A traveler searches for a suitcase in a baggage holding area for Southwest Airlines at Denver International Airport on December 28, 2022. Michael Ciaglo/Getty
Reveal has been a weekly investigative podcast for nearly 10 years now, so we’ve produced hundreds of hours of investigative journalism over the years designed to inspire, inform, or infuriate you (and occasionally, all three at the same time). We’ve curated some of our favorite Reveal series and serials to take you through your holiday travel time—episodes that will resonate today and into 2025. You can find the link to each episode on your preferred podcast platform below.
Mississippi Goddam (seven-part series): Billey Joe Johnson Jr. dreamed of graduating high school, going to college, and one day playing pro football. On a cold December morning in 2008, that future was shattered. His story is a reckoning of justice in America.
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American Rehab (eight-part series): Reveal exposes how a treatment for drug addiction has turned tens of thousands of people into an unpaid shadow workforce. This reporting was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
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After Ayotzinapa (three-part series): In 2014, students from a rural college in Mexico came under attack by police. Six people were killed and 43 young men disappeared without a trace. Families suspected the government was hiding the truth. Now, Reveal is exposing corruption at the highest levels and an unsettling connection to America’s war on drugs.
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40 Acres and a Lie (three-part series): It’s often thought of as a promise that was never kept. But “40 acres and a mule” was more than that. It was real. This three-part series from Reveal and the Center for Public Integrity tells the history of an often-misunderstood government program that gave more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people land titles, only to take the land back, fueling a wealth gap that remains today.
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The COVID Tracking Project (three-part series): This three-part series exposes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s bungled response to COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic and takes listeners inside the massive volunteer effort to collect data about tests, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the US.
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Buried Secrets (two-part series): After decades of stripping away Native American identity from its students, a Catholic boarding school seeks to help the community heal. This series was a partnership between Reveal and ICT, formerly known as Indian Country Today.
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Listening to these next two investigations together will deepen your understanding of the risks and consequences for new mothers suspected of drug use:
They Followed Doctors’ Orders. The State Took Their Babies: Jade Dass began taking medication to treat her addiction to opioids before she became pregnant. After Dass delivered a healthy daughter, the hospital reported her to the Arizona Department of Child Safety.
Even as medications like Suboxone help pregnant women safely treat addiction, taking them can trigger investigations by child welfare agencies that separate mothers from their newborns. To understand the scope of the dragnet, reporter Shoshana Walter, data reporter Melissa Lewis, and a team of Reveal researchers and lawyers filed 100 public records requests, putting together the first-ever tally of how often women are reported to child welfare agencies for taking prescription drugs during pregnancy.
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She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad. Child Services Took Her Baby: Hospitals across the country routinely drug test people coming in to give birth. But the tests many hospitals use are notoriously imprecise, with false positive rates of up to 50 percent for some drugs. Our collaboration with The Marshall Project investigates why parents across the country are being reported to child protective services over inaccurate pee-in-a-cup drug tests.
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Your Retirement Investments Are Probably Fueling Climate Change: Reveal reporter Jonathan Jones was working on a story about a massive coal plant expansion in Montana when he wondered who was bankrolling the project. It turns out a major shareholder of the energy company driving the project was the Vanguard Group, the investment firm where he happens to have his retirement savings. This discovery put Jones on a quest to find out why Vanguard and other asset managers continue to invest in fossil fuels at a time when we need to burn less oil, gas, and coal.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora
The Racist Hoax That Changed Boston: After a pregnant woman’s murder, Boston police rounded up countless Black men in search of her killer. But they were chasing a lie.
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Red, Black, and Blue: Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes spent months on the campaign trail talking to Black voters about how they see the goals and limits of their own political power. He paid special attention to Black Republicans and the new crop of Black supporters of former President Donald Trump.
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