Throughline
Episodes
The History of Birthright Citizenship
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wong Kim Ark was born in the U.S. and lived his whole life here. But when he returned from a trip to China in August of 1895, officials wouldn't let h...
The Kingdom Behind Glass
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Who owns stolen art? Today on the show, the bloody journey of a Benin Bronze from West Africa to the halls of one of England's most elite universities...
We The People: Cruel and Unusual Punishment
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Eighth Amendment. What is cruel and unusual punishment? Who gets to define and decide its boundaries? And how did the Constitution's authors imagi...
Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Whether it's pesticides in your cereal or the door plug flying off your airplane, consumers today have plenty of reasons to feel like corporations mig...
History of the Self: Dreams
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our dreams can haunt us. But what are we to make of them? From omens and art to modern science, we tell the story of dreams and the surprising role th...
History of the Self: Aging
02 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Defeating old age? In 1899, Elie Metchnikoff woke up in Paris to learn he had done just that. At least, that's what the newspaper headlines said. Befo...
History of the Self: Love
26 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How did love – this thing that's supposed to be beautiful, magical, transformative – turn into a neverending slog? We went searching for answers, ...
Embedded: The Black Gate
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the Xinjiang region of western China, the government has rounded up and detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups. M...
History of the Self: Smell and Memory
19 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"History" can seem big and imposing. But it's always intensely personal – it's all of our individual experiences that add up to historical events. O...
Going to the Source of L.A.'s Water
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Throughline associate producer Anya Steinberg talks to supervising senior editor Julie Caine about her reporting trip to Owens Valley in northeastern ...
When Christmas Went Viral
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Christmas wasn't always a national shopping spree — or even a day off work. But in 19th-century London, it went viral. When Charles Dickens publishe...
Seeking Asylum in the U.S.
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. has long professed to be a country where people can seek refuge. That's the promise etched into the base of the Statue of Liberty. But it's n...
The Lord Of Misrule (Throwback)
28 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
By the time his book went to press in London, on November 18, 1633, Thomas Morton had been exiled from the Puritan colonies in Massachusetts. His crim...
The Mother of Thanksgiving
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Thanksgiving story most of us hear is about friendship and unity. And that's what Sarah Josepha Hale had on her mind when she sat down to write a ...
Behind the Scenes of Throughline
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today on the show, we're taking you behind the scenes. We'll tell you how Throughline was born, some of what goes into making our episodes, and a litt...
The Electoral College (Throwback)
07 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is it, why do we have it, and why hasn't it changed? Born from a rushed, fraught, imperfect process, the origins and evolution of the Electoral C...
A History of Settlements
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The question of settlements has loomed over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, and has only intensified in the past year. According to a UN...
The Swing State Power Brokers
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today on the show, two stories of building power in swing states: from the top down, and the bottom up.First, how a future Supreme Court justice helpe...
How We Vote (Throwback)
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Drunken brawls, coercion, and lace curtains: believe it or not, how regular people vote was not something the Founding Fathers thought much about. Ame...
A History of Christian Nationalism
10 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
References to God and Christianity are sprinkled throughout American life. Our money has "In God We Trust" printed on it. Most presidents have chosen ...
The Battle For Jerusalem
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, the city of Jerusalem is seen as so important that people are willing to kill and die to control it. And that struggle goes back centuries. Nea...
A History of Hezbollah (Throwback)
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hezbollah is a Lebanese paramilitary organization and political party that's directly supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the wake of the Oc...
When Things Fall Apart (Throwback)
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Climate change, political unrest, random violence - Western society can often feel like what the filmmaker Werner Herzog calls, "a thin layer of ice o...
The Conspiracy Files
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
9/11 was an inside job. Aliens have already made contact. COVID-19 was created in a lab.Maybe you rolled your eyes at some point while reading that li...
How U.S. Unions Took Flight (Throwback)
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Airline workers — pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, baggage handlers, and more — represent a huge cross-section of the country. And for decade...
Water in the West
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to do the greatest good for the greatest number? When the Los Angeles Aqueduct opened in 1913, it rerouted the Owens River from its ...
We The People: Canary in the Coal Mine
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Third Amendment. Maybe you've heard it as part of a punchline. It's the one about quartering troops — two words you probably haven't heard side ...
We The People: Equal Protection
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Fourteenth Amendment. Of all the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the 14th is a big one. It's shaped all of our lives, whether we realize it o...
We The People: Legal Representation
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Sixth Amendment. Most of us take it for granted that if we're ever in court and we can't afford a lawyer, the court will provide one for us. And i...
Tested: Questions of a Physical Nature
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1966, the governing body of the Olympic track and field event started mandatory examinations of all women athletes. These inspections would come to...
We the People: Gun Rights
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Second Amendment. In April 1938, an Oklahoma bank robber was arrested for carrying an unregistered sawed-off shotgun across state lines. The robbe...
We The People: Free Speech
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The First Amendment. Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us. What were the Founding Fathers ...
The Creeping Coup
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sudan has been at the center of a deadly and brutal war for over a year. It's the site of the world's largest hunger crisis, and the world's largest d...
The Roots of Poverty in America
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet over 10 percent of people – nearly 40 million – live in poverty. It's somet...
Road to Rickwood: The Holy Grail of Baseball
04 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Birmingham, Alabama was one of the fiercest battlegrounds of the Civil Rights Movement. And in order to understand the struggle, you don't have to loo...
Pop Music's First Black Stars
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, the U.S. popular music industry is worth billions of dollars. And some of its deepest roots are in blackface minstrelsy and other racist genres...
The Lavender Scare (Throwback)
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One day in late April 1958, a young economist named Madeleine Tress was approached by two men in suits at her office at the U.S. Department of Commerc...
A History of Zionism
13 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since October 7th, the term Zionism has been everywhere in the news. It's been used to support Israel in what it calls its war against Hamas: a refrai...
The Whiteness Myth (Throwback)
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1923, an Indian American man named Bhagat Singh Thind told the U.S. Supreme Court that he was white, and therefore eligible to become a naturalized...
The Rules of War
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
International courts investigating alleged war crimes have made headlines often in recent months. An arrest warrant has been issued for Russian Presid...
Mythos and Melodrama in the Philippines (Throwback)
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the "Epic of Marcos." In this tale of a family that's larger than life, Ferdinand Marcos, the former dictator of the Philippines, is at the...
The Mandela Effect
16 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For nearly thirty years, the South African government held a man it initially labeled prisoner number 46664, the anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandel...
The Labor Of Love (Throwback)
09 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There's a powerful fantasy in American society: the fantasy of the ideal mother. This mother is devoted to her family above all else. She raises the k...
We the People: Search and Seizure
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Fourth Amendment is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures." But — what's unreasonable? That question...
The Ghost in Your Phone (Throwback)
25 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's hot. A mother works outside, a baby strapped to her back. The two of them breathe in toxic dust, day after day. And they're just two of thousands...
Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader
18 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Whether it's pesticides in your cereal or the door plug flying off your airplane, consumers today have plenty of reasons to feel like corporations mig...
The 14th Amendment
11 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Of all the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the 14th is a big one. It's shaped all of our lives, whether we realize it or not: Roe v. Wade, Brown ...
The Land of the Fee (Throwback)
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tipping is a norm in the United States—and it's always been controversial. The practice took off after the Civil War, as employers sought cheap labo...
A History of Hezbollah
28 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hezbollah is a Lebanese paramilitary organization and political party that's directly supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the wake of the Oc...
The Great Textbook War
21 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is school for? Over a hundred years ago, a man named Harold Rugg published a series of textbooks that encouraged students to confront the thornie...
Radiolab: Worst. Year. Ever
19 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What was the worst year to be alive on planet Earth? We make the case for 536 AD, which set off a cascade of catastrophes that is almost too horrible ...
A Symphony of Resistance (Throwback)
14 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2011, the world was shaken by the Arab Spring, a wave of "pro-democracy" protests that spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The effe...
The Rise of the Right Wing in Israel
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For most of its early history, Israel was dominated by left-leaning, secular politicians. But today, the right is in power. Its politicians represent ...
The Right to An Attorney
29 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us take it for granted that if we're ever in court and we can't afford a lawyer, the court will provide one for us. And in fact, the right to ...
Dance Yourself Free (Throwback)
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Beyonce's Renaissance brought house music back to mainstream audiences. But even when it wasn't gracing the Grammys, house never went away. Born from ...
Love, Throughline
15 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We asked you to call us with your stories of looking for love in the 21st century — and man, did you come through. We heard the whole range of human...
The Scent of History
08 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What if we told you that the key to time travel has been right in front of our eyes this whole time? Well, it has: it's in our noses. Today on the sho...
James Baldwin's Shadow (Throwback)
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
James Baldwin believed that America has been lying to itself since its founding. An insightful commentator on Black identity, American democracy, and ...
Bonus: The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In October of 1983, Grenada's Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was assassinated in a coup, along with seven of his cabinet members and supporters. Six da...
The Man Who Cured Aging
25 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1899, Elie Metchnikoff woke up in Paris to learn that he had defeated old age. At least, that's what the newspaper headlines said. Before long he w...
The Right to Bear Arms
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In April 1938, an Oklahoma bank robber was arrested for carrying an unregistered sawed-off shotgun across state lines. The robber, Jack Miller, put fo...
When Things Fall Apart (Throwback)
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Climate change, political unrest, random violence: modern society can often feel like what the filmmaker Werner Herzog calls "a thin layer of ice on t...
The Nostalgia Bone (2021)
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
They say "everything old becomes new again." Today, that's baggy jeans, shag haircuts, 90s music, TV sitcoms – the latest version of finding comfort...
Editing Reality (2023)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We live in divided times, when the answer to the question 'what is reality?' depends on who you ask. Almost all the information we take in is to some ...
Apology: The Way Back (2023)
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our society is saturated in apologies. They're scripted, they're public, and they often feel less than sincere. Political, corporate, celebrity apolog...
Dare to Dissent
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes, the most dangerous and powerful thing a person can do is to stand up not against their enemies, but against their friends. As the United St...
The Lord Of Misrule
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On November 18, 1633, a book went to press in London. Its author, Thomas Morton, had been exiled from the Puritan colonies in Massachusetts for the cr...
A.D.A. Now! (2020)
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Americans with Disabilities Act is considered the most important civil rights law since the 1960s. Through first-person stories, we look back at t...
How U.S. Unions Took Flight
23 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hot Labor Summer has continued into fall as workers in industries from retail and carmaking to healthcare and Hollywood have organized and gone on str...
A History of Hamas
16 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On October 7th, the organization Hamas, which is also the ruling government of Gaza, perpetrated an attack just across the border in Israel. The Israe...
Grenada: Nobody's Backyard (2021)
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A Marxist revolution, a Cold War proxy battle, and a dream of a Black utopia. In 1983, Ronald Reagan ordered the U.S. military to invade the island of...
The Supreme Court's Shadow Docket
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Roe. Brown. Obergefell. Dobbs. These Supreme Court decisions are the ones that make headlines, and eventually history books. But today, the vast major...
The Three Faces of Ataturk
26 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"Authority, without any condition and reservation, belongs to the nation." A military commander named Mustafa Kemal uttered these words in 1923, on th...
The Dance of the Dead (2021)
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Long before it was a sugary moviefest, the Halloween we know was called Samhain. The Celts of ancient Ireland believed Samhain was a night when the ba...
The Contradictions of Abraham Lincoln
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1855, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to his best friend, Joshua Speed. Speed was from a wealthy, slave-owning Kentucky family; Lincoln believed sla...
Two Miles Down The Road
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Deborah and Ken Ferruccio saw the toxic chemical spill while they were driving home late one summer night in 1978: a big smelly swath of brown oil on ...
Tenochtitlán: A Retelling of the Conquest (2021)
28 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In a sense, 1521 is Mexico's 1619. A foundational moment that for centuries has been shaped by just one perspective: a European one. The story of how ...
David v Goliath
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the year 1258, more than 100,000 soldiers amassed outside the great Islamic city of Baghdad. They were the Mongol Army, led by the grandson of the ...
A Tale of Two Tribal Nations
14 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The word "reservation" implies "reserved" – as in, this land is reserved for Native Americans. But most reservation land actually isn't owned by tri...
Silicon Island (2022)
07 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In a world where computer chips run everything from laptops to cars to the Nintendo Switch, Taiwan is the undisputed leader. It's one of the most powe...
How Korean Culture Went Global (2022)
31 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From BTS to Squid Game to high-end beauty standards, South Korea reigns as a global exporter of pop culture and entertainment. Just 70 years ago, it w...
By Accident of Birth (2022)
24 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In August of 1895, a ship called the SS Coptic approached the coast of Northern California. On that boat was a passenger from San Francisco, a young m...
The Characters That Built China (2022)
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today, China is a global superpower. But less than two hundred years ago, the nation was in a state of decline. After what became known as the 'centur...
The Lavender Scare
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One day in late April 1958, a young economist named Madeleine Tress was approached by two men in suits at her office at the U.S. Department of Commerc...
Getting to Sesame Street (2022)
03 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
American schools have always been more than where we go to learn the ABCs: They're places where socialization happens and cultural norms are developed...
The Hidden War
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How does a country go from its leader winning the Nobel Peace Prize to all-out war in just one year? That's the question surrounding Ethiopia, which h...
All Wars Are Fought Twice (2022)
20 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. Thi...
No Bad Ideas?
13 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Humans have always created. But historian Samuel W. Franklin argues that "creativity" didn't become a social value until the Cold War. Today, we're at...
The Legacy of Henry Kissinger
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Depending on where you stand, Henry Kissinger is either a foreign policy mastermind or a war criminal. Some see him as a brilliant strategist who made...
After Roe: A New Battlefield (2022)
29 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade transformed the landscape of abortion rights overnight. For the doctors, lawyers, feminists, and others wh...
The Labor Of Love
22 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There's a powerful fantasy in American society: the fantasy of the ideal mother. This mother is devoted to her family above all else. She raises the k...
Affirmative Action
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This conversation was recorded ahead of the Supreme Court's expected decision on affirmative action. As of publishing, no decision has been issued.The...
Before Roe: The Physicians' Crusade (2022)
08 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a fairly common practice: a private decision made by ...
The Ghost in Your Phone
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's hot. A mother works outside, a baby strapped to her back. The two of them breathe in toxic dust, day after day. And they're just two of thousands...
The Freedom of Speech
25 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us. What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they cr...
History Is Over (2021)
18 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As the end of the 20th century approached, Radiohead took to the recording studio to capture the sound of a society that felt like it was fraying at t...
Mythos and Melodrama in the Philippines
11 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Corruption. Wealth. Authoritarianism. Torture. These are the words many people associate with Ferdinand Marcos, the former dictator of the Philippines...
What's Your Worth?
04 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The credit score: even if you don't think much about it, that three-digit number can change your life. A high score can mean the keys to a new apartme...
Cinco de Mayo and the Rise of Modern Mexico (2022)
27 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Does history have a border? That is the question at the heart of Cinco de Mayo, May 5th, a holiday that symbolizes Mexico's fight for autonomy, even a...
The Way Back
20 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our society is saturated in apologies. They're scripted, they're public, and they often feel less than sincere. Political, corporate, celebrity apolog...