President Donald Trump wants to build a wall between America and Mexico. Hundreds of miles of border fence are already in place, but most of the nearly 2,000-mile stretch is uncovered. This episode of Reveal explores the political, logistical and geographic barriers that may get in the way of the president’s plans.

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

This week, Reveal host Al Letson speaks to Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Donald Trump. Usually, Gorka is sent out by the White House to discuss threats outside the U.S. In this special podcast, he and Al discuss domestic issues.

Gorka talks a lot about the backbone of America, “real Americans” and the people he calls “the chattering classes.” But who are the “chattering classes”? And what is “the real America”? The outspoken Trump adviser lays bare his views on the country.

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

In 2015, French radio reporter Raphael Krafft was covering the refugee crisis. On the border with Italy, he met desperate families turned away by his country.  

Then one family asked Krafft for his help crossing the border. As a journalist, he was supposed to be objective, but that was getting harder to do. So he followed his moral compass, which led him on the journey of a lifetime.

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Since President Donald Trump took office, we’ve heard plenty about Russia. Some have said tensions with the country could lead to conflict – even another world war.

In this podcast special, Al Letson talks to former top NATO commander Richard Shirreff, who spells out these fears – which are very real for him – in his new novel.

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Powered by the internet, the sex trade is reaching into all corners of the country. Reveal follows up on what’s happened since we first took you inside the hidden places – real and virtual – where people are exploited for sex.

Produced in collaboration with APM Reports, we’ll hear stories from the pot fields of Northern California to the streets of Chicago and suburban Seattle.

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

If you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be appointed to you – that’s how it’s supposed to work. But in New Orleans, the lawyer in charge of representing poor people accused of crimes is saying no. His office doesn’t have enough money or time to do a good job, he says, so he’s refusing some serious cases, which is jamming up the courts and leaving hundreds of people stuck in jail with no lawyer. His goal? To break the system in order to fix it.

Reveal follows up on this story that we first brought you last fall.

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

From women’s 19th-century fight for the right to vote to the Women’s March this year, racism has affected feminist movements.

In this podcast special, Al Letson recalls the #BlackWomenAtWork stories that went viral recently and talks with Kimberly Foster, the founder of For Harriet and a very frank video commentator, about her dream to “bring down the system.”

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Some police departments are embracing a set of tactics designed to reduce the use of force – and prevent police shootings. Rather than rushing in aggressively, officers back off, wait out people in crisis and use words instead of weapons.

But this training isn’t required in most states. Reveal teams up with APM Reports and finds that most cops spend a lot more time training to shoot their guns than learning how to avoid firing them.

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Federal law requires colleges and universities to track and disclose sexual assaults on campus. It’s different for kindergarten through 12th grade, where there are no similar requirements for cases involving assaults between students. In elementary, middle and high schools across the U.S., the Associated Press found a shocking level of sexual violence among students.

On this episode of Reveal, we delve into the results of AP’s yearlong investigation.

 Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

 Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

America’s housing bust created both winners and losers – and homeowners have been the biggest losers. Last year, the rate of homeownership in the U.S. hit its lowest point since the 1960s.

So who are the winners? This episode of Reveal takes you into the world of people who are still profiting, from rent-to-own investors in Detroit to President Donald Trump’s best friend, a real estate mogul.

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

President Donald Trump has used the threat of foreign-born terrorists to justify his travel ban – but since 9/11, nearly every terrorist attack in the United States has come from within. On this episode of Reveal, we investigate which domestic terror episodes get tracked and why.

To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us on fb.com/ThisIsReveal, Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

In 1996, Eddie Wise, the son of a sharecropper, purchased a farm with a loan from the USDA. Twenty years later, the USDA foreclosed on the property and evicted him. Reveal investigates his claim that he was discriminated against because of his race.

To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us on fb.com/ThisIsReveal, Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

In 2015 French radio reporter Raphael Krafft was covering the refugee crisis. Then one day, one refugee asked for his help. Raphael followed his moral compass… which led him on the journey of a lifetime.

To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal, or Instagram @revealnews.

President Donald Trump has been in office for six months. On this week’s podcast special, Reveal host Al Letson speaks with someone who helped get him there – Roger Stone.

Stone is a former campaign adviser to Trump and helped set the tone of the 2016 election. For decades, he’s played hardball politics as a Republican strategist and now is the subject of a documentary. He and Letson discuss political dirty tricks, white supremacy and Russian meddling in the November election.

To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal, or on Instagram @revealnews.

The U.S. Navy spends tens of billions of dollars each year building and repairing ships. But how safe are the shipyards where that work is done? Reveal investigates how lax safety has been allowed to persist at shipyards that thrive on military contracts.

This hour also will explore one of the newest warships in the Navy’s fleet and whether it’s living up to expectations. And we’ll tell the story of one man’s unexplained disappearance on the high seas.

To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal, or Instagram @revealnews.

In Texas, women with limited access to abortions are traveling across the border to find a drug that will induce miscarriages. In Mississippi, anti-abortion groups are opening crisis pregnancy centers across from abortion clinics to persuade women to keep their babies. And one company offers permanent birth control through the insertion of a simple device – that’s ended up causing health complications for thousands of women.

This week, we look into pregnancy and the ways people try to prevent it, end it and save it.

To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

In the wake of the protests by neo-Nazis and white supremacists that turned deadly in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Donald Trump has come under fire for not immediately and clearly condemning American racists. It’s not the first time. Trump and those close to him have often played down the threat of violence committed by white supremacists across the country.

This week, through interviews with key Trump supporters and advisers, we explore if we should have seen Charlottesville coming and if we should expect more race-based clashes on the way.

To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

How much is President Donald Trump worth? And is he or anyone in his administration profiting from their positions? Reveal is teaming up with the Center for Public Integrity to investigate those questions.

We’ve created a database listing all the assets that members of his administration have disclosed. Now we’re digging through those documents to see whether there are any conflicts of interest – and we’re asking the public to take part in our investigation. Citizen sleuths already have uncovered some leads. By crowdsourcing this project, we can monitor whether any policy changes end up benefiting members of the president’s team.

To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

A few weeks ago, Reveal host Al Letson jumped in to protect someone who was being attacked by counter-protesters in Berkeley, California. We found the man behind the attack. He says he’s a member of antifa and is taking the fight to white nationalists. We also interviewed rally organizers who are connected to right-wing extremists.  

In the aftermath of the violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, militants from the left and the right are taking their battles to the streets. This week on Reveal, we examine who they are and whether they’re hurtling the country toward more civil strife.

To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

Desperate to reduce crowding in jails and prisons, court systems all over the country are trying diversion – alternatives to putting offenders behind bars. On today’s Reveal, we peek behind the good intentions and uneven results.

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To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

President Trump’s Department of Justice is investigating claims that Harvard is discriminating against Asian American students in its admissions program. Harvard has been accused of capping the number of Asian American students to make room for other ethnicities.

Al talks to Edward Blum about the case. Blum has made a career out of challenging race-based college admissions. And he and his group, Students for Fair Admissions, filed a lawsuit against Harvard three years ago that makes some of the same claims the Justice Department is now investigating.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wants parents to have the ultimate choice of where their children go to school – public or private – and taxpayers to make it possible. This week, Reveal examines how DeVos might funnel federal education dollars toward private school tuition, yet leave school choice rules up to the states. Plus, we’ll look at how hundreds of thousands of students in Texas were denied the special education they are guaranteed under federal civil rights law.

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To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

On Reveal, we share how the government failed to stop the flow of millions and millions of pills that fuelled the national painkiller epidemic. A Washington Post/60 Minutes partnership with Reveal tells the story of a DEA insider who tried to stop drug distribution companies from flooding America with truckloads of pain pills. His effort was met with backlash from his own agency, the pharmaceutical industry and Congress.

To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

In 1996, Eddie Wise, the son of a sharecropper, purchased a farm with a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Twenty years later, the USDA foreclosed on the property and evicted him. Reveal investigates his claim that he was discriminated against because of his race.

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To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us on fb.com/ThisIsReveal, Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

This short film was produced by the Glassbreaker Films team at The Center for Investigative Reporting. Glassbreaker Films is an all-female group of filmmakers working to promote gender parity in investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking.

After a mass shooting, the media descends on the victims. They’re asked time and again what they saw, what they felt and why they think it happened. After the dead are counted and the shooter’s motives are scrutinized, the survivors try to cope and move on.

Heather Martin was a senior at Columbine High School in Colorado when two teenagers shot and killed 12 students and one teacher. More than a decade later, 12 people were killed and dozens more injured in a shooting at an Aurora movie theater, just miles from where Martin lived.

To create a space for survivors to talk about their grief and traumatic new realities, Martin co-founded The Rebels Project, a nationwide support network that connects survivors of mass tragedy to help them process their experiences.

Martin says she desperately wants the group to stop growing, but every year, more members are joined by tragic circumstances.

On this episode of Reveal, we look at #Pizzagate. 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. Reveal unravels how this conspiracy theory spread and tries to answer one big question: How did America become a post-truth country?

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To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us on fb.com/ThisIsReveal, Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

In Texas, women with limited access to abortions are traveling across the border to find a drug that will induce miscarriages. In Mississippi, anti-abortion groups are opening crisis pregnancy centers across from abortion clinics to persuade women to keep their babies. And one company offers permanent birth control through the insertion of a simple device – that’s ended up causing health complications for thousands of women.

This week, we look into pregnancy and the ways people try to prevent it, end it and save it.

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To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

This short film was produced by the Glassbreaker Films team at The Center for Investigative Reporting. Glassbreaker Films is an all-female group of filmmakers working to promote gender parity in investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking.

In the early hours of 2009, 22-year-old Oscar Grant was fatally shot by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer at the Fruitvale station in Oakland, California. The shooting was captured on cellphone video and made headlines nationwide, leading to a national conversation about police brutality. The officer who shot Grant was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served 11 months in prison out of a two-year sentence.

In the following years, as more police killings made the news, Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson, decided to turn her pain and grief into a purpose. With Grant’s uncle, Cephus Johnson, she established The Oscar Grant Foundation, which led to a movement made up of mothers like her, whose sons were killed by police. She gathers with these women to help them find justice and ensure that their children are not forgotten. The number of members continues to grow steadily every year.

Watch the rest of The Aftermath series at: revealnews.org/theaftermath

Across the country, criminals are arming themselves in unexpected ways. In Florida, they’re stealing guns from unlocked cars and gun stores. In other places, they’re getting them from the police themselves, as cash-strapped departments sell their used weapons to buy new ones. On this episode of Reveal, we learn where criminals get their guns and what cars can teach us about gun safety.

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To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us on fb.com/ThisIsReveal, Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. elections seems to yield a new bombshell every week. Amid such high-profile revelations, we revisit a decades-old story that echoes to this day among the powerful in the nation’s capital.

This episode of Reveal tells the story of Daniel Ellsberg, a former government strategist responsible for leaking the Pentagon Papers – thousands of classified documents that called into question America’s war in Vietnam. Our story juxtaposes Ellsberg’s story with that of Robert Rosenthal, our former executive director, whose first journalism job exposed him to the top-secret documents.  

Those papers are the subject of a new movie in theaters this holiday season. Steven Spielberg’s “The Post” depicts the Washington, D.C. paper’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers after the Nixon administration sued the first news organization to expose them, The New York Times.

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Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Reveal has had a busy year – our team has chased stories from Oklahoma to Bermuda. We exposed a rehab program that provides labor at a chicken processing plant that’s been called a slave camp and followed the money trail of the Paradise Papers, leaked documents that revealed international tax shelters for some of America’s biggest companies. We reported on the rise of hate crimes and investigated hate groups.

In this episode, we look at some of our best reporting from 2017 and how Reveal has made an impact in our world.

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

On Reveal, we share how the government failed to stop the opioid epidemic. A Washington Post/60 Minutes partnership with Reveal tells the story of how a DEA insider and his team of lawyers and investigators tried to stop drug distribution companies from flooding America with truckloads of pain pills. His effort was met with backlash from his own agency, the drug industry and Congress. We also hear the intimate chronicle of one wife’s discovery of her husband’s video diaries after his death from a fentanyl overdose.  Finally, Reveal host Al Letson talks with Jan Rader, the fire chief in Huntington, West Virginia, about her fight to preserve life in the face of a crushing epidemic. Rader was profiled in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Heroin(e).”

To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us at fb.com/ThisIsReveal, on Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

The scandal around USA Gymnastics and former Olympic team doctor Larry Nassar is shining a spotlight on the sexual abuse of young athletes. This week, Reveal revisits the story of a woman who decides to confront the coach she says abused her decades earlier.

Reporter Tennessee Watson was abused by her gymnastics coach when she was a kid in the 1980s. Over 25 years later, when she learned he still was coaching children, she called the police. Her inside account of the arduous process of seeking justice in her own case exposes discrepancies in prosecutors’ responses to reports of child sexual abuse and highlights a lack of accountability.

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Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

It’s been 10 years since the great housing bust and lending is back. Not everyone is getting a fair shot at getting a loan. In dozens of cities across the country, lenders are more likely to deny loans to applicants of color than white ones – even when you take into account how much money they make and how much they want to borrow.

This type of housing discrimination was outlawed 50 years ago but it’s making a comeback. On this episode of Reveal, we dig into the new redlining.

This episode features an interactive text-messaging tool that allows you to learn more about who gets conventional home loans where you live. To get started, text HOME to 202-873-8325.

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Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

With the threat of nuclear war once again a part of the national conversation, Reveal looks at nuclear threats both foreign and domestic. This episode takes listeners to Iran and finds out what life is actually like inside North Korea.

As the Trump administration pushes for the biggest increase in spending on nuclear weapons since the Cold War, Reveal explores how they’ve changed. Instead of annihilation, think “flexible” nuclear weapons that can threaten “limited” nuclear war. That’s the idea anyway.

Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Wildfires raged across Northern California in October, burning through the state’s famed Napa and Sonoma wine regions. In all, more than 170 blazes ripped across an area the size of Maryland and Delaware combined. Scores awoke to flames at their doors, and 44 people were killed in the deadliest fire event in state history.

On this episode of Reveal, we team up with KQED to examine what led to delays in evacuations and why so many fire victims received no warnings at all. As wildfires grow more intense, are first responders keeping up?

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Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Last year, California had its deadliest and most destructive wildfire season in recorded history. No fire killed more people or burned down more buildings than the Tubbs Fire. Reveal investigates what made the Tubbs Fire so devastating by delving into the history of one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods.

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Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

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And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Federal law requires colleges and universities to track and disclose sexual assaults on campus. It’s different for kindergarten through 12th grade, where there are no similar requirements for cases involving assaults between students. In elementary, middle and high schools across the U.S., the Associated Press found a shocking level of sexual violence among students. The AP also uncovered a new dimension to the problem – on U.S. military bases.  

On this episode of Reveal, we delve into results from the AP’s continuing investigation.

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Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Across the country, criminals are arming themselves in unexpected ways. In Florida, they’re stealing guns from unlocked cars and gun stores. In other places, they’re getting them from the police themselves, as cash-strapped departments sell their used weapons to buy new ones. On this episode of Reveal, we learn where criminals get their guns and what cars can teach us about gun safety.

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To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us on fb.com/ThisIsReveal, Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

The toxic water of Flint, Michigan, reminded us that lead is a very persistent poison. This week, Reveal investigates the lurking threat of lead from the dust of urban demolitions to the wilds of Wyoming.

Hear how contractors help one another cut corners on demolitions, putting kids at risk, while city officials study the problem. Meet a public health nurse who explains why she advises families to choose a homeless shelter over a lead-tainted apartment, and learn how childhood lead poisoning still affects one man decades later. Progress has been made cleaning up lead. But much remains to be done.

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Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

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And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

Lead – the toxic metal used for years in paint, plumbing, mining and more – still poisons people in all kinds of ways. Lead also kills wildlife when animals scavenge carcasses shot with lead bullets and left behind by hunters. Eagles and condors are not the hunters’ intended targets, but they’re dying from bullet dust.

The Obama administration tried to phase out all lead ammunition on certain federal lands right before leaving office. But President Donald Trump’s interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, overturned that order his first day on the job.

Reveal follows a bullet’s journey in the wilds of Wyoming.

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Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

In 2016, the Justice Department alleged that Malaysian officials stole billions of dollars from their people and funneled some of it through the United States.

Reveal teamed up with Washington D.C.’s public radio station, WAMU, to dig into one of the largest investigations ever by the Justice Department’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative.

It’s a tale that features cameos from Leonardo DiCaprio, Donald Trump, the world’s largest yacht, a Malaysian playboy known for his lavish spending in New York nightclubs, and – as you might imagine – lots of Champagne.

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Tech companies in Silicon Valley are under the microscope for not living up to their idealistic pledges to save the world. On this week’s episode of Reveal, we investigate companies on the cutting edge that are struggling to solve some old-fashioned problems: Worker safety at Tesla, and diversity at Google and beyond.

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Reveal digs deep – and gets results. By mining data from 31 million records, we discovered a pattern of routine mortgage loan denials to applicants of color in more than 60 U.S. metropolitan areas. Our story led to attorneys generals’ investigations and lawmakers’ demands for accountability at the federal, state and city levels. It also led to thousands of questions from you, our listeners. Our reporters answered a handful of them.

Don’t miss the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

Reveal revisits our investigation into California’s deadliest wildfires. Last October, more than 170 fires ripped across Northern California, burning more than 9,000 buildings, causing millions of dollars in damage and killing 44 people. Along with our partners at KQED we’ll examine what’s being done to ensure that emergency response failures are not repeated as the next wildfire season approaches.

Don’t miss the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

In 2014, WBEZ Chicago reporter Linda Lutton followed a class of fourth-graders at William Penn Elementary School on Chicago’s West Side. She wanted to explore a big idea that’s at the heart of the American dream: Can public schools be the great equalizer in society, giving everyone a chance to succeed, no matter where they come from or how much money their families have?

Lutton told the story in a Peabody Award-nominated show, “The View from Room 205.” This week, Reveal presents a condensed version of that documentary.

Don’t miss the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

Some police departments are embracing a set of tactics designed to reduce the use of force – and prevent police shootings. Rather than rushing in aggressively, officers back off, wait out people in crisis and use words instead of weapons.

But this training isn't required in most states. Reveal teams up with APM Reports and finds that most cops spend a lot more time training to shoot their guns than learning how to avoid firing them.

This episode was originally broadcast on May 6, 2017.

Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

Last fall, we threw out a simple question after a show about U.S. immigration policies: What do you wish you knew about immigration?

Across the country, listeners responded with hundreds of text messages – from small towns in Iowa, Colorado and Massachusetts to big cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago.

We chose four questions and took our team of reporters and producers to task to answer them.

To figure out the answers, we go deep into immigration court, help one listener uncover her grandfather’s secret past about entering the country and break down the path to legal citizenship. On the way, we meet scam artists, attorneys, asylum seekers and do-gooders learning immigration law for kicks.

This episode was originally 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.

In the early 1900s, African American families owned one-seventh of the nation’s farmland, 15 million acres. A hundred years later, black farmers own only one-quarter of the land they once held and now make up less than 1 percent of American farm families.

The federal government has admitted it was part of the problem. In 1997, a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture said discrimination by the agency was a factor in the decline of black farms. A landmark class-action lawsuit on behalf of black farmers, Pigford v. Glickman, was settled in 1999, and the government paid out more than $2 billion as a result. But advocates for black farmers say problems persist.

On this episode of Reveal, reporter John Biewen of “Scene on Radio” tells the story of a black farmer who says the USDA treated him unfairly because of his race.

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President Donald Trump said he was ending family separation at the border this week. But we’ve stayed on the story, investigating the issues that remain: children being drugged at migrant shelters, asylum-seekers being denied at ports of entry and the problems with Trump’s new detention plan.

Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.