Reveal

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the stage at the United Nations last month, diplomats streamed for the exits. Three years after October 7, when much of the Western world rallied behind Israel in the wake of Hamas’ attack, the political ground has shifted.

Some of the biggest changes are happening here in the US. Two years ago, Abbas Alawieh helped lead the Uncommitted movement, pressuring Democrats over Gaza. Now he’s running for Michigan state Senate, and Kamala Harris is calling him. Elsewhere in Michigan, AIPAC and its allies spent close to $30 million backing Abdul El-Sayed’s opponent in the Democratic Senate primary. El-Sayed won anyway.

For some voters, the prominence of Israel itself is striking.

“I don’t know why Israel has become the pivotal point,” said Mimi Price-Miletic, a  Democratic voter in Michigan. “There are so many issues in this country that we should be dealing with, and you’re worried about what’s happening, like, millions of miles away?”

And the divide crosses party lines. Younger Republicans are questioning US support for Israel, even as party leaders advance deeper defense cooperation. Meanwhile, AIPAC faces new challenges to its influence, as younger Jewish political groups, like J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace, offer sharply different visions for what should come next.

This week on Reveal, reporter Najib Aminy follows the new fault lines forming around the US–Israel relationship and asks: As the old political consensus is tested, who gets to shape what replaces it?

More To The Story: Back in August, Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon did something few outside the state saw coming: She won Florida's Democratic US Senate primary. Her victory sent shock waves through the political world not only because her opponent Alex Vindman’s war chest dwarfed hers 19 to 1, but also because Nixon ran as a Democratic Socialist. Today, she’s one of a number of candidates around the country affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America who could be elected to Congress this November. The sudden rise in the DSA’s popularity is reshaping the Democratic Party and America’s political landscape. On this week’s More To The Story, Nixon talks to host Al Letson about going from community activist and comic book co-author to upstart US Senate candidate, being “the biggest thorn” in Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ side, and whether her progressive message can win in deep-red Florida.

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

Read: Angie Nixon Goes on Trial in September. She Just Won Florida’s Senate Primary. (Mother Jones)

Listen: Black in the Sunshine State (Reveal)

Listen: How Redistricting Is Upending America’s Midterms (More To The Story)

Before her historic Speakership, even before she got to the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi worked for years outside the spotlight as an official in the California Democratic party while she raised her family in San Francisco. That

was until 1987, when tragic circumstances led her to do something she hadn’t considered before: run for Congress. Her first hurdle? A city in crisis and a motivated opponent from a community impacted by a deadly epidemic.

Last year, arts organizations and cultural institutions across the US received an alarming message: Their federal grants had been canceled.

The letters said their projects no longer aligned with new federal priorities and that money was being redirected toward the Trump administration’s agenda. The grants had funded museum exhibits, public art programs, historical research, and community arts initiatives. 

Angela Sutton and a team of archaeologists were in the middle of excavating a long-forgotten Black neighborhood in Nashville when she got the news: “Just got an email out of the blue saying, ‘Please stop. You're done.’”

This week on Reveal, reporter Jonathan Jones travels to Nashville and beyond to meet the people living with the fallout of arts funding cuts. Some organizations are scaling back their work. Others worry artists will censor themselves just to survive. But many are fighting back.

Since this show first aired in March 2026, federal courts ordered the National Endowment for the Humanities to reverse mass grant cancellations and struck down the National Endowment for the Arts’ restrictions on “gender ideology.” While some NEH funds have resumed, no retroactive NEA money was restored, and the Trump administration has appealed both rulings.

More To The Story: President Donald Trump’s second term has often felt like an exercise in mass distraction. As soon as he’s directing people to pay attention to one issue like the Iran war or immigration, he’s already moved on to false claims about widespread voter fraud, taking over Greenland, or building a massive arch in the nation’s capital. In the new book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, New York Times reporter and co-author Jonathan Swan has tried to make sense of Trump’s unprecedented tenure by bringing readers inside the room where major decisions happen. And Swan says the loyalists Trump has surrounded himself with in his second term have made Trump’s overwhelming and exhausting presidency possible. On this week’s More To The Story, Swan talks about the immense challenges of covering the Trump administration, how the Jeffrey Epstein scandal sent the White House into crisis mode behind closed doors, and why he’s not eager to write another book about the president anytime soon. 

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Vincent Sherry | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

Listen: The Secrets Behind “The Talented Mr. Epstein” (More To The Story)

Read: Trump is Growing Desperate on Iran (Mother Jones)

Listen: A New Year, a New War (Reveal)

Read: Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files (The New York Times Magazine)

Read: Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump (Simon & Schuster)

After Mother Jones senior reporter Julia Lurie had her IUD removed, she was surprised to find that she felt happier and calmer than she had in years. 

Her experience made her wonder: What does the science say about how hormonal birth control affects mood? And in a moment when contraceptives are so politicized and misinformation is rampant, is it possible to talk about the side effects of birth control without giving ammunition to those who want to get rid of it altogether?

In talking with scientists, doctors, and public health experts, Lurie learns that for years, research has found that people on hormonal contraceptives are much more likely to experience depression, suicidality, anxiety, insomnia, and other effects rarely discussed by the doctors who prescribe them. 

“For some women, it can be an almost overnight change,” says OB-GYN and contraceptive researcher Dr. Ojvind Lidegaard.

This week on Reveal, we explore the gaps in women’s reproductive health, from contraceptives to menopause.

More To The Story: The 2016 election that put Donald Trump in the White House the first time was defined in many ways by the role of America’s longtime adversary Russia. Over the years, multiple investigations have concluded that Russia meddled in the election to boost Trump over Hillary Clinton and create political discord among voters. Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly called the Russia investigations a “hoax.” As the 2026 midterms approach, experts warn that Russia could interfere in US elections once again. Because as Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn lays out in his new book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America, Russia has been waging a continuous campaign against the US. On this week’s More To The Story, Corn talks about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “twilight war” against the US and Western democracies, argues that the infamous Steele dossier ultimately helped Trump, and examines how the Trump White House has dismantled government agencies tasked with finding and fending off Russian disinformation campaigns.

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

Listen: Trump’s Impulsive Foreign Policy Is Tearing Apart the Global Order (More To The Story)

Read: Why Is Trump’s DOJ Still Helping the Russian-Linked Liar Who Smeared Biden? (Mother Jones)

Read: How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America (Harper)

In 2023, Marlena Arjo adopted a one-eyed kitten with a penchant for destruction. She named him Otto, and over the next eight months, Otto grew into his own little chaotic personality.

“ He’s laying on houseplants, he’s tearing books out of the bookshelves, ripping the calendar off the wall…I wasn’t prepared for having a criminal in my home,” Arjo joked.

Within months, Otto got sick and stopped eating. Arjo rushed him to a vet and learned he had feline infectious peritonitis, better known as FIP, a disease that kills nearly all cats that contract it. 

The vet said there was nothing the clinic could do. But there was something Arjo could do.

“I shouldn’t tell you this,” Arjo recalled the vet telling her. “But by the way, you can get drugs for this if you go to this Facebook group.”

This week on Reveal, in partnership with the Hyperfixed podcast, we tell the story of the cat drug black market, why it was even necessary, and how cat lovers fought for big changes to make the black market obsolete.

This is an update of a show that originally aired in January 2026.

Listen to Hyperfixed’s greatest hits

More To The Story: Last month, Duane “Keffe D” Davis was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of rapper Tupac Shakur. The verdict came 30 years after Tupac was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas that for decades remained cloaked in conspiracy theory and mystery. It’s impossible to overstate rapper Tupac’s influence on music and culture in the 1990s. One of the era’s bestselling musical artists, he helped define West Coast hip-hop through vulnerable, introspective lyrics and Black power politics. By his own admission, sports writer Jeff Pearlman is not the rapper’s likeliest biographer. But as he waited for what he called “the big, fat biography” of Tupac, his impatience and long-standing fascination with the rapper got the best of him. So he set out to write it himself. On this week’s episode, Pearlman talks about his book Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur; discusses how Tupac’s Black Panther mother, Afeni Shakur, shaped her son; and examines the nuance and mystery that surrounded Tupac’s life and death for decades.

This episode first aired in June 2026.

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

Read: The 24 Best Books We Read in 2025 (Mother Jones)

Listen: Baltimore Mayor to Trump: Don’t Send Your Troops (More To The Story)

Read: Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur (Mariner Books)

Note: If you buy a book using our Bookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

When Mia Farina got seriously ill in 2014, she thought she had a bad case of pneumonia. But it turned out to be far worse: It was the start of chronic lung disease related to the months she spent working in and around ground zero after 9/11. 

Back then, Farina was a rookie cop, present when the second Twin Tower came down. She and her Brooklyn squad ran to escape the burning debris. “At one point, you couldn’t run because the stuff that was collapsing was so deep,” she said. “So it would go up to my thigh, and you would feel people’s hands and feet because…they’re all under the rubble.” 

Farina lives on Long Island, surrounded by other responders who also are sick and dying from their work at ground zero 25 years ago. She and tens of thousands of other 9/11 responders and survivors were promised care through the World Trade Center Health Program, a federally funded lifeline meant to treat the long-term medical consequences of that day. But funding has never kept up with the number of people who continue to get sick. 

This week on Reveal, reporter Lynn Hallarman, a Long Island doctor turned journalist who once treated 9/11 responders, explores the community of responders around her, their reliance on a program that’s been unstable for decades, and the science behind why people are still getting sick.