Best The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX Podcasts (2025)

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What Is Riley Gaines Hiding? We Investigated. 1:19:23

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8h ago1:19:23

1:19:23

This week, we’re bringing you something a bit different. Our reporter Madison Pauly recently teamed up with journalist and podcaster Pablo Torre for a special episode of his investigative show, Pablo Torre Finds Out. The episode is a deep dive into right-wing superstar Riley Gaines, a swimmer who tied a transgender woman for fifth place and became …

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In Rural America Public Radio Saves Lives 50:52

3d ago50:52

50:52

When a typhoon hit Alaska, public radio station KYUK was on the air, broadcasting critical information about conditions, evacuations and search and rescue operations. An estimated 1600 people were displaced and many were saved in the biggest airlift operation in state history “The work that we do in terms of public safety communication literally do…

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Why America Is Obsessed With True Crime 33:22

7m ago33:22

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More To The Story: John J. Lennon thinks true crime is exploitative—and he has a unique perspective. In 2001, he killed a man on a street in New York City. He was convicted of murder several years later and given the maximum sentence—25 years to life in prison—on top of three additional years for two other convictions. From behind bars, he began re…

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In a Mississippi Jail, Inmates Became Weapons 50:28

3m ago50:28

50:28

Chris Mack has been locked up in Mississippi’s Rankin County Jail on and off since he was a teenager. In a lawsuit, he detailed a jailhouse assault that left him with broken ribs, a broken nose, and two black eyes. But it wasn’t just guards who attacked him. Mack said a group of inmates joined in—men in the jail’s Trusty Inmate Program, who had spe…

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Executions Are Rising in the US. This Reverend Witnesses Them. 39:58

15d ago39:58

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More To The Story: About 2,100 people are on death row in America. Some have been there for decades, in part because executions have been on the decline in the US. But that’s changing. So far this year, 41 people have been executed, up from 25 last year, and six more executions are scheduled. Early in his second term, President Donald Trump signed …

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The Deputies Who Tortured a Mississippi County 50:15

3m ago50:15

50:15

When Andrea Dettore-Murphy first moved to Rankin County, Mississippi, she didn’t believe the stories she heard about how brutal the sheriff’s department could be when pursuing suspected drug crimes. But in 2018, she learned the hard way that the rumors were true when a group of sheriff’s deputies raided the home of her friend Rick Loveday and beat …

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I Study Fascism. I’ve Already Fled America. 25:59

3d ago25:59

25:59

More To The Story: Jason Stanley isn’t afraid to use the F-word when talking about President Donald Trump. The author of How Fascism Works and Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future is clear: He believes the United States is currently under an authoritarian regime led by a fascist leader. At a time when the Trump admin…

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An Atrocity of War Goes Unpunished 50:31

25d ago50:31

50:31

In November 2005, a group of US Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them became one of the most high-profile war crimes prosecutions in US history—but then it fell apart. Only one Marine went to trial for the killings, and all he received was a slap on the wrist. Even his own defense attorney found the outcome shocking. “…

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America Had a Black President. Then Came the Whitelash. 31:56

8d ago31:56

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More To The Story: America in these last 10 years has experienced generational political upheaval, clashes over race and identity, and a battle over the very direction of the country itself. Few writers have charted these wild swings better than staff writer for The New Yorker and Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb. And for Cobb, it all st…

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A Midnight Phone Call. A Missing Movie. Decades of Questions. 51:16

12d ago51:16

51:16

Here at the Center for Investigative Reporting, we excel at finding things: government documents, contact information, the misdeeds people have tried to hide. It’s serious work that we use for serious tasks—but that gave us an idea. What would happen if we used these skills for things that are less about accountability and more about joy? If we tur…

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Al Letson at No Kings: Hope, Fury, and Inflatables 24:28

15d ago24:28

24:28

More To The Story: On October 18, roughly 2,700 No Kings demonstrations took place around the US. Organizers estimated that 7 million protesters came out to denounce what they described as America’s slide toward authoritarianism under President Donald Trump. That’s right where More To The Story’s Al Letson found himself this weekend. Al spoke with …

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Exposing a Global Surveillance Empire 50:18

21d ago50:18

50:18

In June, a sharp-suited Austrian executive from a global surveillance company told a prospective client that he could “go to prison” for organizing the deal they were discussing. But the conversation did not end there. The executive, Guenther Rudolph, was seated at a booth at ISS World in Prague, a secretive trade fair for police and intelligence a…

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How a Climate Doomsayer Became an Unexpected Optimist 32:14

29d ago32:14

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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 …

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Immigrants on the Line 50:32

1M ago50:32

50:32

Mackenson Remy didn’t plan to bypass security when he drove into the parking lot of a factory in Greeley, Colorado. He’d never been there before. All he knew was this place had jobs—lots of jobs. Remy is originally from Haiti, and in 2023, he’d been making TikTok videos about job openings in the area for his few followers, mostly other Haitians. Wh…

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The Race to Stop AI’s Threats to Democracy 34:00

2M ago34:00

34:00

More To The Story: OpenAI became the world’s most valuable private company last week after a stock deal pushed the value of the artificial intelligence developer to $500 billion. But when OpenAI was founded a decade ago, the company’s approach to artificial intelligence wasn’t taken seriously in Silicon Valley. Tech journalist Karen Hao has been co…

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The Secret Story of FTX’s Rise and Ruin Part 2 50:31

1M ago50:31

50:31

When the cryptocurrency exchange FTX imploded, customers around the world lost access to their money. Founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and sent to prison. But the story didn’t stop there. For the past three years, FTX has been in bankruptcy, a legal process that determines who will be paid back and how much they’ll receive. From the…

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So You Don’t Understand Crypto. Buckle Up. 31:44

2M ago31:44

31:44

More To The Story: The growth of crypto—decentralized digital currency that doesn’t rely on the backing of a bank or government—is one of the most transformative financial developments of the 21st century. And yet cryptocurrencies still baffle so many. How risky of an investment is it? Where do I buy it? And, wait, what is crypto again? On this wee…

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The Secret Story of FTX’s Rise and Ruin Part 1 49:56

1M ago49:56

49:56

Sam Bankman-Fried was once called the “crypto king.” But in November 2022, his company, FTX, imploded within a matter of days. All around the world, customers of the cryptocurrency exchange were suddenly cut off from their money. “I tried to withdraw an amount, you know, and it would spin and say, your, your withdrawal is pending,” says Tareq Morad…

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Baltimore Mayor to Trump: Don’t Send Your Troops 30:20

2M ago30:20

30:20

More To The Story: When Brandon Scott took office in late 2020 as one of the youngest mayors in Baltimore’s history, he pledged to reduce the number of homicides and incidents of gun violence. That year, there were 335 reported homicides in the city of roughly 600,000 people, making it one of the most dangerous cities per capita in the US. Scott be…

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Kids Under Fire in Gaza 50:42

2M ago50:42

50:42

When Dr. Mimi Syed returned from her first volunteer trip to Gaza in the summer of 2024, she started flipping through her notes and came to a shocking conclusion: In one month, the ER physician had treated at least 18 children with gunshots to the head or chest. And that’s only the patients she had time to make a note of. “They were children under …

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The Secret Story of FTX’s Rise and Ruin Trailer 1:10

2M ago1:10

1:10

Our two-part series starts September 27th, exposing the inside story of the failed crypto currency exchange & the contentious bankruptcy that followed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choicesBy The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

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Charlie Kirk and Trump's Looming Political Crackdown 30:01

2M ago30:01

30:01

More To The Story: The shocking assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week was part of a wider, horrific trend: the rise of political violence in America. But Kirk’s murder also seemed to reveal something even darker. Before a suspect was found—when facts were scarce—the race for political retribution was already well underway. T…

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The Strike That Broke a Supermax Prison 50:37

2M ago50:37

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At 18, Jack Morris was convicted of murdering a man in South Los Angeles and sent to prison for life. It was 1979, and America was entering the era of mass incarceration, with tough sentencing laws ballooning the criminal justice system. As California’s prison population surged, so did prison violence. “You learn that in order to survive, you yours…

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Being Black in America Almost Killed Me Part 2 24:52

2M ago24:52

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More To The Story: When Trymaine Lee began writing his first book, he didn’t realize that the gun violence he was reporting on was such a central part of his own story. But then he began digging into his family history, only to fully learn about a series of racially motivated murders involving his ancestors. Lee’s book, A Thousand Ways to Die: The …

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Taken by ICE 49:59

2M ago49:59

49:59

A young woman clings to a tree as masked men try to peel her off. The men wrench one of the woman’s arms behind her back, then stuff her into the back of an unmarked SUV as bystanders film and shout. She was selling food outside a Home Depot in West Los Angeles when federal agents chased her down and arrested her. Videos of aggressive immigration r…

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Being Black in America Almost Killed Me Part 1 27:22

3M ago27:22

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More To The Story: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Trymaine Lee was in the middle of writing his first book when the unthinkable happened. At 38, a massive heart attack nearly took his life. That near-death experience altered his life and forced him to reckon with the years he’s spent chronicling gun violence involving Black men in America, as we…

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Will the National Parks Survive Trump? 50:30

3M ago50:30

50:30

From layoffs to billion-dollar budget cuts and ideological battles over history itself, the National Park Service is facing one of the most turbulent moments in its 109-year history. Reporter Heath Druzin hikes deep into Yellowstone National Park’s backcountry with biologist Doug Smith, who helped reintroduce wolves to the park 30 years ago. The pr…

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Why Rehab Often Fuels Relapse Instead of Recovery 30:57

3M ago30:57

30:57

More To The Story: The opioid crisis has been a quiet, deadly presence in America for a quarter-century now. Since 1999, it’s killed more than 800,000 people in the US. But in the background, another crisis has been simmering: the often-lawless patchwork of treatment centers and programs that make up America’s drug rehab industry. Many of the rough…

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A Baby Adopted, A Family Divided 50:38

3M ago50:38

50:38

In 2017, David Leavitt drove to the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana to adopt a baby girl. A few years later, during an interview with a documentary filmmaker, Leavitt, a wealthy Utah politician, told a startling story about how he went about getting physical custody of that child. He describes going to the tribe’s president and offering to…

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Why Conservatives Are Trying to Kill the Voting Rights Act 27:29

3M ago27:29

27:29

More To The Story: The Voting Rights Act turned 60 years old this month. The landmark piece of legislation is considered one of the most effective laws protecting the right to vote for racial minorities around the country. But the conservative movement has successfully hollowed out much of the law, thanks to Supreme Court decisions over the last de…

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What Police Weren’t Told About Tasers 50:03

3M ago50:03

50:03

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 …

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Trump’s Homelessness Crackdown Has Been Tried Before. It Didn’t Work. 27:43

3M ago27:43

27:43

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump announced that his administration is removing homeless encampments from around Washington, DC. The announcement illustrated how the federal government’s approach to homelessness is dramatically changing. It follows an executive order issued last month that makes it easier for cities and states to involuntar…

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She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad. Child Services Took Her Baby. 50:28

3M ago50:28

50:28

Pregnant with her fifth child, Susan Horton had a lot of confidence in her parenting abilities. Then she ate a salad from Costco: an “everything” chopped salad kit with poppy seeds. When she went to the hospital to give birth the next day, she tested positive for opiates. Horton told doctors that it must have been the poppy seeds, but she couldn’t …

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Gazans Are Starving. It’s a Manmade Catastrophe. 25:15

4M ago25:15

25:15

In the last few months, widespread starvation has gripped the Gaza Strip. United Nations-backed food security experts say the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out” in Gaza, home to an estimated 2 million Palestinians. One of the few organizations still on the ground trying to feed Palestinians at risk of famine is the Gaza Soup K…

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They Followed Doctors’ Orders. The State Took Their Babies. 50:36

3M ago50:36

50:36

Jade Dass was taking medication to treat her addiction to opioids before she became pregnant. Scientific studies and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say this leads to the best outcomes for both mothers and babies. But after Dass delivered a healthy daughter, the hospital reported her to the Arizona Department of Child Safety, which c…

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The Bible Says So…or Does It? 33:08

4M ago33:08

33:08

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 biblic…

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Trump’s New World (Dis)order 50:13

4M ago50:13

50:13

During his campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump talked a lot about pulling America out of international treaties and disentangling from military operations abroad. Once in office, he started talking about the idea of Manifest Destiny…that the expansion of the US was both justified and inevitable. In some cases that’s meant turning the tables o…

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Ibram X. Kendi vs. America’s “Antiracism Backlash” 25:36

4M ago25:36

25:36

Just a few years ago, historian and activist Dr. Ibram X. Kendi seemed to be everywhere. At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, Kendi became one of the leading voices on racism in America—and particularly what he described as antiracism. But over the last few years, as a backlash grew against the BLM movement, Kendi also came under attac…

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The Landlord Gutting America’s Hospitals 50:54

4M ago50:54

50:54

In April 2024, medical staff testified before Louisiana’s House Health and Welfare Committee about just how bad things had gotten at the Glenwood Regional Medical Center. The West Monroe hospital had been under fire from the state Health Department over lapses in patient care that seemed to be escalating. The hospital had stopped paying bills for o…

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The Real Conspiracy Behind the Texas Floods 31:51

4M ago31:51

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David Sirota is a journalist, former speechwriter to Bernie Sanders, and co-writer of the Oscar-nominated movie Don’t Look Up, about the threat of climate change. On this week’s More To The Story, Sirota joins host Al Letson to discuss how climate change is fueling more intense weather events like the recent floods in Texas, how the country’s leade…

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We Regret to Inform You 49:42

4M ago49:42

49:42

Bruce Praet is a well-known name in law enforcement, especially in California. He co-founded a company called Lexipol that contracts with more than 95 percent of police departments in the state and offers its clients trainings and ready-made policies. In one of Praet’s online training webinars, he offers a piece of advice that policing experts have…

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Is AI Pushing Us Closer to Nuclear Disaster? 30:34

4M ago30:34

30:34

Earlier this year, Daniel Holz from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that its experts were moving the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds before midnight. The hands have been moved only 25 times since the clock’s creation in 1947, and they’re now the closest they’ve pointed to imminent global destruction. On this week’s More To…

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A Decade of Reveal 50:39

4M ago50:39

50:39

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 an update of an ep…

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Jeffrey Goldberg on Signalgate, Pete Hegseth, and the Risk of WWIII 30:24

5M ago30:24

30:24

In March, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, began receiving top secret messages from national security officials in the Trump administration after he’d been inadvertently added to an internal Signal chat. Many of those same officials oversaw recent military strikes against Iran. On this week’s More To The Story, host Al Letson sits …

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Elon Musk and JD Vance Want You to Breed. A Lot. 50:30

5M ago50:30

50:30

What do Silicon Valley billionaires, religious parents of six, and eugenics-curious biotech founders have in common? Welcome to the world of pronatalism—a growing movement that aims to solve the so-called population crisis by making more babies. We follow the unlikely alliance between tech futurists and traditional conservatives who think it’s thei…

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Mohsen Mahdawi Fought ICE and Won His Freedom. For Now. 29:34

5M ago29:34

29:34

In April, Palestinian student activist Mohsen Mahdawi walked into an immigration office to obtain US citizenship. He left in handcuffs. The Columbia University student was detained by ICE and accused by the Trump administration of jeopardizing US foreign policy through his involvement in protests following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. On …

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The 13th Step 51:10

5M ago51:10

51:10

Across the country, women seeking addiction treatment are being harassed and assaulted by men in positions of power. The problem is so pervasive that it has a name among those in the industry: the 13th Step. “I fell right into it, right into it. You know, it’s like, it’s just, you're so vulnerable,” says a victim named Andrea. “The 13-stepper is li…

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“Madness”: A Retired Brig. General Slams Trump’s Military Power Grab 28:04

5M ago28:04

28:04

Greg Smith spent 35 years in the Army National Guard. But he’s never witnessed the military used the way it’s being deployed in Los Angeles in response to protests opposing the Trump administration’s immigration raids. On this week’s More To The Story, Smith discusses how the military appears increasingly tasked with enforcing a political agenda ra…

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2024 Broke the Democrats. Can They Put Themselves Back Together? 50:44

6M ago50:44

50:44

For the first time in two decades, the Democratic Party has found itself without a clear party leader or even an obvious frontrunner. Angry and adrift, politicians and voters are clashing over how to fight back. They’re also grappling with an uncomfortable new reality: The places that shifted hardest away from Democrats last fall were the kinds of …

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Trump’s Trade War Is Stressing Red State Farmers 26:14

5M ago26:14

26:14

Bryant Kagay is a farmer in Missouri feeling the uncertainty of President Donald Trump’s tariffs up close. He voted for Trump last year but now questions whether the trade war with China is part of a long-term strategy that could help US businesses or merely a short-term negotiating tactic. In this episode of More To The Story, he says the on-again…

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