Deep Cover

"Here it is. The Holy Grail."
John Reznikoff makes his living spotting fakes. So when his close friend, a polished Navy war hero, turned up hundreds of secret documents tying John F. Kennedy to Marilyn Monroe -- a storied affair that had never been confirmed in hard evidence -- John knew he had his work cut out for him. He checked them with the best experts in the field. All of whom said they were real. The papers sold for millions, a Pulitzer winner wrote them into a book, and John thought he’d made the find of his life. Then one day it all came apart.
Jake Halpern’s story about Reznikoff originally aired on This American Life in 2011.
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What happens when you learn your family is not your own?
In 1951, Mary Kaye Miller gave birth to a baby girl. But when she brought the infant home, she suspected something was wrong. 43 years later, she broke the news: her baby had been switched at the hospital. And the girl she'd raised actually belonged to a family living just a few towns away.
Deep Cover host Jake Halpern first reported this story for This American Life in 2008. Ira Glass calls it one of the best episodes they've ever done. In it, both families and their daughters grapple with the fallout of this long held secret.
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For most of her life, Gypsy Rose Blanchard was in a wheelchair. She had a feeding tube, an oxygen tank, and a list of diagnoses long enough to fill a binder.
Then, in 2015, her mother was found stabbed to death in their home, and the world found out Gypsy could walk.
The story became a documentary, a TV series, a household name. Case closed.
But did she fake it all?
In this new series from PRETEND, host Javier Leiva investigates the online world that formed around the case, where no one is a reliable narrator.
This is part one of The Gypsy Rose Obsession. Listen to PRETEND wherever you get podcasts.
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If you liked this past season of Deep Cover, The Family Man, you'll enjoy this episode from another Pushkin podcast, Heavyweight. It's a great companion to our bank robbery story from this season. Heavyweight, hosted by Jonathan Goldstein, creates space for difficult conversations and resolving long-standing regrets and unanswered questions. In this episode: A young man had just turned 14 when he took his father’s shotgun, skipped school, and robbed a bank for $40,000. Now, 33 years later, he wants to apologize to the people he harmed that day.
Find Heavyweight wherever you get your podcasts.
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When Keith Giammanco started robbing banks in 2007, he sought to minimize his legal risk. Keith says he never carried a weapon, and he confessed to the authorities the same day he was arrested. But, ultimately, he faced two prosecutions - federal and state. And he served nearly two decades in prison.
Jake sits down with legal scholar James Forman, Jr. to unpack how this all unfolded, why a lawyer never tries to "manifest success,” and what justice looks like in a case like this.
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