Reveal

This episode originally was  broadcast Oct. 5, 2019.

Genetic genealogy is a powerful crime-solving tool that combines DNA science with family tree research. Where will it take us – a crime-free world or a dark dystopia?

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When the Great Recession walloped Detroit, thousands of people fell behind on property taxes and lost their homes. Today, entire blocks look like ghost towns. It turns out that hundreds of millions of dollars on those delinquent tax bills never should have been charged in the first place. For people who’ve hung onto their homes with vacancies all around them, they have the worst neighbor in town: the government.

This episode was originally broadcast in May 2016. Back 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. 

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Reveal presents a special episode produced by our partners at StoryWorks, a documentary theater company. “When Lighting The Voids” is an audio drama inspired by Reveal’s investigation into a deadly explosion at a Mississippi shipyard. This deconstructed mystery is based on real accounts, real events and real people.

This episode was originally broadcast July 28, 2018. 

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.

This week, we present a special episode of Reveal produced by our partners at StoryWorks, a documentary theater company. “When Lighting The Voids” is an audio drama inspired by Reveal’s investigation into a deadly explosion at a Mississippi shipyard. This deconstructed mystery is based on real accounts, real events and real people. 

This week, Reveal teams up with local journalists around the country to see how stories we first broke on the show are playing out in their communities. 

This episode originally was broadcast May 11, 2019.

Tasers are on the duty belt of nearly every American police officer. Their manufacturer, Axon Enterprise Inc., has long promoted the device as extremely effective at helping police resolve dangerous situations without using their guns.

Who qualifies for a visa? How much does it cost to become a U.S. citizen? Stories about the invisible barriers immigrants come up against when trying to apply for legal status.

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Shop. Click. And the next day, your purchase is on your doorstep. Amazon has changed the face of shopping, but at a surprisingly high human cost. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming soon, we look at what’s behind those smiling packages and expose the dangers of working at Amazon. We start with an investigation from Reveal’s Will Evans into workplace injuries and safety culture at Amazon warehouses. While Amazon touts its workplaces as safe and efficient, Evans finds that many are much more dangerous than the industry average.

Shop. Click. And the next day, your purchase is on your doorstep. Amazon has changed the face of shopping, but at a surprisingly high cost to its workers. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming soon, we look at what’s behind those smiling packages to reveal the dangers of working at Amazon.

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How does a seventh grader end up in solitary confinement in an adult jail? Reporter Ko Bragg takes us to Mississippi to learn about a set of laws that automatically send kids into the adult legal system for certain crimes. 

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A reporter is threatened with prosecution, an officer outruns his past, and Al sits down with the president of the largest association of police officers in the United States to ask the question: When police officers misbehave, why does it stay secret?

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As the House of Representatives continues its impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, we go back in time to the Nixon administration, when the threat of impeachment and a presidential pardon changed the course of history. We then examine the pardons system and learn why it has stopped functioning as originally intended.  

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In 1936, an unarmed black man was killed by an Atlanta police officer who later became leader of the Ku Klux Klan. We explore why the city doesn’t recognize the case as a lynching.

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After the housing bust, a group of men profited by destroying the American dream of homeownership for hundreds of thousands of families. On Reveal, we learn how these Homewreckers did it and meet a woman who fought back. 

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This episode originally was broadcast July 1, 2017.

Picture an American farmer. Chances are, the farmer you’re imagining is white – more than 9 out of 10 American farmers today are. But historically, African Americans played a huge role in agriculture. The nation’s economy was built largely on black farm labor: in bondage for hundreds of years, followed by a century of sharecropping and tenant farming.

Ever since police used genetic genealogy to crack the famous Golden State Killer case, this new crime fighting tool has solved dozens of murders and rapes that had gone cold for decades. Our show looks at the promise and perils of this powerful tool that combines DNA science with genealogy.

We start with the murder of a young couple in Canada more than 30 years ago. This was the first case after the Golden State Killer to employ genetic genealogy, and the person who identified the suspect walks us through how she did it.

When President Trump tweets, the news cycle listens. Whether it’s the trade war, immigration police, vague threats of war or racist language, what the commander-in-tweet has to say often becomes a top story. But is it driving us to distraction? On today’s show, we’ll dig into the details of one story that may have been obscured by furor over Trump tweets: U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen. Then, we'll explore the contours of a conspiracy theory that's developed around the President.

This episode comes to us from Marketplace’s wealth and poverty team and their show, The Uncertain Hour.

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush did his first televised broadcast, speaking directly to the nation about an issue he believed was the gravest domestic threat to America: drugs. Specifically, crack cocaine. In the speech, Bush pulled a baggie of crack out of his desk as a prop, saying it had been seized from Lafayette Park, right across the street from the White House. 

Today’s show looks at the Trump administration’s pattern of pushing expert scientists out of policy discussions. \

In a tweet last month, President Trump urged  Israel to bar two Democratic Congresswomen from visiting that country. The women support a movement against Israel called B.D.S., which stands for Boycott, Divest, Sanction. Trump said Israel would show weakness by allowing them to enter. 

For the 2019 Fall fundraising season, here are three of our favorite Reveal stories from the past year.

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.  

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Four hundred years ago this month, English pirates brought enslaved Africans to America’s shores. We reflect on how the legacy of slavery has reverberated through the generations to the present.

Dominique Martin was thrilled to get a state-funded voucher to send her daughter to private school. We go to Louisiana to investigate the cost of school choice. 

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A bombing in rural Nevada you’ve probably never heard of. A plot to blow up a government building.  Reveal teams up with the podcast series, Bundyville, produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting and Longreads, to see what happened to rancher Cliven Bundy’s supporters since his original armed standoff with the government. 

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As smart devices become a bigger and bigger part of our lives, we look at how Facebook and other companies gather information about their users and turn it into profits. 

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In Oregon, the concussion protocols that were supposed to keep high school athletes safe end up falling short for a star quarterback. 

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