Rates of black lung disease amongst Appalachia’s coal miners are at the highest they’ve been in 50 years. Recent data shows that a third of veteran miners have the disease. The epidemic is also striking younger workers, too. 

On The Sunday Story, Howard Berkes investigates the devastating human cost on Appalachian families, decades of regulatory failures, and why life-saving protections from toxic silica dust remain stalled in federal court.

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President Trump has repeatedly warned that the communists are coming for America. And he’s not talking about China or North Korea. He’s talking about Democratic Socialists like Zohran Mamdani and recent Congressional candidates.

This week on The Sunday Story, we bring you a conversation from our colleagues at The NPR Politics Podcast. They argue that as the midterms near, crying “communism” may be a key Republican strategy. They discuss whether there’s any legitimacy to the claim, what Republicans hope to achieve by making it, and whether voters will be convinced. 
 
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Thirty-six years ago, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed

into law, guaranteeing civil rights for millions of Americans. But the

movement that made that day possible began years earlier. One pivotal

victory was won by a small, often-forgotten group of activists in Denver

known as the "Gang of 19."

On The Sunday Story,

NPR’s Joseph Shapiro and Colorado Public Radio’s Stephanie Wolf trace

the history of the disability rights movement—from the protests that

secured accessible public transit to the modern-day fight to protect the

hard-won right to live independently. 

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What defines a family? For a group of strangers, that question took on a profound, unexpected meaning after DNA tests revealed a hidden, decades-old deception. They discovered they were all half-siblings conceived through artificial insemination in the mid-20th century. Their biological father was not the man who raised them, but Dr. Charles Charny, a Philadelphia fertility specialist.

In this week's episode of The Sunday Story, Frank Langfitt follows this unique family as they piece together their strange creation tale and decide to become a family.

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From climate change to the rise of AI - it’s hard not to feel like human civilization could be nearing the end. What threats are really worth worrying about? And what can we do to survive a global catastrophe? Today on The Sunday Story, Ben Bradford, host of the new NPR Network podcast Are We Doomed?, tells us what he’s learned about the end of the world.

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Two hundred and fifty years ago, the Declaration of Independence was signed, marking the birth of a new nation. But if you read the Declaration closely, it’s not just about creating something new;  it’s about ridding itself of something unwanted. It’s a break-up text, announcing secession from the British Crown. Today, that same spirit is fueling a modern-day movement in Illinois.

A growing number of rural counties want to secede from Illinois and create a  51st state called “New Illinois.”  Driven by frustration over the dominance of Chicago politics,  they are organizing for a new future. This week on The Sunday Story, reporter Connor Towne O'Neill takes us inside the movement to split Illinois, and the challenges facing a modern secessionist movement in the land of Lincoln.


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What happens to famous works of art when they are stolen from museums and private art collections? In the Netherlands, museums and collectors reach out to Arthur Brand, a self-styled art detective who works to track down art that has gone missing and fallen into the criminal underworld.  

This week on The Sunday Story, when a famous Van Gogh painting is stolen from a museum, Brand teams up with an unlikely partner – art thief Octave Durham. Together, the pair work to rescue a masterpiece from the underground market and return it to its museum home.


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Who are the workers behind the global scam industry? 

In Cambodia, more than 200,000 scam workers have been released from fortified compounds, where many of them had been trafficked, held against their will, and forced to work for little pay. The Cambodian government’s recent crackdown has enabled reporters to get a closer look at an industry responsible for defrauding Americans of at least 20 billion dollars in 2025.

But how did these workers end up in Cambodia, and what was the promise that drew them there? In this two-part series for The Sunday Story, investigative reporter Shibani Mahtani dives into the previously hidden world of the global scam industry. And she follows the story of one Ugandan man, who traveled far from home for a job that was “too good to be true.” 

Listen to Part 2 here.


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PART 2: With the Cambodian government’s ongoing crackdown on the scam industry, tens of thousands of former scammers are stranded on the streets of Phnom Penh. Are they being treated as criminals or as victims themselves of a global industry designed to extract their labor? In part 2 of our series on The Sunday Story, investigative reporter Shibani Mahtani continues the story of one Ugandan scam worker as he tries to make his way home.

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In the summer of 2020, sixteen-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. traveled a thousand miles to be part of the racial justice movement. He arrived in Seattle during the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, known as CHOP. Less than a week later, he was shot and killed there. The case remains unsolved.

Today on The Sunday Story, we bring you the first episode of a new series from NPR’s Embedded podcast that investigates Mays’ death.

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