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?...
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 comme...
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 s...
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 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 a...
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 filmm...
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...
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....
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 th...
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 en...
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 fro...
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 1960...
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 healt...
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 ...
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...
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 e...
The Three Faces of Ataturk
26 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"Authority, without any condition and reservation, belongs to the nation." A military commander name...
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 ancien...
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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...
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 i...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 sui...
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 soci...
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?...
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 Pu...
No Bad Ideas?
13 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Humans have always created. But historian Samuel W. Franklin argues that "creativity" didn't become ...
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 crimina...
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. ...
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 devo...
Affirmative Action
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This conversation was recorded ahead of the Supreme Court's expected decision on affirmative action....
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 f...
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...
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. Wh...
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 sou...
Mythos and Melodrama in the Philippines
11 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Corruption. Wealth. Authoritarianism. Torture. These are the words many people associate with Ferdin...
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 lif...
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 t...
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 th...
Past is Prologue: Talking Taxes
13 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin Franklin said the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Sifting through receipts, d...
Student Loans: The Fund-Eating Dragon (2022)
06 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At the start of the 20th century, only the most privileged could afford to go to college. Today, mil...
Throughline Presents: Louder Than A Riot
04 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Louder Than A Riot breaks down how hip-hop history is told. Who gets to be remembered and who gets l...
The Mystery of Inflation (2022)
30 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rising interest rates. Layoffs. A shrinking dollar. Over the past year, the US economy has been sque...
Everyone Everywhere All At Once
23 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This year's Oscars were one of the most diverse in history, in all kinds of ways. Everything Everywh...
Meltdown (2020)
16 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when an accident puts the public at risk? In the early hours of March 28, 1979, a syste...
A More Perfect Human
09 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The dream of AI — artificial intelligence — has been around for centuries: the idea of an intell...
Dance Yourself Free
02 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since Beyonce's Renaissance dropped last summer, house music has found its way back to mainstre...
Of Rats and Men (2022)
23 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rats. Love 'em or hate 'em, (though you probably hate 'em), they're part of our world. And they've b...
Throughline Presents: White Lies
16 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It all started with a photograph. A photograph from 1991 of a prison takeover in rural Alabama. A ph...
The Whiteness Myth
09 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1923, an Indian American man named Bhagat Singh Thind argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that h...
The Real Black Panthers (2021)
02 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said the Black Panther Party "without question, represents the...
When Things Fall Apart
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Climate change, political unrest, random violence - Western society can often feel like what the fil...
Extremist Futures
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's 2074 and a suicide bomber has killed the President of the United States. Months later Marines o...
Do Not Pass Go (2022)
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There's more to Monopoly than you might think. It's one of the best-selling board games in history —...
Nancy Pelosi (2019)
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nancy Pelosi is the highest-ranking woman in American politics. She made her first run for public of...
The Monster of We (2021)
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Are most modern problems caused by selfishness or a lack of it? Ayn Rand, a Russian American philoso...
The New Gilded Age (2022)
29 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Philanthropic foundations are a fundamental part of our society: they support media, the arts, educa...
God Wants You To Be Rich (2021)
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the New Testament, Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for...
Road to Partition
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when a nation splits apart? It's a question many of us are asking ourselves today. It h...
400 Years of Sweetness
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1970s, a savvy CEO named Dwayne Andreas hit on an idea: take surplus corn from America's hear...
The Nostalgia Bone (2021)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The global pandemic spawned a different type of epidemic, one of an entirely different nature: a nos...
La Última Copa: El sueño del pibe
26 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ésta semana te presentamos un episodio muy especial de nuestros amigos en NPR y Futuro Media — su...
The Last Cup: The Kid's Dream
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're bringing you something special from our friends at NPR and Futuro Media: the first e...
Qatar's World Cup
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Football, aka soccer, is life. At least, it is for many people across the globe. There are few thing...
Dreams, Creatures, and Visions
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are in the season of chaos. It can feel like everything is happening at once: You might be sprint...
The Most Sacred Right (2020)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Born into slavery in the early 1800s, Frederick Douglass would live to see the Civil War, Emancipati...
The State of Disunion
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Is the U.S. on the brink of civil war? It's a question that has been in the air for a while now, as ...
The Woman Question
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What's happening in Iran right now is unprecedented. But the Iranian people's struggle for gender eq...
The Dance of the Dead (2021)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Halloween — the night of ghost stories and trick-or-treating — has religious origins that span o...
Silicon Island
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In a world where computer chips run everything from laptops to cars to the Nintendo Switch, Taiwan i...
Editing Reality
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We live in divided times, when the answer to the question 'what is reality?' depends on who you ask....
Five Fingers Crush the Land (2021)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over one million Uyghur people have been detained in camps in China, according to estimates, subject...
Getting to Sesame Street
15 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In American history, schools have not just been places to learn the ABCs – they're places where so...
How Korean Culture Went Global
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From BTS to Squid Game to high-end beauty standards, South Korea reigns as a global exporter of pop ...
American Socialist (2020)
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It's been over a century since a self-described socialist was a viable candidate for president of th...
Drone Wars (2021)
25 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Unseen, they stalk their targets from thousands of feet in the air. Operators are piloting them from...
Afghanistan: The Rise of the Taliban (2021)
18 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How did a small group of Islamic students go from local vigilantes to one of the most infamous and e...
Afghanistan: The Center of the World (2021)
11 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Afghanistan has, for centuries, been at the center of the world. Long before the U.S. invasion — b...
The Mystery of Inflation
04 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gas. Meat. Flights. Houses. The price of things have gone up by as much as nine percent since last y...
Nikole Hannah-Jones and the Country We Have (2021)
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Is history always political? Who gets to decide? What happens when you challenge common narratives? ...
Student Loans: The Fund-Eating Dragon
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
At the start of the 20th century, only the most privileged could afford to go to college. Today, mil...
The Long Hot Summer (2020)
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Things in the U.S. feel tense right now. Two years after a police officer killed George Floyd outsid...
Throughline Presents: School Colors
07 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
School District 28 is located in one of the most racially and ethnically diverse places in the U.S.:...
Do Not Pass Go
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There's more to Monopoly than you might think. It's one of the best-selling board games in history —...
The Evangelical Vote (2019)
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, the door opened on one of those rare opportunit...
After Roe: A New Battlefield
16 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade transformed the landscape of abortion rights overnight. ...
By Accident of Birth
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In August of 1895, a ship called the SS Coptic approached the coast of Northern California. On that ...
The Modern White Power Movement (2020)
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The recent shooting in Buffalo, New York, which authorities are investigating as a hate crime, has y...
The Characters That Built China
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today, China is a global superpower. But less than two hundred years ago, the nation was in a state ...
Before Roe: The Physicians' Crusade
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a f...
Bonus: The Forgotten Mothers of Civil Rights History
17 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
MLK Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin are household names, but what about their mothers? This hour, a...
The Shadows of the Constitution (2020)
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Constitution is like America's secular Bible, our sacred founding document. As the Supreme Court...
Cinco de Mayo and the Rise of Modern Mexico
05 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Does history have a border? That is the question at the heart of Cinco de Mayo, May 5th, a holiday t...
The New Gilded Age
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Philanthropic foundations are a fundamental part of our society: they support media, the arts, educa...
Force of Nature (2021)
21 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Rivers on fire, acid rain falling from the sky, species going extinct, oil spills, polluted air, and...