Embedded

Ayanna Williams Gaines is the coach and founder of Buffalo All-Star Extreme, a Black competitive cheerleading and dance team from Buffalo, New York. Williams Gaines started the gym as a space for Black girls to feel safe and to thrive in the predominantly white world of cheer. But on May 14, 2022, a white supremacist came to a predominantly Black neighborhood on the east side of Buffalo and killed ten Black people at a grocery store just a few blocks away from the gym. In the wake of the massacre, feeling like a target, Williams Gaines and her cheer families are faced with the challenge of making sure their cheerleaders feel safe and confident, on and off the stage.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

What happens after a racist mass shooting in your neighborhood? On May 14, 2022, the world changed for residents of Buffalo, New York, when a white man approached the Jefferson Street Tops supermarket and started shooting. He murdered ten and injured three people, almost all Black. That same day, teenagers and children — members of a Black cheer team called BASE — were at their gym around the corner. "Buffalo Extreme" is their story: a 3-part series where NPR hands the mic to the girls, their moms and coaches as they navigate the complicated path to recovery in the year after.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Tom and Graham meet Shihab's brother in Baghdad — but he's wary. They also visit Fallujah, to find the schoolhouse and talk with people who were on the other side of the occupation. Then, finally... back to Camp Pendleton.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The team turns to Pat Tillman's family for help. Duncan Hunter the elder, and the younger, respond to NPR's questions... kind of. A breakthrough in the search for the interpreter has Tom and Graham planning a trip back to where it all began.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Tom and Graham work their way up the chain of command, looking for someone — anyone — who can explain how and why this incident was buried. One general claims he can't recall the incident. Another talks with the team at the Pentagon, then changes his story about Duncan Hunter's involvement.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

As Tom and Graham work to track down the men in the courtyard, one of the wounded Marines has long remained elusive. His former comrades wonder if he's even still alive. Eventually, with help from Carlos, the team finds David. His chilling story reflects the lingering wounds of war.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hoping to get their hands on the official investigation, the NPR team flies to Tucson. But problems begin shortly after arrival. The widow of a man who died in the explosion wants to know why the Marine Corps lied to her. Tom and Graham want to know why the recommended punishments were overturned. The team finally confirms a crucial detail from the original tip.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The wounded are evacuated. The battle subsides. Now the men of Echo 2/1 begin to wonder: What happened? The Marine Corps says "no records exist" but Tom and Graham find testimony before an obscure Congressional subcommittee that says otherwise. The team also finds that promises made — to Congress, to the families of the dead and to wounded Marines — have been broken. And, they hear from one man who knows exactly what happened in the courtyard of that schoolhouse — but they still have to wonder, why was this covered up?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

NPR's Pentagon Correspondent, Tom Bowman, receives a shocking tip from a trusted source: A deadly explosion during the Iraq War was an accident—friendly fire, covered up by the Marine Corps—and the son of a powerful politician may have been involved. He partners with an old pal, Graham Smith, to investigate, and they discover the truth is even worse than the tipster realized. After dozens of interviews, the team patches together the story of the First Battle of Fallujah — the days and hours before the explosion — from the men who were there.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In our final episode of the season, we start researching the names on the secret list of 2,746 Cuban excludables. What we find confirms many of our suspicions about the arbitrariness of how the U.S. government created the list. Our reporting takes us — where else? — to Cuba, to finally track down the men on the roof and hear them tell their own stories. What had they hoped to find in this country and what had they found instead? Finally, our journey takes us to one last interview in a high rise in Vancouver, Canada, where we hear from the man who led the uprising at Talladega, and made the decision to take to the prison's roof to display banners made from bedsheets that read, Pray for Us and Please Media: Justice, Freedom, or Death. Want to hear the first episode of Embedded's next series a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hosted by NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman and Graham Smith of the Investigations unit, Taking Cover isn't just a show about the worst Marine-on-Marine friendly fire incident in modern history. It's a story of betrayal, brotherhood, and what's owed—to families, the wounded, and to the American public—when we send our young to war. Coming soon, after this week's conclusion of White Lies.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Since we began reporting this story, we've been after a list. A secret list. On it are the names of 2,746 people whom the US government deemed excludable, including the men on the roof. The government has kept this list so secret that at one point it went so far as to classify it. None of the Mariel detainees knew if their name was on the list or not. In fact, nobody knew what names were on the list. Until now. In Episode 7, the story of a list that sparked uprisings, separated families, and changed the trajectory of U.S. immigration policy. And the story of what we learned when we finally got our hands on it. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In Episode 6, we sneak into the graveyard of the Atlanta federal penitentiary with a radical peace activist to learn more about what happened in the prison in late 1984. A peaceful protest by detainees held in the Atlanta pen resulted in a violent crackdown, and one of the detainees, a man named Jose Hernandez-Mesa, was charged in federal court with inciting a riot. We tell the story of his trial — and the surprising verdict that began reshaping public opinion about the Mariel Cubans who were being detained. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

On May 18, 1980, a man named Genaro Soroa-Gonzalez arrived in Key West from the port of Mariel. With no family waiting to sponsor him, he was sent by plane to a resettlement camp at an army base. There he was interviewed by the INS and, a few days later, he boarded another plane, this one bound for the federal prison in Atlanta. But wait - he'd committed no crime, so why was the US government detaining him? And how long could they hold him? In Episode 5, the story of Genaro Soroa-Gonzalez and the beginning of the indefinite detention of Mariel Cubans. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

When President Carter promised to welcome the men and women arriving on the Mariel boatlift with "an open heart and open arms," he had referred to them as refugees. But technically speaking, they weren't refugees. They were classified as entrants, an immigration status with a peculiar legal standing in the United States. While entrants are physically allowed to enter the country, legally they're still at the border, asking to come in. Their presence in the country is known as a legal fiction — specifically, the "entry fiction." So even as Cubans were disembarking boats in droves through the summer of 1980, they were officially still floating off the coast of Key West. And this immigration status followed them to where they went next: an army base in rural Arkansas. In episode 4, the curious case of the militarized border in the middle of the Ozark Mountains. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message

During our reporting, we heard one story over and over again: that Fidel Castro had emptied his prisons to fill the boatlift. It's a story that's been told so often and with such conviction that of course it must be true, right? But what if this was more theater than history? What was happening in 1980 in Miami and throughout the country that made this story so compelling? Why did it feel so true to so many people? In Episode 3, we go to Miami to find out. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Note: Due to a technical error, some listeners did not hear the correct audio for Episode 2. We are re-publishing it with the corrected audio. The story of the men on the roof didn't start with that prison takeover in 1991. It didn't start when they were detained in federal prisons. And it didn't start when the government made a secret list of their names in 1984. Instead, it started in the spring of 1980, with one of the largest refugee crises in American history: the Mariel Boatlift. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It all started with a photograph. A photograph from 1991 of a prison takeover in rural Alabama. A photograph of a group of men on the roof of that prison holding a bedsheet scrawled with a message: "Pray for us." In the first episode of the new season of White Lies, hosts Chip Brantley and Andrew Beck Grace go searching for answers to the questions raised by this photograph. Who were these men? What on earth had made them want to take over that prison? And what became of them after? As they search, they uncover a sprawling story: a mass exodus across the sea, a secret list, and the betrayal at the heart of this country's ideals. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In 1991, a group of men took over a federal prison in rural Alabama. But these men weren't prisoners, they were immigration detainees, all of them from Cuba. And none of them were serving time for a sentence; they were being indefinitely detained. Who were these men? What in the world had brought them from Cuba to a prison in rural Alabama, and what became of them afterward? On the new season of White Lies, hosts Chip Brantley and Andrew Beck Grace set out to find the men who took over the prison and, in the process, unspool a sprawling story of a mass exodus across the sea, back-channel cold war communiques, family separation, and a secret list.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The 2022 World Cup has ended. With his left foot, Messi wrote a more spectacular finale than we could have imagined. In the final installment of The Last Cup, Jasmine Garsd reveals the magic of Argentina's first World Cup victory since 1986. This final episode of our series is mainly in English, with some Spanish. Este último capítulo está disponible en ingles, e incluye comentario en español.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy