Reveal
The Strike That Broke a Supermax Prison
At 18, Jack Morris was convicted of murdering a man in South Los Angeles and sent to prison for life. It was 1979, and America was entering the era of mass incarceration, with tough sentencing laws ballooning the criminal justice system. As California’s prison population surged, so did prison violence. “You learn that in order to survive, you yourself then have to become predatorial,” Morris says. “And then, you then expose somebody else to that, and it's a vicious cycle.”When California started aggressively targeting prison gangs, Morris was accused of associating with one of the groups. The punishment was severe: He was sent to a special supermax unit at the state’s highest-security prison, Pelican Bay. The facility was designed to isolate men deemed the “worst of the worst.” Like Morris, most lived in near-total isolation. No phone calls, no meaningful physical contact with another human, no educational classes, no glimpses of the outside world. The only regular time out of a cell was for a shower and solo exercise in another concrete room.Decades later, prisoners at Pelican Bay, including Morris, started a dialogue through coded messages and other covert communication. They decided to protest long-term solitary confinement by organizing a hunger strike. It would become the largest in US history and helped push California to implement reforms.This week on Reveal, we team up with the PBS film The Strike to tell the inside story of a group of men who overcame bitter divisions and harsh conditions to build an improbable prison resistance movement. 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 onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Exclusive: Trump Fired This Top Watchdog. Now He’s Speaking Out.
Fraud, waste, and abuse: That’s what inspectors general are tasked with investigating throughout the federal government. But in his first week in office, President Donald Trump did something unprecedented. He fired at least 17 IGs—more than any president in history—without notifying Congress or providing a substantive rationale for doing so, both of which are required by federal statute.On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with one of those fired IGs, Larry Turner of the US Department of Labor, in his first full interview since being let go. Turner says the kind of fraud that Elon Musk’s DOGE says it has found within days isn’t actually possible to uncover as quickly as Musk claims. And he describes Trump’s effort to oust inspectors general like himself as a threat to democracy itself.Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Production manager: Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Host: Al LetsonRead: Trump Ousts Multiple Government Watchdogs in a Late-Night Purge (Mother Jones)Donate today at Revealnews.org/moreSubscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram @revealnews Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Deputies Who Tortured a Mississippi County
When Andrea Dettore-Murphy first moved to Rankin County, Mississippi, she didn’t believe the stories she heard about how brutal the sheriff’s department could be when pursuing suspected drug crimes. But in 2018, she learned the hard way that the rumors were true when a group of sheriff’s deputies raided the home of her friend Rick Loveday and beat him relentlessly while she watched. A few years later, Dettore-Murphy says deputies put her through another haunting incident with her friend Robert Grozier. Dettore-Murphy was just the latest in a long line of people who said they witnessed or experienced torture by a small group of deputies, some of whom called themselves the “Goon Squad.” For nearly two decades, the deputies roamed Rankin County at night, beating, tasing, and choking suspects in drug crimes until they admitted to buying or selling illegal substances. Their reign of terror continued unabated until 2023, when the deputies were finally exposed.“Rankin County has always been notorious,” says Garry Curro, one the Goon Squad’s many alleged victims. “They don't follow the laws of the land. They make their own laws.”This week on Reveal, reporters Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield with Mississippi Today and the New York Times investigate the Goon Squad, whose members have allegedly tortured at least 22 people since the early 2000s. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Bird Flu, Measles, and Trump’s Ticking Time Bomb
This month marks the five-year anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has killed 1.2 million people in the US alone. While life has returned to normal for most Americans, the threats to our health haven’t disappeared. On this week’s episode of More To The Story, infectious disease epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera talks with host Al Letson about the collision course between the Trump administration’s health priorities and our developing public health emergencies, including the spread of bird flu and the ongoing measles outbreaks. We’ve not only failed to learn our lessons from the pandemic, she argues, but we also might be stumbling into the next one.Donate today at Revealnews.org/moreSubscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weeklyFollow us on Instagram @revealnewsProducer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producers: Nikki Frick and Artis Curiskis | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Host: Al LetsonListen: The Covid Tracking Project (Reveal)Read: Avian Flu Could Define Trump’s Second Presidency (Mother Jones) Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Plague in the Shadows
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. “We literally had to convince the federal government that there were women getting HIV,” says activist Maxine Wolfe. “We actually had to develop treatment and research agendas that were about women.”This week on Reveal, reporters Kai Wright and Lizzy Ratner from the podcast Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows take us back to 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 leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 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 in February 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Trump’s Mass Deportations Are Decades in the Making
This past weekend marked a major escalation in the Trump administration's mass deportation efforts, with the dramatic detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who played a prominent role in the protests against Israel on Columbia University’s campus last year. Khalil, a Columbia graduate student, is a permanent legal resident in the US. The Trump administration says it detained Khalil for what it described, without evidence, as his support for Hamas, and President Donald Trump promised “this is the first arrest of many to come” in a Truth Social post. In the meantime, a federal court in New York prevented the federal government from deporting Khalil while it hears his case. He’s currently being held at an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.Khalil’s arrest—and the Trump administration’s reimagining of immigration writ large—are in many ways a product of decades of dysfunction within the US immigration system itself. On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Reveal’s new weekly interview show, host Al Letson talks with The New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer about the 50-year history of the country’s inability to deal with migrants at the southern border and why the Trump administration’s approach to immigration is much more targeted—and extreme—than it was eight years ago. Support our journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al LetsonDig Deeper/Related Stories:Did the US Cause Its Own Border Crisis? (Reveal)https://revealnews.org/podcast/did-the-us-cause-its-own-border-crisis/Immigrants on the Line (Reveal)https://revealnews.org/podcast/immigrants-on-the-line/The Forgotten Origins of a Migration Crisis (Mother Jones)https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/02/jonathan-blitzer-migration-crisis-everyone-who-is-gone-is-here-interview/ Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
An Atrocity of War Goes Unpunished
In November 2005, a group of US Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them became one of the most high-profile war crimes prosecutions in US history—but then it fell apart. Only one Marine went to trial for the killings, and all he received was a slap on the wrist. Even his own defense attorney found the outcome shocking. “It's meaningless," said attorney Haytham Faraj. “The government decided not to hold anybody accountable. I mean, I don't know, I don't know how else to put it.”The Haditha massacre, as it came to be known, is the subject of the current season of The New Yorker’s In the Dark podcast and this week’s episode of Reveal. Reporter Madeleine Baran and her team spent four years looking into what happened at Haditha and why no one was held accountable. They also uncovered a previously unreported killing that happened that same day, a 25th victim whose story had never before been told. Photos from this story, as well as a searchable database of military war crimes, can be found at newyorker.com/season-3. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Trump’s January 6 Pardons Hijacked History
One of President Donald Trump’s first actions as president was simple and sweeping: pardoning 1,500 people convicted of offenses related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. That single executive action undid years of work and investigation by the FBI, US prosecutors, and one person in particular: Tim Heaphy.Heaphy was the lead investigative counsel for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, and he’s arguably done more than anyone to piece together what happened that day. His work helped inform related cases that were brought against rioters, Trump administration officials, and even Trump himself.In the first episode of More To The Story, Heaphy talks to host Al Letson about how Trump swept aside those consequences; the overlap between the January 6 attack and the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; and what Trump’s pardons mean for the country going forward.Check out the Reveal episode Viral Lies, in which we dig into the origins of “Stop the Steal.”Support our journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenowSubscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weeklyInstagramMore To The Story team:Kara McGuirk-Allison, Josh Sanburn, Al Letson Taki Telonidis, Brett Myers, Fernando Arruda, Jim Briggs, Nikki Frick, Kate Howard, Artis Curiskis Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Decade of Reveal
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. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
More To The Story with Al Letson
From the unflinching investigative team behind Reveal comes a new weekly podcast that delivers More To The Story. Every Wednesday, Peabody Award-winning journalist Al Letson sits down with the people at the heart of our changing world for candid—sometimes uncomfortable—conversations that make you rethink your entire newsfeed. Whether he's sounding the alarm about the future of democracy, grappling with the shifting dynamics of political power, or debating big cultural moments, Al always brings his unfiltered curiosity to topics and perspectives that go too often ignored. Because, as Al reminds us every week on Reveal, when you take the time to listen, there’s always More To The Story. Find it in your Reveal feed beginning March 5, 2025. Support our journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram or BlueSky Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
40 Acres and a Lie Part 3
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.”It’s an 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 week on Reveal, in honor of Black History Month, we explore the long-delayed fight for reparations.This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
40 Acres and a Lie Part 2
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 are 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 and in honor of Black History Month, 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 at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
40 Acres and a Lie Part 1
Our historical investigation found 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans who were given land—only to see it returned to their enslavers.This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Immigrants on the Line
Mackenson Remy didn’t plan to bypass security when he drove into the parking lot of a factory in Greeley, Colorado. He’d never been there before. All he knew was this place had jobs…lots of jobs. Remy is originally from Haiti, and in 2023, he’d been making TikTok videos about job openings in the area for his few followers, mostly other Haitians.What Remy didn’t know was that he had stumbled onto a meatpacking plant owned by the largest meat producer in the world, JBS. The video he made outside the facility went viral, and hundreds of Haitians moved for jobs at the plant. But less than a year later, Remy—and JBS—were accused of human trafficking and exploitation by the union representing workers at the plant. “This is America. I was hoping America to be better than back home,” says Tchelly Moise, a Haitian immigrant and union rep. “Someone needs to be held accountable for this, because this is not okay anywhere.” This week on Reveal, reporter Ted Genoways with the Food & Environment Reporting Network looks into JBS’ long reliance on immigrant labor for this work—and its track record of not treating those workers well. The difference this time is those same workers are now targets of President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
After the Crash
A police officer chased a Native teen to his death. Days later, the police force shut down without explanation.In 2020, Blossom Old Bull was raising three teenagers on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. Her youngest son, Braven Glenn, was 17, a good student, dedicated to his basketball team.That November, Old Bull got a call saying Glenn was killed in a police car chase that resulted in a head-on collision with a train. Desperate for details about the accident, she went to the police station, only to find it had shut down without any notice. “The doors were locked. It looked like it wasn’t in operation anymore—like they just upped and left,” Old Bull said. “It's, like, there was a life taken, and you guys just closed everything down without giving the family any answers?”This kicks off a yearslong search to find out what happened to Glenn and how a police force could disappear overnight without explanation. This week on Reveal, Mother Jones reporter Samantha Michaels’ investigation into the crash is at once an examination of a mother’s journey to uncover the details of her son’s final moments and a sweeping look at a broken system of tribal policing.This is an update of an episode that originally aired in April 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
In Fallujah, We Destroyed Parts of Ourselves
It’s been 20 years since the Battle of Fallujah, a bloody campaign in a destructive Iraq War that we now know was based on a lie. But back then, in the wake of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with troops who believed in serving and defending the country against terrorism. “Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” said Mike Ergo, a team leader for the US Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. “And it was also, for myself, the most alive I've ever felt.”This week on Reveal, we’re partnering with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
All the President’s Pardons
President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son and President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to set free people who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, bring back memories of what’s considered the most controversial pardon ever: Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. Ford’s pardon of the former president in 1974 sparked outrage among politicians and the American people. “I had a visceral feeling that the public animosity to Mr. Nixon was so great that there would be a lack of understanding, and the truth is that's the way it turned out,” Ford said in an interview broadcast for the first time on Reveal. “The public and many leaders, including dear friends, didn’t understand it at the time.”This week on Reveal, we look at the politics of pardons and discover that beyond those that make headlines, there is a backlog of thousands of people who’ve waited years—even decades—for presidents to make a decision about their petitions for clemency. This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2019. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Fortress Europe: The Fight for Refugees in Greece
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 ACB Stories 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. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Take No Prisoners
It was their first day in battle and the two best friends had just switched places. Bob Fordyce rested while Frank Hartzell crawled down into the shallow foxhole, taking his turn chipping away at the frozen ground. Just then, German artillery fire began falling all around them. With his body plastered to the ground, Hartzell could feel shrapnel dent his helmet. When the explosions finished, he picked himself up to find that his best friend had just been killed in the blur of combat. “When you’re actually in it, it’s very chaotic,” Hartzell said. The following day, New Year’s Day 1945, Hartzell batted Nazi soldiers for control of the Belgian town of Chenogne. In the aftermath, American soldiers gunned down dozens of unarmed German prisoners of war in a field, a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. “I remember we had been given orders, take no prisoners,” Hartzell said. “When I walked past the field on the left, there were these dead bodies. I knew what they were. I knew they were dead Germans.” News of the massacre reached General George S. Patton, but no investigation followed.This week on Reveal, reporter Chris Harland-Dunaway investigates why the soldiers who committed the massacre at Chenogne were never held accountable.This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2018. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Whistleblower in New Folsom Prison
When Valentino Rodriguez started his job at a high-security prison in Sacramento, California, informally known as New Folsom, he thought he was entering a brotherhood of correctional officers who hold each other to a high standard of conduct.Five years later, Rodriguez would be found dead in his home. His unexpected passing would raise questions from his family and the FBI. Before he died, Rodriguez was promoted to an elite unit investigating crimes in the prison. His parents and his widow say he had been hoping for the position for a long time. But once inside the unit, the job consumed him. From day one, his fellow officers began to undermine and harass him. Stressed and fed up with how he was being treated, Rodriguez reached a breaking point. He left the prison, but his experiences there still haunted him—so he went in for a meeting with the warden. He didn’t know it would be his last.This week on Reveal, we partner with KQED reporters Sukey Lewis and Julie Small and the On Our Watch podcast to explore what this correctional officer’s story shows about how the second-largest prison system in the country is failing to protect the people who live and work inside it.This is an update of an episode that originally aired in March 2024. Listen to the whole On Our Watch series here. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Charles Saulino
It is so weird to me when someone reacts to shifting politics with, "God is good!" In this case we're talking about overturning a 50- year precedent. Was God not good for those 50 years? Was something more powerful preventing God's way for 50 years? Or do you just mean that the work of people that by your belief agree with God did something you believe God will find good? And if it's the last one, why are you giving God any credit?
Joy Merten
I'm almost certain they are using AI for some of the hosts' voices in this episode
Margi Baum
8*++#: ×asad5m .a
Bea Kiddo
Great episode
Jon Ferry
I’ve been writting to you about the Troubled teen industry for a bit, please Check out my TikTok playlist on it. @slaythetti, I am survivor, activist, and do a lot more than that, but I am an expert on the tti, history of it, the of fraud Paris Hilton & SICCA, how marginalized survivors still don’t get heard and more. I am a survivor of the Elan school, and so much more. Please email me at JusticeforElanSurvivors@gmail.com I can help