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, pushing back against conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s biblical interpretations, 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 | 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: 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)
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Trump’s New World (Dis)order
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 on America’s friends and allies.For this week’s show, Reveal reporter Nate Halverson and Panamanian journalist Andrea Salcedo investigate how the Trump administration’s threats to reclaim the Panama Canal are fueling protests and destabilizing a longtime ally. Trump has said military force may be necessary to retake control of the canal from China.“China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn't give it to China, we gave it to Panama, and we're taking it back,” Trump said in January.But the administration’s allegations about China’s control over the canal perplex many Panamanians.“We just said wow, how many people can be wrong about the Chinese having a lot of influence over the Panama Canal?” says Jorge Luis Quijano, the canal’s top administrator from 2012 to 2019.The Trump administration’s threats against Panama are also reviving painful memories of the 1989 US invasion that claimed the lives of an estimated 500 Panamanians. For wider context, host Al Letson speaks with Mother Jones reporter David Corn, who wrote about the Panama Canal in his book American Psychosis. Corn talks about how reclaiming the canal has been used as a political cudgel by conservatives in the US, from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. Letson also speaks with Emma Ashford, a foreign policy expert at the Stimson Center, about how Panama fits into the Trump administration’s other moves on the international front.
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Ibram X. Kendi vs. America’s “Antiracism Backlash”
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 attack. His ideas urging people to be actively antiracist were often the target of conservative critics fighting against DEI policies and the teaching of critical race theory. Kendi was also accused of mismanaging an antiracism center at Boston University, which laid off much of its staff before closing last month (BU cleared Kendi of financial mismanagement.) On this week’s More To The Story, Kendi responds to the criticism he faced at BU, argues that the Trump administration’s policies are harming both white and Black Americans, and discusses Malcolm Lives!, his new book for young readers about Malcolm X.Producer: Josh Sanburn with help from Zulema Cobb and Julia Haney | 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: Black in the Sunshine State (Reveal)Read: I’m Racist. You’re Racist. We’re All Racist. Here’s How to Fix It. (Mother Jones)Read: Ibram X. Kendi Introduces Malcolm X to a New Generation (The New York Times)
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The Landlord Gutting America’s Hospitals
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 oxygen supplies, the blood bank, and repairs to the elevators that take patients up to surgery. Former Glenwood nurse Debra Russell testified that there wasn’t a cardiologist available when a man suffered a heart attack or a $5 piece of equipment she needed for a routine procedure. “You would send a nurse to go get it,” Russell said. “And she would come back and say, ‘Oh, Miss Debra, I don’t have any.’ I said, ‘Go to another unit.’...‘We don’t have one.’” Glenwood was run by Steward Health Care, at the time one of the country’s largest for-profit health care operators. But its building was owned by Medical Properties Trust—a real estate company based in Birmingham, Alabama, that charged Glenwood monthly rent.State Rep. Michael Echols, a Republican whose district includes Glenwood, had been flooded with concerns from community members. Echols had begun to wonder whether the high rent to MPT was fueling Glenwood’s financial crisis. He struggled to get real answers. Glenwood is just one of nearly 400 health care facilities owned by MPT and rented out to hospital chains. Nine companies that leased hospitals from MPT have gone bankrupt—including Steward, Glenwood’s former operator. And while dozens of hospitals have been sold, entangled in bankruptcy proceedings, or become depleted shells, MPT’s top brass has earned millions. This week on Reveal, Mother Jones reporter Hannah Levintova and Reveal producer Ashley Cleek dig into MPT—its history, its business model, and how treating hospitals like financial assets leaves them gutted.
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The Real Conspiracy Behind the Texas Floods
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 leaders are failing to address climate disasters while avoiding accountability, why Trump’s domestic policy bill is “class war in legislative form,” and why some Democrats still don’t know how to react to socialist Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary win in New York City.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: Master Plan (The Lever)Listen: 2024 Broke The Democrats. Can They Put Themselves Back Together? (Reveal)Read: How Zohran Mamdani Tied Climate Policy to Voters’ Pocketbook Issues (Mother Jones)
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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.