More To The Story: A year ago this month, President Donald Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people responsible for the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. University of Chicago political science professor Robert Pape argues that Trump’s decision to pardon and set free the insurrectionists, including hundreds who had been found guilty of assaulting police, could be the most consequential decision of his term. 

On this week’s More To The Story, Pape talks with host Al Letson about how America’s transformation to a white minority is fueling the nation’s growing political violence, the remarkable political geography of the insurrectionists, and the glimmers of hope he’s found in his research that democracy can survive this pivotal moment in history.

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 Trump’s January 6 Pardons Hijacked History (More To The Story)

Read: Both the Left and the Right Are Targeted by Political Violence. Who Perpetrates It? (Mother Jones)

Read: Understanding Support for Political Violence in America (Chicago Project on Security and Threats)

Kansas City police Officer Matt Masters first used a Taser in the early 2000s. He said it worked well for taking people down; it was safe and effective. 

“At the end of the day, if you have to put your hands on somebody, you got to scuffle with somebody, why risk that?” he said. “You can just shoot them with a Taser.”

Masters believed in that until his son Bryce was pulled over by an officer and shocked for more than 20 seconds. The 17-year-old went into cardiac arrest, which doctors later attributed to the Taser. Masters’ training had led him to believe something like that could never happen. 

This week on Reveal, we partner with Lava for Good’s podcast Absolute: Taser Incorporated and its host, Nick Berardini, to learn what the company that makes the Taser knew about the dangers of its weapon and didn’t say.

More To The Story: Last week, US forces entered Venezuela, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a nighttime raid. On Monday, they were arraigned in US federal court, pleading not guilty to narcoterrorism charges. The military action followed a monthslong pressure campaign that included a number of deadly strikes on boats off the Venezuelan coast that the Trump administration alleges were used for drug smuggling. Many legal experts, human rights groups, and lawmakers have called the strikes illegal. The US has a long history of exerting power and influence in South America—sometimes violating international law in the process. The latest moves by the Trump administration appear to signal a new era of foreign policy for America meant to send a message to countries in the region and around the world. On this week’s More To The Story, host Al Letson sits down with Emma Ashford, a Foreign Policy magazine columnist and senior fellow at the Stimson Center, to examine the implications of Maduro’s ouster, how she defines what Trump is now calling the “Donroe Doctrine,” and what the US’s latest actions could mean for the region and the world.

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: A New Theory Explains Why Trump Keeps Threatening Global Takeovers (Mother Jones)
Listen: Trump’s New World (Dis)order (Reveal)
Read: Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates (Georgetown University Press)

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.

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More To The Story: Bill McKibben isn’t known for his rosy outlook on climate change. Back in 1989, the environmentalist wrote The End of Nature, which is considered the first mainstream book warning of global warming’s potential effects on the planet. His writing on climate change has been described as “dark realism.” But McKibben has recently let a little light shine through thanks to the dramatic growth of renewable energy, particularly solar power. In his latest book, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, McKibben argues that the planet is experiencing the fastest energy transition in history from fossil fuels to solar and wind—and that transition could be the start of something big. On this week’s More To The Story, McKibben sits down with host Al Letson to examine the rise of solar power, how China is leapfrogging the United States in renewable energy use, and the real reason the Trump administration is trying to kill solar and wind projects around the country.

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

Listen: Will the National Parks Survive Trump? (Reveal)

Read: Rooftop Solar Is a Miracle. Why Are We Killing It With Red Tape? (Mother Jones)

Read: Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (W.W. Norton & Company)

This week on Reveal, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary with a look back at some of our favorite stories, from investigations into water shortages in drought-prone California to labor abuses in the Dominican Republic. And we interview the journalists behind the reporting to explain what happened after the stories aired. 

This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in March 2025.

More To The Story: Dan McClellan has spent much of his life learning—and relearning—what the Bible and its authors were trying to tell us. But his years in graduate school also taught him that the way scholars talk about the Bible is much different from how churchgoers discuss it. Several years ago, McClellan began pushing back against what he saw as misguided biblical interpretations online and soon gained a following. Today, he has almost 1 million followers on TikTok who look for his thoughts on topics like the “sin of empathy,” what the Bible says about slavery, or maybe just to see what graphic T-shirt he has decided to wear that day. 

On this week’s More To The Story, McClellan sits down with host Al Letson to talk about the ways people throughout history have used the Bible to serve their own interests, and a time when his own perspective of the Bible was challenged.

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: In God We Vote (Reveal)

Read: Christian “TheoBros” Are Building a Tech Utopia in Appalachia (Mother Jones)

Listen: A Christian Nationalist Has Second Thoughts (More To The Story)

Read: The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues (St. Martin’s Essentials)

In the mid-’90s, two high-end New York art galleries began selling one fake painting after another – works in the style of Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko and others. It was the largest art fraud in modern U.S. history, totaling more than $80 million. Our first story looks at how it happened and why almost no one ever was punished by authorities. 

Our second story revisits an investigation into a painting looted by the Nazis during World War II. More than half a century later, a journalist helped track it down through the Panama Papers. 

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in January 2020. 

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For many Americans, proper sanitation and clean water seem like issues for developing countries. But much of rural America—and even parts of US cities—still struggles to provide the basics we all need to survive. And as infrastructure ages and strains under the threat of climate change, the problems will likely get worse. Environmental justice activist Catherine Coleman Flowers has been on the forefront of these issues for decades. And she says that while a lack of sanitation is often found in poor, Black regions, especially in the Deep South, these basic environmental issues cut across racial lines. On this week’s More To The Story, Flowers sits down with host Al Letson to talk about her years working to achieve “sanitation justice” in the South, how biblical lessons apply to climate offenders, and her book of personal essays, Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope.

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

Read: Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope (Spiegel & Grau)

Listen: The Great Arizona Water Grab (Reveal)

Read: Some Alabamians Can’t Even Flush Their Toilets. The EPA Is Here to Help. (Inside Climate News via Mother Jones)

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

Chicago has been one of the latest stops on the Trump administration’s deportation tour. “Operation Midway Blitz” started in September and, for months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents have been roaming the streets and detaining hundreds of people.

This week on Reveal, host Al Letson and producer Ashley Cleek visit Chicago to see “Operation Midway Blitz” in action, and find out what it’s been like for those targeted by it. Letson and Cleek found citizens detained, Chicago police officers pepper-sprayed, and communities terrified. Most Chicagoans arrested by federal agents in the operation had no criminal record, not even a traffic ticket.

Letson and Cleek also see how communities are mobilizing to protect each other, and how some of the tensions over immigration raids stretch back to decisions made by the city back in 2022. They also learn from 404 Media’s Joseph Cox about face-scanning apps used by federal agents in Chicago—and how the use of this kind of surveillance points to a broader shift in how the US government deploys its technologies against people inside the country.