like venues across the country, the Paramount Theatre plans to reopen its doors later this year, and we find out what it will look like.   We end with an essay from reporter Yoohyun Jung, who’s been a fan of K-pop music for most of her life. But when she went from being a fan to working in the business, she saw some disturbing things that gave her a new perspective on this international phenomenon.  This is an update of an episode that originally aired February 6, 2021.

Donica Brady lost her job after the Trump administration cut grant funding to bring solar power across the country, including to tribal nations. She picked up multiple jobs to make ends meet. That, in addition to caring for children, whittled down Brady’s free time. So she invited reporter Ilana Newman over when she found a quiet moment—while skinning a deer—to talk about what the loss of solar funding meant to her and her community.  “When the opportunity came up to work and help us get something established…it was huge,” she said. Brady was one of many Indigenous people working to build energy sovereignty for tribal nations—work that continues despite the administration clawing back federal funds.  This week on Reveal, we’re diving into how small communities across the country are navigating the current administration’s policies and how they show up in everyone’s lives, no matter where you are in this country. We’ve partnered with The Daily Yonder to share a story about the solar energy hopes of tribal nations; The Tributary in Jacksonville, Florida, to learn how local and state DOGE are complicating efforts to run the city; and Idaho-based reporter Heath Druzin to hear how the Trump administration’s immigration policy is rupturing the state’s Republican Party. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram

More To The Story: On January 24, a US Border Patrol agent shot and killed 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis after he was held down by multiple federal agents. The Trump administration alleged that Pretti threatened agents with a gun. But videos appear to show Pretti, who was carrying a licensed handgun, holding only his phone in his hand when he was tackled and agents disarming Pretti before he was shot and killed. Following Pretti’s death, thousands of protesters once again flooded the streets of Minneapolis. One of them was Rob Schenck, an evangelical minister who was a religious-right leader for decades. But Schenck began doubting the movement and his own role in it—especially once President Donald Trump came to power. Since then, he’s worked to undo his decades of activism that he believes helped pave the way for the Trump presidency. On this week’s More To The Story, Schenck sits down with host Al Letson to talk about what led him to the streets of Minneapolis, his emotional visit to Renée Good’s memorial, and why he’s become “guardedly optimistic” about the ultimate direction of this current political moment in America. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: A Christian Nationalist Has Second Thoughts (Reveal) Watch: He Spent Decades Building the Religious Right. Now He’s Marching to Undo It. (Mother Jones) Read: Confessions of a (Former) Christian Nationalist (Mother Jones) Read: Tom Homan Is Supposed to Fix Trump’s Minnesota Crisis. His Record Raises Serious Questions. (Mother Jones) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Thirty years ago, activists and scientists turned a fight over the spotted owl and ancient trees into one of the biggest environmental conflicts of the century. The process transformed the way we see – and fight over – the natural world. Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

During an NCAA women’s swimming championship in March 2022, two seniors tied for fifth place. The race was unremarkable except for one fact: One of the swimmers, Lia Thomas, was a transgender woman. The swimmer she tied with, Riley Gaines, believed the NCAA never should have allowed her to participate. The matchup, and Gaines’ subsequent transformation into a leading anti-trans activist, has fueled a growing movement to “save women’s sports” from trans women—and a conservative crusade against trans rights more broadly.  This week on Reveal, we examine Gaines’ rise and radicalization, as her rhetoric shifts from calling out NCAA policy to calling trans women  sexual predators. Over the last year, the anti-trans movement has reached a tipping point. Trans girls are banned from girls’ school sports in the majority of states. The NCAA and US Olympic and Paralympic committees have banned trans women from women’s competitions. The Supreme Court is currently considering the issue, too. Then we dive into the science to understand how gender-affirming hormone therapy affects trans women’s performance—and what questions science still has not answered around fairness in women’s sports. Finally, we return to the swimming pool, as reporter Imogen Sayers speaks with Meghan Cortez-Fields, one of the last transgender swimmers to compete as a woman in the NCAA. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Over the last few weeks, Minneapolis has looked like a city under siege. The Trump administration has sent roughly 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota in what Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has called the “largest immigration operation ever.” This all comes as protests have spread around Minneapolis and across the country demanding that ICE leave Minnesota and other states following the death of Renée Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and US citizen who was killed by an ICE officer as she observed federal agents. ICE and other immigration agents are operating in ways we’ve never seen before in this country. But their tactics and weapons are not entirely new.  Investigative journalist Radley Balko is the author of Rise of the Warrior Cop and host of Collateral Damage, a podcast about America’s war on drugs. He’s been tracking police militarization for decades and how it's tied to America's long-running drug war. On this week’s More To The Story, Balko tells host Al Letson that how law enforcement is operating today is beyond anything he ever imagined. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: Lessons From Trump’s “War” on Chicago (Reveal) Read: How Trump Is Using Violent Tragedies to Divide America (Mother Jones) Listen: A Dictator Deposed—What Now for Venezuela? (Reveal) Read: Rise of the Warrior Cop (PublicAffairs) Listen: Collateral Damage (The Intercept) Read: The Watch Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Journalist Mariana Zúñiga woke up in the middle of the night to the sounds of explosions and military planes in Caracas, Venezuela. Her WhatsApp chats flashed the news: The ruling dictator, Nicholás Maduro, had just been captured by the US military. She was surprised and felt uneasy about what was to come. In the days that followed, Zúñiga would go into the field, despite the dangers journalists face, to report on what the country feels like at this tumultuous moment.  This week on Reveal, we speak with Venezuelans about witnessing this moment of history from up close and afar. For Freddy Guevara, an exiled Venezuelan opposition leader living in the US, there is little confidence in the country’s new leadership.  “They are not moderate at all,” Guevara says. “They are super radical, and they believe they are smarter than everyone.”  And historian Alejandro Velasco explains the role Venezuela’s most valuable resource—oil—has played in the country’s history and relations with the US. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: A year ago this month, President Donald Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people responsible for the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. University of Chicago political science professor Robert Pape argues that Trump’s decision to pardon and set free the insurrectionists, including hundreds who had been found guilty of assaulting police, could be the most consequential decision of his term.  On this week’s More To The Story, Pape talks with host Al Letson about how America’s transformation to a white minority is fueling the nation’s growing political violence, the remarkable political geography of the insurrectionists, and the glimmers of hope he’s found in his research that democracy can survive this pivotal moment in history. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: How Trump’s January 6 Pardons Hijacked History (More To The Story) Read: Both the Left and the Right Are Targeted by Political Violence. Who Perpetrates It? (Mother Jones) Read: Understanding Support for Political Violence in America (Chicago Project on Security and Threats) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

Kansas City police Officer Matt Masters first used a Taser in the early 2000s. He said it worked well for taking people down; it was safe and effective.  “At the end of the day, if you have to put your hands on somebody, you got to scuffle with somebody, why risk that?” he said. “You can just shoot them with a Taser.” Masters believed in that until his son Bryce was pulled over by an officer and shocked for more than 20 seconds. The 17-year-old went into cardiac arrest, which doctors later attributed to the Taser. Masters’ training had led him to believe something like that could never happen.  This week on Reveal, we partner with Lava for Good’s podcast Absolute: Taser Incorporated and its host, Nick Berardini, to learn what the company that makes the Taser knew about the dangers of its weapon and didn’t say. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Last week, US forces entered Venezuela, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a nighttime raid. On Monday, they were arraigned in US federal court, pleading not guilty to narcoterrorism charges. The military action followed a monthslong pressure campaign that included a number of deadly strikes on boats off the Venezuelan coast that the Trump administration alleges were used for drug smuggling. Many legal experts, human rights groups, and lawmakers have called the strikes illegal. The US has a long history of exerting power and influence in South America—sometimes violating international law in the process. The latest moves by the Trump administration appear to signal a new era of foreign policy for America meant to send a message to countries in the region and around the world. On this week’s More To The Story, host Al Letson sits down with Emma Ashford, a Foreign Policy magazine columnist and senior fellow at the Stimson Center, to examine the implications of Maduro’s ouster, how she defines what Trump is now calling the “Donroe Doctrine,” and what the US’s latest actions could mean for the region and the world. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Read: A New Theory Explains Why Trump Keeps Threatening Global Takeovers (Mother Jones) Listen: Trump’s New World (Dis)order (Reveal) Read: Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates (Georgetown University Press) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

In the early 2000s, rampant steroid use across Major League Baseball became the biggest scandal in the sport’s history. But fans didn’t want to hear the difficult truth about their heroes – and the league didn’t want to intervene and clean up a mess it helped make.  We look back at how the scandal unraveled with our colleagues from the podcast Crushed from Religion of Sports and PRX. Their show revisits the steroid era to untangle its truth from the many myths, examine the legacy of baseball’s so-called steroid era and explore what it tells us about sports culture in America. We start during the 1998 MLB season, when the home run race was on. Superstar sluggers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa battled to set a new single-season record, and McGwire, the St. Louis Cardinals first baseman, was portrayed as the hero baseball needed: part humble, wholesome, working man and part action hero, with his brawny build and enormous biceps. So when a reporter spotted a suspicious bottle of pills in his locker in the middle of the season, most fans plugged their ears and refused to acknowledge that baseball might be hooked on steroids. Joan Niesen, a sportswriter and host of the podcast Crushed, takes us on a deep dive into an era that dethroned a generation of superstars, left fans disillusioned and turned baseball’s record book on its head. The story takes us from ballparks and clubhouses to the halls of Congress to explain how baseball was finally forced to reckon with its drug problem.

In 2023, Marlena Arjo adopted a one-eyed kitten with a penchant for destruction. She named him Otto, and over the next eight months, Otto grew into his own little chaotic personality. “ He’s laying on houseplants, he’s tearing books out of the bookshelves, ripping the calendar off the wall…I wasn’t prepared for having a criminal in my home,” Arjo joked. Within months, Otto got sick and stopped eating. Arjo rushed him to a vet and learned he had feline infectious peritonitis, better known as FIP, a disease that kills nearly all cats that contract it.  The vet said there was nothing the clinic could do. But there was something Arjo could do. “I shouldn’t tell you this,” Arjo recalled the vet telling her. “But by the way, you can get drugs for this if you go to this Facebook group.” This week on Reveal, in partnership with the Hyperfixed podcast, we tell the story of the cat drug black market, why it was even necessary, and how cat lovers fought for big changes to make the black market obsolete. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Bill McKibben isn’t known for his rosy outlook on climate change. Back in 1989, the environmentalist wrote The End of Nature, which is considered the first mainstream book warning of global warming’s potential effects on the planet. His writing on climate change has been described as “dark realism.” But McKibben has recently let a little light shine through thanks to the dramatic growth of renewable energy, particularly solar power. In his latest book, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, McKibben argues that the planet is experiencing the fastest energy transition in history from fossil fuels to solar and wind—and that transition could be the start of something big. On this week’s More To The Story, McKibben sits down with host Al Letson to examine the rise of solar power, how China is leapfrogging the United States in renewable energy use, and the real reason the Trump administration is trying to kill solar and wind projects around the country. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick with help from Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: Will the National Parks Survive Trump? (Reveal) Read: Rooftop Solar Is a Miracle. Why Are We Killing It With Red Tape? (Mother Jones) Read: Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (W.W. Norton & Company) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

This week on Reveal, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary with a look back at some of our favorite stories, from investigations into water shortages in drought-prone California to labor abuses in the Dominican Republic. And we interview the journalists behind the reporting to explain what happened after the stories aired.  This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in March 2025.

More To The Story: Dan McClellan has spent much of his life learning—and relearning—what the Bible and its authors were trying to tell us. But his years in graduate school also taught him that the way scholars talk about the Bible is much different from how churchgoers discuss it. Several years ago, McClellan began pushing back against what he saw as misguided biblical interpretations online and soon gained a following. Today, he has almost 1 million followers on TikTok who look for his thoughts on topics like the “sin of empathy,” what the Bible says about slavery, or maybe just to see what graphic T-shirt he has decided to wear that day.  On this week’s More To The Story, McClellan sits down with host Al Letson to talk about the ways people throughout history have used the Bible to serve their own interests, and a time when his own perspective of the Bible was challenged. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy Editor: Nikki Frick |Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Listen: In God We Vote (Reveal) Read: Christian “TheoBros” Are Building a Tech Utopia in Appalachia (Mother Jones) Listen: A Christian Nationalist Has Second Thoughts (More To The Story) Read: The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues (St. Martin’s Essentials) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

In the mid-’90s, two high-end New York art galleries began selling one fake painting after another – works in the style of Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko and others. It was the largest art fraud in modern U.S. history, totaling more than $80 million. Our first story looks at how it happened and why almost no one ever was punished by authorities.  Our second story revisits an investigation into a painting looted by the Nazis during World War II. More than half a century later, a journalist helped track it down through the Panama Papers.  This is an update of an episode that originally aired in January 2020.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

For many Americans, proper sanitation and clean water seem like issues for developing countries. But much of rural America—and even parts of US cities—still struggles to provide the basics we all need to survive. And as infrastructure ages and strains under the threat of climate change, the problems will likely get worse. Environmental justice activist Catherine Coleman Flowers has been on the forefront of these issues for decades. And she says that while a lack of sanitation is often found in poor, Black regions, especially in the Deep South, these basic environmental issues cut across racial lines. On this week’s More To The Story, Flowers sits down with host Al Letson to talk about her years working to achieve “sanitation justice” in the South, how biblical lessons apply to climate offenders, and her book of personal essays, Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky Read: Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope (Spiegel & Grau) Listen: The Great Arizona Water Grab (Reveal) Read: Some Alabamians Can’t Even Flush Their Toilets. The EPA Is Here to Help. (Inside Climate News via Mother Jones) Note: If you buy a book using ourBookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

Chicago has been one of the latest stops on the Trump administration’s deportation tour. “Operation Midway Blitz” started in September and, for months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents have been roaming the streets and detaining hundreds of people. This week on Reveal, host Al Letson and producer Ashley Cleek visit Chicago to see “Operation Midway Blitz” in action, and find out what it’s been like for those targeted by it. Letson and Cleek found citizens detained, Chicago police officers pepper-sprayed, and communities terrified. Most Chicagoans arrested by federal agents in the operation had no criminal record, not even a traffic ticket. Letson and Cleek also see how communities are mobilizing to protect each other, and how some of the tensions over immigration raids stretch back to decisions made by the city back in 2022. They also learn from 404 Media’s Joseph Cox about face-scanning apps used by federal agents in Chicago—and how the use of this kind of surveillance points to a broader shift in how the US government deploys its technologies against people inside the country.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

The second Trump administration has made tearing down parts of the federal government a priority. And some of those efforts have been literal. In October, President Donald Trump ordered the demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for the construction of a massive 90,000-square-foot ballroom. He’s also given the White House a gilded makeover, bulldozed the famed Rose Garden, and even has plans for a so-called “Arc de Trump” that mirrors France’s Arc de Triomphe. So what’s behind all of this? Art historian Erin Thompson—author of Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments—says that whether it’s Romans repurposing idols of leaders who had fallen out of favor or the glorification of Civil War officers in the American South, monuments and public aesthetics aren’t just about the past. They’re about symbolizing power today. On this week’s More To The Story, Thompson sits down with host Al Letson to discuss why Trump has decked out the White House in gold (so much gold), the rise and recent fall of Confederate monuments, and whether she thinks the Arc de Trump will ever get built. Producers: Josh Sanburn and Artis Curiskis | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky Listen: Fancy Galleries, Fake Art (Reveal) Listen: Will the National Parks Survive Trump? (Reveal) Read: Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments (W. W. Norton & Company) Read: America’s Tech Right Is Obsessed With Building Giant Statues (Bloomberg) Read: Nearly 100 Confederate Monuments Were Toppled in 2020. What Happened to Them? (Mother Jones) Note: If you buy a book using our Bookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

Earlier this fall, hundreds of activists from all over the world crowded onto several dozen boats and set sail for Gaza. Their goal: Break through Israel’s blockade of the territory and end one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet. They thought that by sharing their journey through social media, they could capture the world’s attention.  At first, it was easy to dismiss the Global Sumud Flotilla—until it wasn’t. Before reaching Gaza, the flotilla was attacked by drones, and activists were arrested by the Israeli navy.  “We were at gunpoint; like, you could see the laser on our chest,” says flotilla participant Louna Sbou.   They were then sent to a high-security prison in the middle of the Negev desert. “You have no control, you have no information, and you have no rights,” says Carsie Blanton, another participant. “They could do whatever they want to you.” This week on Reveal, we go aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla for a firsthand look at what activists faced on their journey and whether their efforts made any difference.  Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell is one of the most prominent Black conservatives in President Donald Trump’s orbit. It all started last summer when the president visited Sewell’s 180 Church while campaigning in Detroit. A month later, Sewell spoke at the Republican National Convention. And in January, he prayed for the new president during his inauguration inside the US Capitol. As Sewell’s voice echoed around the domed rotunda, the prayer sounded familiar to many. That’s because Sewell adapted Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. As Trump dismantles DEI policies around the country and pushes efforts to erase Black history from schools and museums, Sewell remains one of the president’s most prominent Black defenders and argues that the Trump presidency is actually improving Black Americans’ lives. On this week’s More To The Story, Sewell sits down with host Al Letson to talk about his upbringing as a drug dealer in Detroit, his conversion to Christianity, and his inauguration prayer. Letson challenges Sewell’s ideas about racism, his support of Charlie Kirk, and his defense of the Trump administration’s rollback of DEI policies. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky Watch: I Spent a Week With Black Republicans (Mother Jones) Listen: Red, Black, and Blue (Reveal) Read: Trump Shuts Down Diversity Programs Across Government (Mother Jones) Listen: The Bible Says So…or Does It? (More To The Story) Watch: Rev. Lorenzo Sewell Delivers Benediction (PBS NewsHour via YouTube)

In August 2022, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall made a guest appearance on a local conservative talk radio show. It was two months after the US Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, and abortion was now illegal in Alabama. And Marshall addressed rumors that he planned to prosecute anyone helping people get abortions out of state.   “If someone was promoting themselves out as a funder of abortion out of state,” Marshall explained to the host, “then that is potentially criminally actionable for us.”  This particular threat launched an epic legal battle with implications for some of the most basic American rights: the right to travel, the right to free speech, the right to give and receive help.  This week on Reveal, reporter Nina Martin spends time with abortion rights groups in Alabama, following how they’ve adapted to one of the nation’s strictest anti-abortion policies—and evolved their definition of help. This is an update of an episode that originally aired in May 2025. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Instagram

This week, we’re bringing you something a bit different. Our reporter Madison Pauly recently teamed up with journalist and podcaster Pablo Torre for a special episode of his investigative show, Pablo Torre Finds Out. The episode is a deep dive into right-wing superstar Riley Gaines, a swimmer who tied a transgender woman for fifth place and became a viral figure with outsized influence within the MAGA movement. Pauly spent six months digging into the money behind Gaines’ anti-trans empire and interviewing Gaines’ former teammates and competitors. She uncovers how the swimmer is profiting from her newfound fame as a generational conservative activist and explores how a lawsuit Gaines filed against the NCAA, which will be decided by the Supreme Court next year, could change everything for trans athletes. Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. Check out their other investigations on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky

When a typhoon hit Alaska, public radio station KYUK was on the air, broadcasting critical information about conditions, evacuations and search and rescue operations. An estimated 1600 people were displaced and many were saved  in the biggest airlift operation in state history “The work that we do in terms of public safety communication literally does save lives”, said Sage Smiley, KYUK’s news director.  KYUK is small, scrappy and bilingual. It broadcasts in English and Yugtun, the native language of an indigenous population that lives in villages along two massive rivers. The station airs NPR but also high school basketball games, local call-in talk shows, even a show hosted by the volunteer search and rescue team answering listeners’ questions about ice conditions and safety. The station is a lifeline for this unique region. KYUK news covers an area the size of the state of Oregon, and after Congress passed the Rescission Act, it lost 70 percent of its operating budget. Republicans have targeted public media since its inception in the late 60’s. But this is the first time it has successfully ended the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, wiping out more than a billion dollars in funding for public media.  This week on Reveal we take listeners inside KYUK as it grapples with this new reality. Host Al Letson sits down with Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski about how the cuts are affecting her state. And, we take a trip to WQED in Pittsburgh for a look back at how Fred Rogers, the host of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, defended public television throughout its decades-long struggle to survive Washington politics. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: John J. Lennon thinks true crime is exploitative—and he has a unique perspective. In 2001, he killed a man on a street in New York City. He was convicted of murder several years later and given the maximum sentence—25 years to life in prison—on top of three additional years for two other convictions. From behind bars, he began reckoning with his crime through in-prison writing workshops and soon fell in love with journalism. He’s since made a name for himself as an incarcerated journalist and has been published in The Atlantic, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine, often writing about the criminal justice system and conditions in correctional facilities, all from the inside. In the decades Lennon’s been behind bars, America has become increasingly fixated on stories like his—true crime—through endless podcasts, documentary series, and streaming shows. But Lennon argues that tragedy is too often being turned into entertainment. True crime “creates this thirst for punishment,” he says. On this week’s More To The Story, Lennon joins with host Al Letson to discuss how his first book, The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us, inverts the basic structure of the true crime genre. They also discuss how his portrayal on a cable news show hosted by Chris Cuomo inspired him to write the book and how Lennon now views the murder he committed almost a quarter-century ago. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky Listen: In a Mississippi Jail, Inmates Became Weapons (Reveal) Read: There Are Many Programs Trying to Reduce Recidivism. This One Works. (Mother Jones) Read: The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us (Celadon Books) Read: A Convicted Murderer’s Case for Gun Control (The Atlantic)

Chris Mack has been locked up in Mississippi’s Rankin County Jail on and off since he was a teenager. In a lawsuit, he detailed a jailhouse assault that left him with broken ribs, a broken nose, and two black eyes. But it wasn’t just guards who attacked him. Mack said a group of inmates joined in—men in the jail’s Trusty Inmate Program, who had special privileges and wore blue jumpsuits.  “They were called the blue wave,” Mack said. Through more than 70 interviews with former inmates and officers, reporters from Mississippi Today and the New York Times discovered a system in which guards ordered beatings, inmates who participated were rewarded, and those trying to raise an alarm about the system for more than a decade were ignored. This week on Reveal, on the heels of our reporting on abuses in the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department run by Sheriff Bryan Bailey, we expose a wave of violence in his county jail. Support Reveal’s journalism atRevealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes atRevealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky,Facebook andInstagram

More To The Story: About 2,100 people are on death row in America. Some have been there for decades, in part because executions have been on the decline in the US. But that’s changing. So far this year, 41 people have been executed, up from 25 last year, and six more executions are scheduled. Early in his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reinstating federal executions while encouraging states to expand the use of capital punishment. One man has seen many of these executions up close. The Reverend Jeff Hood is an Old Catholic Church priest, an ordained Baptist minister, a racial justice activist, and something of a go-to spiritual adviser for many currently on death row. On the day of the execution, he goes inside the chamber for the final moments of people’s lives. On this week’s More To The Story, Hood sits down with host Al Letson to describe his work as an advocate for death row inmates, what it’s like being a white Southern reverend vocally advocating for racial justice, and how capital punishment in the US today illustrates American society’s increasing movement in a more violent direction. Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter atRevealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky Listen: In Bondage to the Law (Reveal) Read: Louisiana Is Executing Prisoners Again. His Case Shows the Costs. (Mother Jones)  Read: The Last Face Death Row Inmates See (Rolling Stone) Learn more: Death Penalty Information Center