It’s been just over 20 years since the Battle of Fallujah, a bloody campaign in a destructive Iraq War that we now know was based on a lie.

But back then, in the wake of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with troops who believed in serving and defending the country against terrorism.

“Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” said Mike Ergo, a team leader for the US Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. “And it was also, for myself, the most alive I've ever felt.”

This week on Reveal, we’re partnering with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today.

This episode originally aired in January 2025.

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Mike Hixenbaugh first knew things had changed when someone on a four-wheeler started ripping up his lawn after his wife placed a Black Lives Matter sign outside their home on the suburban outskirts of Houston.

Hixenbaugh is an award-winning investigative reporter for NBC News. He’s covered wrongdoing within the child welfare system, safety lapses inside hospitals, and deadly failures in the US Navy. But when his front yard was torn apart in the summer of 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd protests, he saw a story about race and politics collide at his own front door. So like any investigative journalist, he started investigating, and his reporting about the growing divides in his neighborhood soon led him to the public schools.

As more than a dozen states sue the Trump administration over its policies aimed at ending public schools’ diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, More To The Story host Al Letson talks with Hixenbaugh about how America’s public schools have become “a microcosm” for the country’s political and cultural fights—“a way of zooming in deep into one community to try to tell the story of America.”

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

Listen: The Culture War Goes to College (Reveal)

Read: At the Heritage Foundation, the Anti-DEI Crusade Is Part of a Bigger War (Mother Jones)

Read: They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms, by Mike Hixenbaugh

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Listen: Southlake/Grapevine podcasts (NBC News)

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The schools in Steubenville, Ohio, are doing something unusual—in fact, it’s almost unheard of. In a country where nearly 40 percent of fourth graders struggle to read at even a basic level, Steubenville has succeeded in teaching virtually all of its students to read well.

According to data from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, Steubenville has routinely scored in the top 10 percent or better of schools nationwide for third grade reading, sometimes scoring as high as the top 1 percent.

In study after study for decades, researchers have found that districts serving low-income families almost always have lower test scores than districts in more affluent places. Yet Steubenville bucks that trend.

“It was astonishing to me how amazing that elementary school was,” said Karin Chenoweth, who wrote about Steubenville in her book How It’s Being Done: Urgent Lessons From Unexpected Schools.

This week on Reveal, reporter Emily Hanford shares the latest from the hit APM Reports podcast Sold a Story. We’ll learn how Steubenville became a model of reading success—and how a new law in Ohio put it all at risk.

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