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 roughly 50 million Americans who battle substance abuse rely on this underregulated for-profit industry that too often exploits patients, fails to properly treat them, or even worse. On this week’s More To The Story, journalist Shoshana Walter sits down with host Al Letson to talk about the lingering opioid crisis, the many theories about why overdose deaths have started falling in the US, and the stark racial disparity in how lawmakers have approached the opioid crisis compared with the crack epidemic in the 1980s.Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | additional help from Artis Curiskis | 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
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Read: Choose Your Child or Choose Recovery: The Impossible Decision Facing Addicted Mothers (Mother Jones)Read: Rehab: An American Scandal (Simon & Schuster) Note: If you buy a book using our Bookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.Listen: How Trump Exploits Working-Class Pain (More To The Story)
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A Baby Adopted, A Family Divided
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 use his connections to broker an international sale of the tribe’s buffalo. At the same time, he was asking the president for his blessing to adopt the child.That video eventually leaked to a local TV station, and the adoption became the subject of a federal investigation into bribery. To others, the adoption story seemed to run afoul of a federal law meant to protect Native children from being removed from their tribes’ care in favor of non-Native families. This week on Reveal, reporters Andrew Becker and Bernice Yeung dig into the story of this complicated and controversial adoption, how it circumvented the mission of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and why some of the baby’s Native family and tribe were left feeling that a child was taken from them. This episode was produced in collaboration with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.This is an update of an episode that originally aired in August 2024.
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Why Conservatives Are Trying to Kill the Voting Rights Act
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 decade. On this week’s episode, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie sits down with host Al Letson to talk about how the Voting Rights Act has been defanged by the Supreme Court, why the Democratic Party is made up of “a bunch of weenies,” and why he believes the country is now in a constitutional emergency.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 LetsonDonate today at Revealnews.org/moreSubscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weeklyFollow us on Instagram and Bluesky
Listen: How Trump Exploits Working-Class Pain (More To The Story)
Read: Republican Gerrymandering Schemes Target Minority Voters and Their Representatives (Mother Jones)
Listen: Not All Votes Are Created Equal (Reveal)
Read: The Nation’s Landmark Voting Rights Law Just Turned 60. It May Not Survive Trump. (Mother Jones)
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What Police Weren’t Told About Tasers
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.
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Trump’s Homelessness Crackdown Has Been Tried Before. It Didn’t Work.
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 involuntarily commit unhoused people and eliminate encampments. It also prioritizes treatment over housing for people struggling with mental health issues or substance abuse. The policies represent a 180-degree turn away from an approach the federal government has used for years called Housing First, an evidence-based program that prioritizes the opposite: housing before treatment. It was first developed by clinical psychologist Sam Tsemberis almost 30 years ago. On this week’s More To The Story, Tsemberis sits down with host Al Letson to examine the potential effects of Trump’s executive order.Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
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Listen: The Churn (Reveal)Read: Trump’s Plan to Eliminate Homelessness Is Just Cruel. Here’s Another Option. (Mother Jones)Learn more: Pathways Housing First Institute
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Reveal’s investigations will inspire, infuriate and inform you. Host Al Letson and an award-winning team of reporters deliver gripping stories about caregivers, advocates for the unhoused, immigrant families, warehouse workers and formerly incarcerated people, fighting to hold the powerful accountable. The New Yorker described Reveal as “a knockout … a pleasure to listen to, even as we seethe.” A winner of multiple Peabody, duPont, Emmy and Murrow awards, Reveal is produced by the nation’s first investigative journalism nonprofit, The Center for Investigative Reporting, and PRX. From unearthing exploitative working conditions to exposing the nation’s racial disparities, there’s always more to the story. Learn more at revealnews.org/learn.
Österreich