Reveal

They belonged to an elite police task force charged with getting guns off Baltimore’s streets. Instead, the plainclothes cops roamed the city, robbing people on the street, breaking into homes to steal money and drugs, and planting evidence on their victims.

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In the second part of Reveal’s series about hate, we look at how racism and white supremacy are institutionalized in America. We start with Reveal’s Will Carless, who over the past year has been tracking police officers’ activity on Facebook, finding that hundreds of them belong to racist groups connected to the Confederacy, Islamophobic groups, misogynistic groups and groups connected to violent anti-government militias. He takes us inside this online world where officers share racist memes, and jokes and share conspiracy theories.

The mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue and the killing of activist Heather Heyer at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, are reminders that hate crimes are on the rise in the U.S. This episode surveys the state of the hate movement in America, tracing how it has evolved since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and looking ahead to 2020. The first segment includes a discussion with Megan Squire, a professor of computer science at Elon University who’s been studying efforts to de-platform hate sites on the web.

In our first story, we take listeners to a place where no human has been before. Reporter Carolyn Beeler boards an icebreaker to sail along the face of Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier. If Thwaites collapses, it could cause 2 feet of global sea level rise. But glaciologists fear the consequences could also be much worse: Thwaites may be holding back the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, almost like a cork in a wine bottle. If it crumbles into the ocean, the results could be catastrophic.

This episode originally aired Dec. 22, 2018. This episode tells the story of a mysterious illegal dump in a Chicago neighborhood that grew to be six stories high and spanned an area equal to 13 football fields. It took years for the dump to be cleaned up. Even then, neighborhood residents were angry and felt used when it was revealed that the dump was cover for a federal investigation into political corruption in the city.

As the population of Americans over 65 rises, families increasingly are choosing to place loved ones in long-term assisted care facilities called residential care homes. With around-the-clock caregivers and individualized attention in a single-family-home setting, these smaller, more intimate alternatives to the traditional nursing home seem like the perfect place for Mom or Grandpa. They're more affordable, too. But that affordability masks an ugly truth: Workers doing the day-to-day work of caring for America's older adults are being exploited.

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. But a yearlong investigation by APM Reports shows Tasers are often less effective than the company has claimed. And just as Tasers can save lives when they subdue suspects, when they don’t, the outcome can be deadly. In Vermont we explore what happened when police using Tasers failed to subdue a mentally ill man.

This show originally was broadcast on December 8, 2018. The Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, but the Confederacy didn't completely die with it. Monuments, shrines and museums are found throughout the South. We teamed up with Type Investigations to visit dozens of them and found that for devoted followers they inspire a disturbing – and distorted – view of history: Confederate generals as heroes. Slaves who were happy to work for them. That twisted history is also shared with schoolchildren on class trips. And you won't believe who's funding these sites to keep them running.

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.

American soybean farmers call pigweed “Satan’s weed” because it’s so hard to get rid of. Many of them are excited about the herbicide dicamba, which is good at killing off pigweed. There’s just one problem, and it’s igniting a civil war in farm country. Plus, each year, beekeepers from all over the country ship thousands of hives to California in time for almond pollination season. In recent years, the valuable hives have become a high-stakes target for theft. Lastly, asthma is just as common in rural areas as it is in cities.

This episode originally was broadcast on Sept. 1, 2018. 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. We meet two farmers, one who’s willing to break the rules to protect his farm and the other who thinks that makes her farm more vulnerable. We explore the science behind levees and learn why policymakers sometimes ignore it.

We examine the record of one of the toughest immigration judges in the country, including the surprising way her decisions benefited transgender asylum seekers. Then we follow one transgender woman who flees El Salvador for the United States to try to claim asylum. Our final story takes us to Turkey, and focuses on a small but growing group of refugees seeking a new life: young Afghan women fleeing abuse, forced marriage and persecution in their homeland.

Support for boycotts of Israel has been growing in recent years, along with an increase in legislation seeking to curb this kind of boycott. Our story is about a contractor in Texas who feels they have no choice but to turn down a job when they realize the state requires they agree not to boycott Israel. We look at where this Israel boycott clause in employment contracts comes from, and weigh it against the First Amendment right to free speech.

This episode originally was broadcast July 14, 2018. We’ve updated this show to include a secret recording that Reveal received of a 2017 Independent Petroleum Association of America meeting. Oil executives are heard discussing David Bernhardt, now deputy secretary of the Interior and a former industry lobbyist. In the recording, the executives call Bernhardt a close friend and rejoice over their unprecedented access. President Donald Trump has nominated Bernhardt to replace Ryan Zinke as department head, and confirmation hearings will be held this week.

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

As the investigation into foreign influence in the 2016 election heats up, we bring you a story of how fake news starts, snowballs and sometimes erupts into gunfire. This story takes us into the world of right-wing Twitter trolls, pro-Trump political operatives and fake-news profiteers from St. Louis to Macedonia. This collaboration with Rolling Stone and Type Investigations was originally broadcast Nov. 18, 2017.

A controversial theory is swaying family court judges to award custody to parents accused of harming kids. We trace the origins of “parental alienation” and learn how it has spawned a cottage industry of so-called family reunification camps that are making big profits from broken families.

This episode looks at parents forced to make an impossible decision. Our first story, a partnership with Type Investigations, focuses on parents who lose custody of their children so the kids can access medical and psychological care. Our final story investigates a Trump administration practice that forces parents to risk deportation in order to claim their children from government shelters.

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.

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We unravel how refugee families destined for Australia ended up stuck in an immigrant detention camp more than a thousand miles away on the tiny island nation of Nauru. And why, after years of confinement, kids are succumbing to a surreal mental illness spreading through the camp like a contagion. This episode is a collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s show “Background Briefing” and reporter Olivia Rousset.

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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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.

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.

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On a freezing January morning in 2014, a fire broke out in the cabin of a MH-53E Navy Sea Dragon helicopter on a training mission over the Atlantic. Seconds later it slammed into the ocean. Only two sailors survived. This week, Reveal partners with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism to find out what caused that crash, and why the 53 is the military's deadliest aircraft.

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.

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. In this hour, Reveal’s Elizabeth Shogren details the pressures one researcher faced as she worked on a project for the National Park Service.

This episode originally was 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 episode tells the story of a mysterious illegal dump in a Chicago neighborhood that grew to be six stories high and spanned an area equal to 13 football fields. It was part of a federal investigation that brought down a dozen corrupt politicians, but it left neighborhood residents angry and feeling used.

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.

The Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, but the Confederacy didn't completely die with it. Monuments, shrines and museums are found throughout the South. We teamed up with The Investigative Fund to visit dozens of them and found that for devoted followers they inspire a disturbing – and distorted – view of history: Confederate generals as heroes. Slaves who were happy to work for them. That twisted history is also shared with schoolchildren on class trips. And you won't believe who's funding these site to keep them running. Plus, the story of New Mexico’s great monument controversy.