Reveal

More To The Story: Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1980s and ’90s, a daughter and granddaughter of social justice activists, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein fell in love with math and the physical sciences and developed a profound curiosity about the cosmos (though the smoggy night sky of her childhood blocked her view of the stars). She soon developed a detailed plan for her life that led to a career writing and teaching about physics and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Today, Prescod-Weinstein’s work stands out for the ways she weaves her identity as queer, Black, and Jewish into her work. In her latest book, The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie, Prescod-Weinstein brings a Black feminist lens to cosmology, quantum physics, poetry, and popular culture to help unlock the mysteries of the physical universe. On this week’s More To The Story, Prescod-Weinstein talks about the need for diversity and inclusivity in the sciences and puts science fiction’s various hypotheses for space travel to the test with host Al Letson.
Read: The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie (Pantheon)
Read: Has America Lived Up to Its Founding Promise? (Reveal)
Watch: How We Could Solve the Dark Matter Mystery (TED Talks)
Read: The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (Bold Type Books)
Learn more: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s personal website

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Elizabeth Freeman was an enslaved person living in Massachusetts when the Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago. The document’s famous words “all men are created equal” did not apply to her, but she thought they should. 
“She is somebody who heard the words of the declaration, knew that they were real in her life, and argued for that to be true,” says Errin Haines, editor-at-large at The 19th. Eventually, Freeman fought to abolish slavery in Massachusetts.
This week on Reveal, as America marks 250 years since its founding, we share stories of people who were denied equality and the battles they fought to attain it. In addition to Freeman’s story, we hear about one of the first Native American communities to encounter white settlers more than 400 years ago and learn why the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment for women continues to this day.

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The second Trump administration has made tearing down parts of the federal government a priority. And some of those efforts have been literal. In October, President Donald Trump ordered the demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for the construction of a massive 90,000-square-foot ballroom. He’s also overseen a now-problematic overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, given the White House a gilded makeover, bulldozed the famed Rose Garden, and even has plans for a so-called “Arc de Trump” that mirrors France’s Arc de Triomphe. So what’s behind all of this? Art historian Erin Thompson—author of Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments—says that whether it’s Romans repurposing idols of leaders who had fallen out of favor or the glorification of Civil War officers in the American South, monuments and public aesthetics aren’t just about the past. They’re about symbolizing power today. 
On this week’s More To The Story, Thompson sits down with host Al Letson to discuss why Trump has decked out the White House in gold (so much gold), the rise and recent fall of Confederate monuments, and whether she thinks the Arc de Trump will ever get built.
This is an update of an episode that first aired in December 2025.

Producers: Josh Sanburn and Artis Curiskis | 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

Listen: Fancy Galleries, Fake Art (Reveal)
Listen: Will the National Parks Survive Trump? (Reveal)
Read: Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments (W. W. Norton & Company)
Read: America’s Tech Right Is Obsessed With Building Giant Statues (Bloomberg)
Read: Nearly 100 Confederate Monuments Were Toppled in 2020. What Happened to Them? (Mother Jones)
Note: If you buy a book using our Bookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

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The World Cup is here. 
For the first time, the tournament is happening in three countries at once: the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It’s bigger than ever, with more teams, more games, more viewers, and more money on the line.
This special World Cup episode of Reveal looks beyond the spectacle of the beautiful game to the organization behind it: FIFA. The global soccer body stands to take in billions from the tournament, while fans face soaring ticket prices and host cities pay massive sums for transportation, security, and infrastructure.  
“Sport is this incredible glue that brings people together,” human rights advocate Mustafa Qadri tells Reveal. But he says that also makes it “highly vulnerable to cynical people coming in and exploiting it for their own gain.”  
This week, reporters Alex Shephard, Tim Murphy of Mother Jones, and Reveal producer Artis Curiskis follow the money, power, and politics behind the World Cup—and ask who gets to be part of the world’s biggest game.

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More To The Story: When Bryan Stevenson moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1980s, the city—one of America’s most prominent slave trading spaces before the Civil War—had dozens of Confederate monuments and memorials, but nothing commemorating slavery. Today, thanks to Stevenson’s efforts, the city looks much different. Over the last decade, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative has transformed parts of Montgomery through markers acknowledging the legacy of slavery while also building the Legacy Sites, a series of museums and memorials that commemorate America’s dark history of lynching, slaveholding, and racial terror across the South. 
On this week’s More To The Story, Stevenson talks about the importance of memorializing America’s full history as the Trump administration attempts to erase slavery and lynching from the nation’s museums and why he sees today’s narrative struggle for racial justice as a generational battle.

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: Trump’s War on History (Mother Jones)
Listen: Mississippi Goddam: The Ballad of Billey Joe (Reveal)
Read: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (One World)
Learn more: Equal Justice Initiative
Learn more: The Legacy Sites

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