Explore every episode of the podcast Paper Trail

Reporter David Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer and soon learned that one of his drugs would cost almost $1,000 per pill. He set out to discover why, and uncovered financial records and legal filings that shocked him. The drugmaker’s strategy to raise the price over and over again helps explain why our healthcare system is the most expensive in the world.

Read the original reporting: https://www.propublica.org/article/revlimid-price-cancer-celgene-drugs-fda-multiple-myeloma

Support our journalism by donating at propublica.org/donate.

ProPublica got a tip from a reader named Teressa. Her husband was having a severe mental health crisis, and her health insurance company was denying coverage for his hospital and inpatient treatment. She was fighting back against the denials — and recording every phone call with the company as she did. She brought reporter Duaa Eldeib along for the journey, which ended after Teressa was able to deploy what one source called the industry’s “best-kept secret.”

Reporter: Duaa Eldeib
How to file an external appeal: https://www.propublica.org/article/health-insurance-denial-external-review
Support our journalism by donating at propublica.org/donate.

Local reporters at The Connecticut Mirror heard story after story of drivers having their cars towed and then sold out from underneath them, sometimes in just 15 days. They teamed up with ProPublica to investigate why, how often this was happening and who was profiting from it.

This episode traces the history of the 100-year-old law that made all of it legal and follows the reporters as they try to track down drivers’ cars and confront the bureaucrats allowing a flawed system to take advantage of vulnerable people.

Reporters: Ginny Monk and Dave Altimari
Read More: https://www.propublica.org/series/on-the-hook
Support our journalism by donating at propublica.org/donate.

For years, the Food and Drug Administration told the public that generics are just as safe and effective as brand-name medications. But ProPublica reporters uncovered reports from the FDA’s own inspectors detailing everything from pigeons pooping onto boxes of sterilized equipment to evidence of a factory cheating on quality testing. Even though the FDA knew about these reports, it let some of those troubled factories overseas keep shipping their drugs to the U.S. — some of which might have ended up in your medicine cabinet.

This episode details why and how a secretive group inside the FDA made the decision to keep this information from the public and how you can find out where your own medications are made.

Reporters: Debbie Cenziper and Megan Rose
Read More: https://www.propublica.org/article/fda-drug-loophole-sun-pharma
Look up your own drugs: https://projects.propublica.org/rx-inspector/
Support our journalism by donating at propublica.org/donate.

Investigative journalism can change the world. Host and reporter Jessica Lussenhop tells the story of how she learned that for herself.

Follow this feed for a new investigation on every episode. It might change the way you see the world, too. 

Support our journalism by donating at propublica.org/donate.

A source told reporter Renee Dudley something she found hard to believe: that Microsoft was running tech support for the Department of Defense through China, the country’s biggest cybersecurity adversary. The arrangement was called “digital escorting.” She thought it sounded like a conspiracy theory — until she started looking into it. This is the story of what she found and how her investigation changed government policy.

Read More: www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-digital-escorts-pentagon-defense-department-china-hackers
Support our journalism by donating at propublica.org/donate.

In 2024, Oklahoma legislators passed an unusual law: It would create a pathway to freedom for people who could prove that domestic violence was a substantial contributing factor to their crime — even if that crime was first-degree murder. Members of a “survivor sisterhood” who’d found a connection in their shared histories of abuse hoped that, perhaps, they would all soon be going home. But, as reporter Pamela Colloff discovered, nothing would play out as expected.

Reporter: Pamela Colloff
Read More: https://www.propublica.org/article/oklahoma-survivors-act-domestic-violence
Support our journalism by donating at propublica.org/donate.

This week, we’re presenting a conversation with ProPublica reporters that originally aired on Reveal’s podcast “More to the Story.” When the administration and DOGE cut off funding to USAID, administration officials claimed that aid was still flowing and no one had died as a result. Reporters Brett Murphy and Anna Maria Barry-Jester learned that wasn’t true and traveled to South Sudan and Kenya to find out what really happened.

If you have information on foreign aid, contact Murphy here and Barry-Jester here.
Read the original reporting here:
https://www.propublica.org/article/kenya-trump-usaid-world-food-program-starvation-children-deaths
https://www.propublica.org/article/usaid-cholera-deaths-trump-humanitarian-aid-cuts-south-sudan

Support our journalism by donating at propublica.org/donate.

Host Jessica Lussenhop received an unusual email: A prosecutor had major concerns about a case in Minnesota. A man had pleaded guilty to felony child sexual abuse, but it seemed like the church he belonged to, the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church, might have played a part in keeping the abuse quiet. Lussenhop teamed up with reporter Andy Mannix, and they discovered this case was just a symptom of a much bigger problem in the OALC.

Read the original stories here: https://www.propublica.org/series/forgive-and-forget
The National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached at 800-656-HOPE (4673).
If you have information about the OALC, contact Andy Mannix and Jeremy Kohler.
Support our journalism by donating at propublica.org/donate.