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More To The Story: As NASA’s Artemis II journeyed into space earlier this month, one of the astronauts took a photo of Earth lit by the moon known as “Hello, World.” It’s the first published photograph of our planet taken by a human since 1972. The Artemis mission has reinvigorated mankind’s awe of our planet. But for Earth to remain a habitable place for humans to flourish, it requires us to take care of it.
On this special Earth Day episode of More To The Story, we’re featuring interviews with three influential environmental leaders: former Vice President and founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project Al Gore; longtime activist Catherine Coleman Flowers; and journalist, author, and activist Bill McKibben. All three acknowledge the challenges of fighting climate change to protect our planet, especially at a time when the Trump administration is rolling back federal environmental protections. But they’re surprisingly hopeful about our capacity to protect the Earth for future generations.

Listen: The Great Arizona Water Grab (Reveal)
Read: Rooftop Solar Is a Miracle. Why Are We Killing It With Red Tape? (Mother Jones)
Read: Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (W.W. Norton & Company)
Read: Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope (Spiegel & Grau)
Learn more: The Climate Reality Project

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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 agencies and advanced surveillance technology companies. Rudolph went on to explain how his firm, First Wap, could provide sophisticated phone-tracking software capable of pinpointing any person in the world. The potential buyer? A private mining company, owned by an individual under sanction, who intended to use it to surveil environmental protesters. “I think we’re the only one who can deliver,” Rudolph said.
What Rudolph did not know: He was talking to an undercover journalist from Lighthouse Reports, an investigative newsroom based in the Netherlands.
The road to that conference room in Prague began with the discovery of a vast archive of data by reporter Gabriel Geiger. The archive contained more than a million tracking operations: efforts to grab real-time locations of thousands of people worldwide. What emerged is one of the most complete pictures to date of the modern surveillance industry. 
This week on Reveal, we join 13 other news outlets to expose the secrets of a global surveillance empire.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in October 2025. 

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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 85 seconds before midnight. The hands have been moved only 27 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 The Story, in an update of an episode that first aired in July 2025, Holz sits down with host Al Letson to talk about the history of the Doomsday Clock, why we’re closer to destruction than ever before, and what we can do to reverse course.
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
Listen: Weapons With Minds of Their Own (Reveal)
Learn more: NUKEMAP
Read: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Read: Why Iran’s Nuclear Program Is So Essential to Its Identity (The Guardian via Mother Jones)

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Alessandro Chesser is a 40-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He’s married with two kids and was the first in his family to attend college. His grandfather immigrated from Sicily and worked as a school janitor so his family could have a better life. 
Skip forward a few generations, and Chesser is noticing the way wealthy investors hide their money to avoid paying taxes. He’s outraged and wants to upend the tax system, which he thinks is unfair to the everyday American worker. In Chesser’s mind, the realistic solution isn’t to reform the tax code, but to make it easier for average Americans to access one of the best-kept secrets of the superrich: trusts.
Trusts have become big business in the US. They are now an industry worth trillions of dollars. But no one knows the exact number, because the trust industry is extraordinarily private. Trusts can last forever (literally), but there is no public registry for them. In fact, they are one of the main reasons why watchdog groups consider America to be the most secretive financial jurisdiction in the world.
This week on Reveal, journalists Sally Herships and Leah McGrath Goodman investigate America’s shadowland of trusts. As the nation’s wealth gap keeps growing—and Americans brace for Tax Day—we uncover what’s at stake as US states race to become the most trust-friendly jurisdictions in the world.

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More To The Story: Earlier this year, parts of Minneapolis resembled a war zone. The Minnesota city had become the violent epicenter of President Donald Trump’s immigration raids as thousands of masked agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol roamed the streets in what was known as Operation Metro Surge. Thousands of immigrants, many of whom had no criminal record, were detained. Children were arrested. High schoolers were pepper-sprayed. And two US citizens—Renée Good and Alex Pretti—were shot and killed by immigration agents. Following weeks of protests, the White House reversed course and ramped down immigration enforcement. But hundreds of agents are still there as state officials like Attorney General Keith Ellison are left to clean up the mess. 
On this week’s More To The Story, Ellison talks with host Al Letson about the economic damage from the Trump administration’s ICE raids and persistent fears within immigrant communities, his congressional confrontation with Sen. Josh Hawley over a Covid-19 fraud scheme, and why he refuses to back down from the what he describes as the “Trump onslaught.”
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Josh Sanburn | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
Listen: How Minneapolis Taught America to Fight Back (Reveal)
Read: Top Trump Official Says FBI Won’t Investigate Killing by ICE Agent (Mother Jones)
Watch: Minnesota and Immigration Enforcement Officials Testify Before Senate Committee (C-SPAN)
Read: Transcript of Feeding Our Future/Keith Ellison Audio Recording

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