Many schools teach reading using an approach that can actually make it harder for kids to learn. They’re taught strategies like “look at the picture” and “think of a word that makes sense.” This episode is a partnership with American Public Media’s Sold a Story podcast.

Jim Briggs
Senior Sound Designer, Engineer and Composer
Jim Briggs III is the senior sound designer, engineer and composer for Reveal. He supervises post-production and composes original music for the public radio show and podcast. He also leads Reveal's efforts in composition for data sonification and live performances.
Prior to joining Reveal in 2014, Briggs mixed and recorded for clients such as WNYC Studios, NPR, the CBC and American Public Media. Credits include “Marketplace,” “Selected Shorts,” “Death, Sex & Money,” “The Longest Shortest Time,” NPR’s “Ask Me Another,” “Radiolab,” “Freakonomics Radio” and “Soundcheck.” He also was the sound re-recording mixer and sound editor for several PBS television documentaries, including “American Experience: Walt Whitman,” the 2012 Tea Party documentary "Town Hall" and “The Supreme Court” miniseries. His music credits include albums by R.E.M., Paul Simon and Kelly Clarkson.
Briggs' work with Reveal has been recognized with an Emmy Award (2016) and two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards (2018, 2019). Previously, he was part of the team that won the Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma for its work on WNYC’s hourlong documentary special “Living 9/11.” He has taught sound, radio and music production at The New School and Eugene Lang College and has a master's degree in media studies from The New School. Briggs is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.
Inside the Global Fight for White Power
White nationalists around the globe are working together to disrupt multicultural societies and Western democracies.
A Miracle Cure for AIDS or Snake Oil?
In the 1990s, a Black doctor said he may have found a cure for AIDS – but federal regulators insisted it didn’t work. What was its true potential? This episode is a partnership with the Serum podcast from WHYY and Local Trance Media.
Locked Up: The Prison Labor That Built Business Empires
Companies across the South profited off the forced labor of people in prison after the Civil War – a racist system known as convict leasing.
Drilling Down on Fossil Fuels and Climate Change
The U.S. has promised to move away from fossil fuels, but the natural gas industry is booming.
A Young Doctor Reflects on COVID
As COVID-19 has now claimed more than 1 million lives in the United States, we follow a rookie doctor who graduated at the height of the pandemic.
The Suspect Detective
A Philadelphia homicide detective on the rise abused his power in bizarre and extreme ways. How did he get away with it for so long?
No Retreat: The Dangers of Stand Your Ground
In the decade since George Zimmerman killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida, stand your ground laws have expanded across the nation. And with them come more homicides.
The Bitter Work Behind Sugar
On a vast plantation in the Dominican Republic, Haitian migrants still use machetes to harvest sugarcane that’s exported to the U.S. The workers are protesting poor working and living conditions.
A Reckoning at Amazon
Who is shipping out all those holiday season packages? As Amazon has made huge profits, their worker injury rates are higher than other companies.