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Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

There's More To The Story

  • 50 minutes 52 seconds
    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.


    21 December 2024, 5:00 am
  • 50 minutes 53 seconds
    50 States of Mind

    Every summer, 50 of the nation’s best and brightest teenage girls gather in Mobile, Alabama, to embark on two of the most intense weeks of their lives. Everybody wants the same thing: to walk away with a $40,000 college scholarship and the title of Distinguished Young Woman of America.

    Reporter Shima Oliaee competed for Nevada when she was a teenager, and was invited back as a judge more than 20 years later. Oliaee accepted, all while recording it for a six-part audio series called The Competition.

    In the final days of the competition, there was news from Washington that had big implications for women across the nation: Roe v. Wade had fallen. 

    The girls are faced with a tough decision: Do they speak up for their political beliefs or stay focused on winning the money? And what might this mean for their futures—and their friendships?

    “This series changed how I view America,” Oliaee said. “I came away from it thinking, damn. American teen girls are the canaries in the coal mine.”

    This week, Reveal is partnering with The Competition podcast, from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios and hosted by Oliaee, to explore the dreams of young women, America’s promise, and what it takes to survive being a teen girl today.

    14 December 2024, 5:00 am
  • 50 minutes 39 seconds
    The Racist Hoax That Changed Boston

    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.

    7 December 2024, 5:00 am
  • 50 minutes 54 seconds
    Buried Secrets: America’s Indian Boarding Schools Part 2

    Chief Red Cloud was a Lakota leader in the late 1800s, when the conflict between the US government and Native Americans was intense, and he was the tribal chief when the Catholic church built a boarding school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Generations of children were traumatized by their experience at the school, whose mission was to strip them of their language and culture.


    Red Cloud’s descendant Dusty Lee Nelson and other members of the community are seeking reparations from the church. “In my heart, in my soul, I feel like the best thing that they can do is to exit the reservation, return all property, and pay us,” Nelson said.


    In the second half of Reveal’s two-part collaboration with ICT (formerly Indian Country Today), members of the Pine Ridge community put pressure on the Catholic church to share information about the boarding school it ran on the reservation.


    ICT reporter Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, travels to the archives of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. She discovers that many records are redacted or off-limits, but then comes across a diary written by nuns. Buried in the diary entries is information about the school’s finances, the massacre at Wounded Knee, and children who died at the school more than a century ago. 


    This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in October 2022. 

    30 November 2024, 5:00 am
  • 50 minutes 20 seconds
    Buried Secrets: America’s Indian Boarding Schools Part 1

    In the early 1990s, Justin Pourier was a maintenance man at Red Cloud Indian School, a Catholic school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. One day, he says he stumbled upon small graves in the school’s basement. For nearly 30 years, Pourier would be haunted by what he saw and told no one except his wife. 

    “Those are Native children down there…hopefully their spirit was able to travel on to whatever is beyond this world,” Pourier says. In 2022, he urged school officials to search the basement for the graves.

    The hunt for unmarked graves of Native children isn't happening just at Red Cloud, now called Maȟpíya Lúta. It’s one of more than 400 Indian boarding schools across the country that were part of a program designed by the federal government to “kill the Indian and save the man”—those were the actual words of one of the architects of the plan to destroy Native culture. In a historic first this fall, President Joe Biden apologized to Native Americans on behalf of the United States for the country’s past Indian boarding school policies.

    This week on Reveal, in a two-part collaboration with ICT (formerly Indian Country Today), we expose the painful legacy of boarding schools for Native children with ICT reporter Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe. She’s been writing about these schools for more than two decades. 

    This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in October 2022. 

    23 November 2024, 5:00 am
  • 50 minutes 2 seconds
    The Many Contradictions of a Trump Victory

    As Donald Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term, the reasons people voted him into office are becoming more clear. 

    For Micki Witthoeft, it’s cause for celebration. Her daughter, Ashli Babitt, was shot and killed by a police officer after storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Today, Witthoeft is confident Trump will stand by his word and pardon everyone involved. 

    “He said his administration's going to be one on ‘promises made and promises kept,’ ” she said. “I felt like he was talking right to me.”

    But it’s not the same sentiment for all voters. This week on Reveal, we look at the many contradictions behind Trump’s victory, with stories from hosts Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober of the new podcast from The Atlantic, We Live Here Now; Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy; and Reveal producer Najib Aminy. We delve into January 6ers seeking pardons, “messy middle” voters who split their ballots, and members of the Uncommitted movement who wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris despite being opposed to Trump. 

    16 November 2024, 5:00 am
  • 51 minutes 12 seconds
    From Victim to Suspect

    Nicole Chase was a young mom with a daughter to support when she took a job at a restaurant in Canton, Connecticut. She liked the work and was good at her job. But the place turned out to be more like a frat house than a quaint roadside sandwich spot. And the crude behavior kept escalating—until one day she says her boss went too far. 

    Chase turned to the local police for help, but what happened next further complicated her life. Her quest for justice triggered a legal battle that dragged on for years, eventually reaching the US Supreme Court.

    “This man has caused me to lose so much money that I had to move out of my place,” Chase says. “I went to a doctor, I had to get put on more medicine for my PTSD and my anxiety attacks and all that. My whole life has been flipped upside down.” 

    Reveal reporter Rachel de Leon spent years taking a close look at cases across the country in which people reported sexual assaults to police, only to find themselves investigated. In this hour, we explore one case and hear how police interrogated an alleged perpetrator, an alleged victim, and each other. 

    De Leon’s investigation is also the subject of the documentary Victim/Suspect, streaming on Netflix, which won the 2024 Emmy Award for outstanding documentary research.

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in March 2023. 

    9 November 2024, 5:00 am
  • 32 minutes 32 seconds
    How Donald Trump Won the Presidency, Again

    Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris on Tuesday night to become only the second president in US history to win two nonconsecutive terms. (The last one? Grover Cleveland in 1892.) Trump won the presidency following one of the most tumultuous election years in modern US history—one that included an incumbent president pulling out of his  reelection bid, the vice president becoming the Democratic nominee a few short months before Election Day, and two assassination attempts on Trump.


    A majority of voters elected Trump to return to the White House following a campaign often filled with violent rhetoric, misinformation, and disparaging comments about women, immigrants, and people of color. Harris was unable to build a coalition to defeat Trump, losing both the Electoral College and the popular vote after a campaign that initially energized Democrats around the country after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.


    “America has never had a Black woman governor,” says Mother Jones editorial director Jamilah King. “So the fact that America’s never had a Black woman president is not surprising. I don’t think we as a country were quite ready for it.”


    In this Reveal podcast extra, host Al Letson sits down with King, as well as Mother Jones’ David Corn and Ari Berman, to break down how Trump won, why Harris’ campaign faltered, and where the nation goes from here.

    Listen: Red, Black, and Blue (Reveal)


    Read: America Meets Its Judgment Day (Mother Jones)


    Read: Republicans Defeat Ohio Anti-Gerrymandering Initiative With Brazen Anti-Democratic Tactics (Mother Jones)


    Read: Trump Wins the White House in a Political Comeback Rooted in Appeals to Frustrated Voters (Associated Press)

    7 November 2024, 12:55 am
  • 50 minutes 51 seconds
    Remembering a White Supremacist Coup

    In the late 1800s, Wilmington, North Carolina, was a city where African Americans thrived economically and held elected office. This did not sit well with White supremacists, who during the election of 1898 used violence to intimidate voters and overthrow the elected government. It’s considered the only successful coup d’etat in US history. 

    The leader of the coup, a former Confederate colonel named Alfred Moore Waddell, gave a speech in which he told White people: “If you see the Negro out voting tomorrow, tell him to stop. If he doesn't, shoot him down. Shoot him down in his tracks.”

    This week on Reveal, we look back at that coup and its consequences. After the overthrow, North Carolina legislators passed laws segregating White and Black people in housing, trains, schools, libraries, and other public spaces. Those laws were copied in states across the South, sowing the seeds of the Jim Crow era and much of the structural racism that continues today.

    We then go further back in history, to just after the Civil War, when the US government made its famous “40 acres and a mule” promise to formerly enslaved people. Most Americans assume the promise of land was never kept, but over a two-and-a-half-year investigation, journalists at the Center for Public Integrity unearthed records that prove freed people had, and lost, titles to tracts of land that once were part of plantations.  

    This is an update of episodes that originally aired in October 2020 and June 2024.

    2 November 2024, 4:00 am
  • 21 minutes 28 seconds
    Why Elon Musk Went Full MAGA

    Just a few years ago, Elon Musk seemed to be just another Silicon Valley billionaire with no true political compass. He once described himself as “half-Republican, half-Democrat” and often donated money to candidates from both parties. But all that seemed to change during the Covid-19 pandemic when Musk started taking much more right-wing stances about lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and many other divisive political issues, often spreading misinformation in the process.


    Today, Musk has donated almost $120 million of his own money to get Donald Trump reelected. He recently campaigned with Trump at New York’s Madison Square Garden, where he said he wasn’t just MAGA, he was “dark, gothic MAGA.” Musk is using both his financial resources as the world’s richest person along with the soft power he wields on X, the social media platform he bought two years ago, where he routinely posts to his 200 million followers why they should vote for Trump.


    In this Reveal podcast extra, host Al Letson talks about Musk’s political evolution with Mother Jones senior reporter Anna Merlan, who’s been covering the many ways Musk has tried to influence the 2024 election.


    “There have always been billionaires and titans of industry who get involved in politics,” Merlan says. “But I think the scale of Musk’s involvement is really different because it’s not just that he’s a billionaire. It’s not just that he’s endorsing Trump. It’s also that he controls a powerful and widespread communication medium.”




    Read: Elon Musk’s Lawyers Quietly Subpoena Public Interest Groups (Mother Jones)


    Read: How Elon Musk is Tying His Love for Trump to His Fight in Brazil (Mother Jones)

    30 October 2024, 4:05 am
  • 50 minutes 34 seconds
    Swing States of Denial

    In 2020, as elections officials counted votes in Phoenix, protesters swarmed outside the Maricopa County election center. Many held flags; some had AR-15s. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was there yelling into a bullhorn, “Burn in hell, Joe Biden.” They claimed the election was stolen. 


    Since then, dozens of court cases across the country have all found no evidence of widespread fraud. Despite that, election workers in Arizona’s Maricopa County and across the country continue to be threatened, harassed, and doxxed.


    “Top election officials throughout the state have been turning over at the rate of a lunch shift at Taco Bell,” said Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder. Richer, a Republican, says he voted for Donald Trump in 2020, but since taking office in 2021, he has spent a lot of his time working to dispel the election lies Trump helped create. And he’s faced ongoing death threats for steadfastly pushing back on those lies. 

     

    This week on Reveal: Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy takes listeners inside the recently fortified election center in Maricopa County, where Richer’s staff are on a mission to demonstrate to voters that the election process is free and fair and deserving of their trust. Murphy joins a public tour, one of at least 150 that have occurred since January 2021.


    Meanwhile in Georgia, new members of the State Election Board try to rewrite the rules to favor Trump. Mother Jones national voting rights correspondent Ari Berman unpacks the battle for control of the election results in the crucial swing state.


    Also on this show, a Reveal exclusive from the archives: an interview with Kamala Harris that has never before been broadcast. Nina Martin sat down with Harris when she was attorney general of California. Their conversation covers an array of topics, from housing to guns—issues that remain central to the presidential election today.

    26 October 2024, 4:00 am
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