Reveal

As the nation looks to quarantines as a way to contain the new coronavirus, host Al Letson speaks to a mom and her son, who decided to put themselves in separate quarantines after they each may have come into contact with the virus. 

Reveal’s Elizabeth Shogren follows with a report on new research that shows current quarantine guidelines may not be strict enough to stop the spread. 

As the new coronavirus spreads, an ER doctor in Seattle explains how he and other front-line physicians are learning to treat patients and keep themselves safe. Dr. Nick Mark says that because the virus is so new, doctors are improvising treatments and learning from each other. 

As the new coronavirus spreads through the U.S., we chronicle how it came to California and analyze what went right and what went wrong in containing it. We hear voices of first responders, experts and passengers quarantined on a cruise ship docked in San Francisco Bay. Then we meet a scientist who developed a vaccine for a very similar virus years ago, only to have funding cut off before she could complete her work. 

The 40-year fight over drilling for oil in one of the world’s wildest places, Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is coming to a head. In 2017, Congress opened part of the refuge for oil and gas development. The Trump administration says drilling rights will go on sale any day. But opponents are trying to stop it. They say climate change is warming the Arctic twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and the plants, animals and people living there are struggling to adapt.

Unborn babies’ hearts are at risk as the Trump administration bows to chemical companies’ 20-year effort to debunk the science linking the dangerous chemical TCE to fetal heart defects. 

Chris Orris was born at Camp Lejeune when the drinking water was heavily contaminated with TCE. Orris had open heart surgery for a defect.

This episode originally was broadcast Sept. 14, 2019. It is the first of two shows where we are looking at how the Trump administration has turned its back on science, usually in favor of industry.

An asylum-seeking migrant girl is separated from her family at the border and enters U.S. custody at 10 years old. Now, she’s 17 and still in a shelter, even though her family is ready to take her in. They just can’t find her. They turn to reporter Aura Bogado for help.

The rest of this episode originally was broadcast April 6, 2019.

For the 2020 Spring fundraising season, here are three of our favorite Reveal stories from the past year.

Delivering donated organs quickly to patients waiting for a transplant is a matter of life and death. Yet transportation errors are leading to delays in surgeries that put patients in danger and make some organs unusable. This week, we look at weaknesses in the nation’s system for transporting organs and solutions for making it work better. More than any other organ, donated kidneys are put on commercial flights so they can get to waiting patients.

The 2020 census will make a huge imprint on the nation for a decade, from determining how much federal money goes to states to divvying up congressional seats and helping city planners figure out where to build schools. But experts warn this census is doomed to be inaccurate because of a poor rollout and a swirl of controversy over a citizenship question proposed by the Trump administration. 

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 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.