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Paper Trail

ProPublica's investigative podcast; each episode follows one investigation and lays out the receipts: when 3M knew PFAS was in blood, how a 25-cent drug became a hundred-billion business

TopicsIdeas
PriorityT2
44:28
Paper Trail 0910

MLB Built Baseball Castles in the Dominican Republic, and Also Grew the Lenders

MLB spends as much as $400 million a year in the Dominican Republic, but there is no draft and teams may sign players privately before they turn 16 — spawning a shadow industry of high-interest loans to players' families, with David Ortiz alleged to be part of it.

9 Points 7 Quotes Sports industryInvestigative reporting
44:24
Paper Trail 0903

3M Knew for Decades, and Let a Scientist Believe She Was Wrong

3M knew in the 1970s that PFOS had entered ordinary people's blood, yet let the young scientist who found it be questioned into giving up. The secret wasn't kept by destroying documents — it was kept by getting the people who knew to silence themselves.

8 Points 8 Quotes Investigative reportingPFAS
41:40
Paper Trail 0820

The Chicago Raid: The Government Said It Caught Terrorists; In Court It Never Said It Once

A counterterror-style raid with Black Hawk helicopters, BORTAC and the FBI ended with zero criminal charges — and the word Tren de Aragua does not appear once in the arrest records.

9 Points 8 Quotes Immigration enforcementInvestigative reporting
45:45
Paper Trail 0806

The Church Used "Forgive and Forget" to Handle Sexual Abuse, and Victims Were Told to Stay Silent

A closed sect in Minnesota wrote "forgive and forget" into its official guidance, letting sexual abuse be handled internally and kept out of the justice system. A prosecutor handed the case to a reporter, and only then did a systemic cover-up spanning three generations come to light.

9 Points 7 Quotes Investigative ReportingReligious Institutions