The herbicide dicamba is causing a civil war in farm country. Plus, honeybee rustling in California’s almond groves. Lastly, sulfur and its link to asthma in children.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Some people who live along the Mississippi River are willing to do anything to keep their homes and farms safe from flooding – even if it means inundating their own neighbors. This week, we team up with ProPublica to investigate how rising waters have set off a race to build the highest levee.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
We meet an immigration judge who rejected nearly every asylum case that came before her, then follow a transgender woman as she tries to claim asylum. Finally, we go to Turkey, where young Afghan women are trying to leave their past behind.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Before there were boycotts, there was Captain Boycott. Meet the man who gave name to a new kind of protest.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
“It is wrong to boycott Israel” is a bipartisan message. But is banning the boycott a violation of First Amendment rights? Also, the story of a man who is trying to boycott Israel while living under Israeli occupation.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Reveal received a secret recording of oil industry executives rejoicing over the “unprecedented access” they have to David Bernhardt, the No. 2 official at the Interior Department. President Donald Trump has nominated Bernhardt to the top slot at the department, following the resignation of Ryan Zinke, and Bernhardt’s confirmation hearings are this week.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
A journey into the world of right-wing Twitter trolls, pro-Trump political operatives and fake-news profiteers from St. Louis to Macedonia, to answer one big question: How did America become a post-truth country?
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
A controversial theory about child abuse is swaying family court judges to award custody to parents accused of harming kids. We trace the origins of “parental alienation.”
**
*Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.*
Parents are forced to give up custody to get their children medical and psychological treatments. Also, a Trump administration practice forces parents to risk deportation in order to claim their kids from government shelters.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
It’s been 10 years since the great housing bust and lending is back for some Americans, but not for others. In dozens of cities across the country, lenders are more likely to deny loans to applicants of color than white ones.
On this episode of Reveal, we dig into the new redlining.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Children refusing to eat, talk, or even drink water. A surreal mental illness sweeps across families stuck in an Australian immigrant detention camp on a tiny island nation in the South Pacific.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
In Oregon, the concussion protocols that were supposed to keep high school athletes safe end up falling short for a star quarterback.
**
*Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.*
We examine the stories of two families separated in 2018 at the U.S.-Mexico border and how what happened to them matches up with what the government said was supposed to happen.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Investigators dig up an unidentified murder victim, 45 years after she was buried, in an attempt to give her back her name. The exhumation leads to a series of unexpected revelations about who she was and why she may have been killed. Her case speaks to the complexity – and importance – of opening up cold cases.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
How did one helicopter become the deadliest aircraft in the US military? To find out, Reveal partners with Investigative Studios, the production arm of the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
In 1971, a 22-year-old journalist named Robert Rosenthal got a call from his boss at The New York Times. He told him to go to room 1111 of the Hilton Hotel, bring enough clothes for at least a month and not tell anyone.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
President Donald Trump says he doubts humans have much of a role in climate change. His administration has downplayed the science of climate change and sought to silence scientists working for the federal government.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
In the carnage that followed the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, there was one incident that top military commanders hoped would be concealed. It’s the story of an American war crime nearly forgotten to history.
**Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
A giant mysterious illegal dump in Chicago was part of a federal investigation that brought down a dozen corrupt politicians, but it left neighborhood residents angry and feeling used.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
In Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, the Catholic church had a problem with Jesuit priests sexually abusing children. The church’s first solution was to send the priests to remote Native villages, but there they continued to abuse. So the church tried something else: hiding them in plain sight.
*Listeners should know that this episode includes descriptions of abuse and predatory behavior, and is not a story for all listeners.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Myths of the Civil War and slavery are being kept alive at Confederate monuments, where visitors hear stories of “benevolent slave owners” and enslaved people “contented with their lot.” We team up with The Investigative Fund and discover how public money is supporting this false version of history.
Plus, an artist finds herself in the middle of the creation of New Mexico’s most controversial historical monument.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
The recent killing of 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue refocused the nation’s attention on right-wing extremist terrorists. Meanwhile, the Trump administration points to radical Islam as the bigger threat to security. On this episode of Reveal, we investigate which terror threats get tracked and which are ignored.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Half of California’s 10 worst wildfires have struck in the last two years. We look at the recent Camp Fire, which is the deadliest and most destructive in state history. And we revisit an investigation from earlier this year looking at how extreme wildfires are breaking our emergency response systems. Produced in partnership with KQED.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
He seemed to confess to the crime, twice to his ex-girlfriend, once to police. But prosecutors never charged him. The reasons why show how rape myths continue to influence how justice is meted out in America. Reported in partnership with Newsy and ProPublica.
When police closed the rape case against Bryan Kind, they made it look like it had been solved. But he never was arrested – or even charged. We team up with Newsy and ProPublica to investigate how police across the country make it seem like they’re solving more rape cases than they actually are.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
After being called out for hiding worker injuries at its factory, Tesla decides to double down. Plus, a report card on diversity in Silicon Valley.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
After being called out for hiding worker injuries at its factory, Tesla doubles down. Hear a sneak preview of our latest investigation.
Doctors in Puerto Rico are outraged at the government’s unexpected decision to declare the Zika crisis over in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Plus, communities in Houston and North Carolina struggle to put their homes and lives back together.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
2017 was the worst hurricane season on record. A year later, we look at how Hurricane Harvey has made it almost impossible for people to find affordable housing in Houston. Listen to a sneak preview of this Saturday’s episode.
Approaching 2018’s midterms, the country has its eyes locked on Georgia’s governor’s race. It’s a close contest between Stacey Abrams, a former state congresswoman who could become the first-ever black female governor in America and Brian Kemp, a tough-talking Trump loyalist with a penchant for the Second Amendment. The race has become a battleground for many of America’s most pressing concerns about democracy – from voter suppression to election security.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Get a sneak preview of Saturday’s show where we investigate voter suppression ahead of the midterm elections.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
We hike through the jungles of El Salvador to find an elusive fleet of shark-fishing boats implicated in overfishing and possible human trafficking. Then we join a UN mission to intercept a crewmember from one of those boats who might be a victim of human trafficking. Finally, we investigate a U.S.-based seafood company that purports to be a model of sustainability.
From reporters Sarah Blaskey, Ben Feibleman, Robin McDowell, Margie Mason and Martha Mendoza, producer Michael Montgomery, and editor Brett Myers. This show was originally broadcast June 30th, 2018.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
An accused man faces an impossible choice in New Orleans. Plus, a new district attorney in Philadelphia sets out to undo the work of those who came before him.
From reporters Eve Abrams and Laura Starecheski, and editor Catherine Winter.
A 6-year-old child sleeps in a vacant office building, surrounded by strangers. An infant is taken from his breastfeeding mother. We examine the stories of two families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border and how what happened to them matches up with what the government said was supposed to happen.
From Reveal’s Aura Bogado, and Neena Satija (who also works with our partners at The Texas Tribune), Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, along with Casey Miner.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
At 7 years old, Wilson was taken from his mother as part of the Trump administration’s policy of family separation this summer. Our next show tells you what happened to him.
There’s a new battlefield in the culture wars: comic books. The alt-right now has gotten in the business, led by a buxom, Confederate flag-waving superhero named Rebel and a white vigilante who turns immigrants over to ICE.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Desperate to have a child, a couple puts its trust in a fertility clinic that promises more than it can deliver. They enter a world where some clinics take unnecessary risks to make them look far more successful than they are in reality.
From reporter Jonathan Jones and Reveal’s Bernice Yeung and Emily Harris.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Victim compensation funds are supposed to help victims of crime cover lost wages or funeral expenses. But Reveal teamed up with The Marshall Project and discovered that in some states, African Americans are disproportionately hurt by rules on how that money is handed out.
Then, Reveal reporters Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter uncover a scheme at a drug rehabilitation facility in the mountains of North Carolina, where clients are being used as a source of free labor.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Some people who live along the Mississippi River are willing to do anything to keep their homes and farms safe from flooding – even if it means inundating their own neighbors. This week, we team up with ProPublica to investigate how rising waters have set off a race to build the highest levee.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
*This show was originally broadcast February 3, 2018. *It’s been ten years since former NASDAQ chairman Bernie Madoff was arrested for committing one of the largest financial crimes in U.S. history. For decades he ran a Ponzi scheme from a secret office in New York, duping thousands of investors out of billions of dollars. Many of them lost everything when the house of cards fell.
How did Madoff pull it off? And what steps have regulators taken in the past decade to ensure that it doesn’t happen again? For this week’s episode, we teamed up with Steve Fishman, a reporter based in New York City who’s followed the story for years. He produced and hosted a seven-part podcast for Audible called “Ponzi Supernova.”
Through interviews with financial experts, federal agents, Madoff’s cellmates and Madoff himself, Fishman explains how the $60 billion con worked, and why Madoff was able to elude regulators for decades. Fishman says that while Madoff was the mastermind of the scheme, it was banks and other financial institutions who “weaponized” him, turning him from a “local swindler” into an unstoppable force.
Madoff will spend the rest of his life in prison, but no one from these institutions faced similar consequences. And even though some precautions have been put in place since Madoff’s arrest, financial experts warn that for the most part, investors are still on their own.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
African migrants fleeing persecution or seeking opportunity often end up in Libya, where they are tortured and trafficked. Many try to escape to Europe, only to be intercepted at sea and returned to Libya. On this episode of Reveal, we trace their journey and explore how Europe’s immigration policy is helping Libyan warlords and putting migrants at risk. This episode was originally broadcast on May 19, 2018.
In the first segment, reporter Raphaël Krafft takes us to the open waters off the coast of Libya, where a small boat carrying migrants is trying to flee the country. The boat is filled beyond capacity and starts to take on water and sink. A rescue ship run by nongovernmental organizations from Europe is poised to help, but a coast guard boat from Libya intervenes, creating a standoff at sea.
Next, we learn why so many migrants – mostly from Africa – end up trapped in Libya and about the conditions they face when they’re there. Krafft meets a young Nigerian man named Osaze Sunday, who was held for ransom and trafficked in Libya before attempting to escape by boat to Italy.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
In Texas, the foster care system is failing the vulnerable children it’s meant to protect, leaving many without a safe place to live. Foster children often end up on the streets or in jail, which is one of the few places where they can receive treatment services. This week we look into the crisis in foster care, and efforts to fix it.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Deep in the backroads of central Florida, hidden between trees dripping with Spanish moss, sits the campus of an infamous center for the developmentally disabled. Its story shows what can happen when families have nowhere else to find care for their loved ones.
After years of complaints, Carlton Palms is finally being shut down. But its parent company, Bellwether Behavioral Health, is still running group homes across the country, where new allegations have arisen.
WNYC reporter Audrey Quinn investigates the company and speaks to a family whose son was abused at two of Bellwether’s New Jersey facilities. She discovers that, with national spending on autism services expected to increase 70 percent by 2025, the company is owned by a private equity firm.
Then, reporter Elly Yu investigates the death of a DACA recipient while at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in rural Georgia.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
In December 1944, Adolf Hitler surprised the Allies with a secret counterattack through the Ardennes forest, known today as the Battle of the Bulge. In the carnage that followed, there was one incident that top military commanders hoped would be concealed. It’s the story of an American war crime nearly forgotten to history.
After desperate house-to-house fighting between German and American forces, American soldiers wrested control of the Belgian town of Chenogne. Americans rounded up the remaining German prisoners of war, took them to a field and machine-gunned them.
Reporter Chris Harland-Dunaway found an entry in General George S. Patton’s handwritten diary referring to the incident in Chenogne. Patton called it murder. So why then was there no official investigation?
Through vivid interviews with a 93-year-old veteran who witnessed the event, conversations with historians and the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg Trials, and analysis of formerly confidential military records, we investigate why justice never came for the American soldiers responsible for the massacre at Chenogne.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Old paint, old pipes and demolition dust often are sources of toxic lead. It’s a poison known to cause neurological damage in children. For adults, new science shows lead exposure increases the risk of heart disease. Reveal investigates the lurking threat from the dust of urban demolitions to the wilds of Wyoming. This episode was originally broadcast March 31, 2018.
In Detroit, dust is a particular concern. Because of the population drop, the city is tearing down tens of thousands of empty homes. Contractors are supposed to follow strict protocols on demolitions, but when those rules are not enforced, lead dust can drift around the neighborhood, poisoning children in unsuspecting families. Reporter Eilís O'Neill explores the impact.
Next, we go to the Fruitvale neighborhood in Oakland, California, where the rate of kids with high lead levels in their blood was greater than in Flint, Michigan, during the height of the water crisis there. Reporters Angela Johnston and Marissa Ortega-Welch of KALW in San Francisco explain how high housing costs and lead exposure are connected and introduce us to public health nurse Diep Tran, who says lead poisoning puts enormous stress on families.
“I've seen parents go into shock,” Tran says. “Most of them are anxious. Some feel guilty and go into denial, which is not good for the child, because parents in denial don't want to work with us. How can the child recover if we don't help the family?”
She says her only option sometimes is to advise families to move to a homeless shelter to escape exposure to lead.
Paul Flory could not escape. He grew up in Idaho’s Silver Valley, a longtime mining area that’s now a lead-laced Superfund site. Host Al Letson talks with him about going to school next door to a smelter and the struggles he’s had after his childhood lead poisoning was recorded – and then largely ignored.
Finally, we discover how tiny fragments of lead bullets hurt hunters’ unintended targets: eagles, condors and other scavenging wildlife. We trace lead dust from game guts to eagle brains in Wyoming.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
President Donald Trump has pledged allegiance to what he calls America’s “energy dominance.” This is good news for the oil and gas industry. We examine what this means for Alaskan villagers coping with climate change, Native American artifacts in Utah and birds flying over the U.S.
*
*To find out, we talk with a former Interior Department official who became a whistleblower after helping relocate Alaskan Native villages threatened by rising temperatures. We also examine the energy industry’s influence on the Trump administration and visit public lands in southeastern Utah, where parcels leased for oil and gas exploration contain sensitive Native American archeological sites.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
This week, we continue our ongoing investigation into what happens to immigrant children after they’re detained by the U.S. government. Our latest story investigates a vacant office building being used by a defense contractor to house children.
Then, we travel to the Gulf Coast to learn why last year was the costliest hurricane season on record. In Houston, we discover that homes flooded by Hurricane Harvey were actually built inside a reservoir.
We end on the Louisiana coast, where officials say they can no longer provide protection to homes most vulnerable to flooding, and that residents will have to abandon them.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
This week’s episode of Reveal investigates shark fishing in Central America and a U.S.-based seafood company that claims to be a model of sustainability.
We start in the jungles of El Salvador, where reporter Sarah Blaskey and photojournalist Ben Feibleman investigate one of the largest shark-fishing operations in the region. The men who crew these boats are migrants from Vietnam who work under grueling conditions.
Next, we follow reporters from The Associated Press as they continue their award-winning investigation into the seafood industry. Robin McDowell, Margie Mason and Martha Mendoza look into one of the country’s leading sustainable seafood companies, Sea to Table.
The company provides seafood to restaurants, universities and private homes across the country, claiming all its fish are wild caught and directly traceable to a U.S. dock. The reporters examine whether those claims hold up.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
Far from the World Cup stadium cheers, a prisoner held in Russia is six weeks into a hunger strike.
Reveal host Al Letson talks with Masha Alyokhina, a founding member of the Russian feminist punk rock collective Pussy Riot, about the efforts to free Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker convicted of an armed plot during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He denies any involvement. His supporters fear U.S. President Donald Trump has undermined their cause. Alyokhina knows the topic well: She spent time in prison for challenging Russian President Vladimir Putin, too.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.