Reveal

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.

More To The Story: Tennessee Rep. Justin J. Pearson first caught national attention when he was expelled from the state’s House of Representatives after demonstrating in support of gun law reforms. Today, he’s the Democratic candidate for Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District. It’s an area newly transformed by redrawn voting maps and sprawling data centers, putting Pearson at the center of some of the country’s biggest national fights. On this week’s More To The Story, Pearson talks about how redistricting has upended Tennessee and the many ways gun violence has become a deeply personal issue for him. He also looks back at the opposition to his 2023 demonstration for gun law reform when he was dubbed part of “the Tennessee Three.”

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

Read: Republicans Don’t Need to Win Elections Anymore. They Just Need Their Judges. (Mother Jones)

Listen: Not All Votes Are Created Equal (Reveal)

In medical school, Aaron Baugh, like most doctors in training, was taught that Black people have smaller lungs than white people. His professors explained that it came down to evolution and body proportions.

A spirometer measures lung capacity and helps doctors diagnose and treat most lung diseases, including asthma, COPD, and cystic fibrosis. And for generations, it had a so-called race equation built into it. When a patient breathes into the machine, their lung capacity is compared to what is considered normal for their age, gender, and race. For Black patients, that normal range was 10 to 15 percent lower than for white patients. For years, doctors believed that a race “correction” made the test more accurate.

But after becoming a pulmonary and critical care physician, Baugh discovered that historical assumptions embedded in the spirometer were not only wrong, but were based on racist science that can be traced back to American slavery. And they were leading to misdiagnoses in thousands of Black patients, including military veterans. 

“This is not a small test,” Baugh says. “It is used in diagnosis of lung disease. It is used for job hiring. It is used for disability assignments. It is used for different medical treatments. So it can touch people in a lot of important ways if you’re doing this wrong.”

This week on Reveal, we team up with The Race Equation podcast series from the New England Journal of Medicine to examine a standard medical test with a brutal history that is harming Black patients and is still being used in hospitals across the country.

More To The Story: Ben McKenzie might seem like an unlikely choice to launch an investigation into the complicated world of cryptocurrency. But the television actor known for shows like The O.C. and Gotham did exactly that. His documentary film, Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, is a deep dive into the people and companies at the heart of crypto. The film focuses on McKenzie’s journey to discover why people continue to invest in digital currency even while knowing the risks of this highly under-regulated market. 

On this week’s More To The Story, McKenzie shares his concerns for what he calls the cult-like behavior of those investing in digital currency, talks about his interview with disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried just months before his arrest, and discusses the poignant conversations he had with everyday people who trusted the power of digital currency and lost everything—yet are still crypto believers.

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:Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud (Abrams Press)

Watch:Everyone Is Lying to You for Money (The Forge)

Listen:The Secret Story of FTX’s Rise and Ruin Part 1 (Reveal)

Listen: So You Don’t Understand Crypto. Buckle Up. (More To The Story)

The loss of land for Black Americans started with the government’s betrayal of its “40 acres” promise to formerly enslaved people—and it has continued over decades. 

Today, researchers are unearthing the details of Black land loss long after emancipation. 

“They lost land due to racial intimidation, where they were forced off their land [to] take flight in the middle of the night and resettle someplace else,” said Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, an assistant professor of Africana studies at Morehouse College. “They lost it through overtaxation. They lost it through eminent domain…There's all these different ways that African Americans acquired and lost land.”

This week on Reveal, we dive into the examination of American history happening at the state, city, even county level as local government task forces are on truth-finding missions. Across the country, government officials ask: Can we repair a wealth gap for Black Americans that is rooted in slavery? And how?

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024.

More To The Story: Sen. Adam Schiff is often on the receiving end of President Donald Trump’s rage online. It should be no surprise. Back in 2020, the California Democrat was the lead prosecutor during the first Trump impeachment trial as a member of the House of Representatives. Now a senator, Schiff has been laying out a different strategy for how Democrats might challenge the president if they reclaim Congress. Much of that strategy focuses on how the president has enriched himself in the White House—all at the expense, Schiff argues, of the American people. On this week’s More To The Story, Schiff describes what it’s like to be an ever-present target of Trump’s ire, how the Israeli government has pushed longtime supporters like himself to criticize it more openly, and lays out his proposals for rebuilding America’s institutional guardrails in a post-Trump era.

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: The Gaza Flotilla Story You Didn’t Hear (Reveal)

Read: 10 Ways to Enrich the Trumps and the MAGA Movement (Mother Jones)

Listen: Al Gore: Trump Administration Is the Most Corrupt in History (More To The Story)

Watch: Cost of Corruption: Ten Ways Trump Is Profiting off the Presidency While You Lose (YouTube/C-SPAN2)