Throughline
Episodes
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.: Queens, N.Y. But the neighborhood served by this ...
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 — despite huge economic instability, sales actual...
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 opportunities to tip the balance of the highest court in the...
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. For the doctors, lawyers, feminists, and others wh...
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 boat was a passenger from San Francisco, a young m...
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 yet again highlighted the threat posed by domestic ...
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 of decline. After what became known as the 'centur...
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 fairly common practice: a private decision made by ...
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, author Anna Malaika Tubbs explores how these three ...
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 debates the future of Roe v. Wade, many of us are...
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 that symbolizes Mexico's fight for autonomy, even a...
The New Gilded Age
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Philanthropic foundations are a fundamental part of our society: they support media, the arts, education, medical research, and more. NPR, and even th...
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 undrinkable water: For so long, we didn't think o...
The Everlasting Problem (2020)
14 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Health insurance for millions of Americans is dependent on their jobs. But it's not like that everywhere. So how did the U.S. end up with such a fragi...
Capitalism: What Makes Us Free? (2021)
07 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What's the role of government in society? What do we mean when we talk about individual responsibility? What makes us free? 'Neoliberalism' might feel...
The Land of the Fee (2021)
31 Mar 2022
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...
All Wars Are Fought Twice
24 Mar 2022
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...
Our Own People (2021)
17 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A Japanese American activist whose early political awakenings came while incarcerated in the concentration camps of World War II America, Kochiyama de...
Ukraine's Dangerous Independence
10 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Months before Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, he published an essay on the Kremlin website called "On The Historica...
Of Rats and Men
03 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Rats. Love 'em or hate 'em, (though you probably hate 'em), they're part of our world. And during the pandemic, they've been out in full force: fewer ...
There Are No Utopias
24 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It may seem bleak, but Robin D.G Kelley's view of the world says there is no promise of liberation, only struggle. Kelley has spent his career bringin...
Marcus Garvey: Pan-Africanist (2021)
17 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Black people deserve nothing less than everything: This was Marcus Garvey's simple, uncompromising message. His speeches on Pan-Africanism — the vis...
Pirates of the Senate
10 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The fight over the filibuster brings up some deeper questions that we as a country are facing. How do we make space for disagreement without ending up...
A Story Of Us?
03 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We've been seeing a lot of debate recently about how history should be taught. For example, some believe that the Civil War was about state rights whi...
Russia's Longest Leader: Vladimir Putin (2019)
27 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As tensions between Ukraine and Russia escalate, we decided to take a look at the man who has been running Russia for two decades: Vladimir Putin. How...
Throughline Sleeps
25 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Life can be tough. Every day brings new challenges. And in order to get through the waking hours we need rest. Good quality sleep. In this bonus episo...
The Way We Dream
20 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our dreams can haunt us: literally. Recurring dreams about failing tests or running late are a common occurrence, but what are we to make of them? And...
Bayard Rustin: The Man Behind the March on Washington (2021)
13 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Bayard Rustin, the man behind the March on Washington, was one of the most consequential architects of the civil rights movement you may never have he...
The Anatomy of Autocracy: Timothy Snyder (2021)
06 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When a mob of pro-Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 they also incited a defining moment in United States history....
The Electrical Grid (2020)
30 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today, electricity in the U.S. is a utility we notice only when it's suddenly unavailable. But over a hundred years ago, electricity in the homes of e...
Bonus: On Our Watch
28 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What happens to police officers who use excessive force, tamper with evidence or sexually harass someone? In California, internal affairs investigatio...
American Socialist (2020)
23 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
American workers are reaching a breaking point. We're seeing a wave of resignations and labor strikes, and a supply chain that's cracking under the pr...
The Monster of We
16 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Are most modern problems caused by selfishness or a lack of it? Ayn Rand, a Russian American philosopher and writer, would say it's the latter — tha...
History Is Over
09 Dec 2021
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...
A Symphony of Resistance (2021)
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Arab Spring erupted eleven years ago when a wave of "pro-democracy" protests spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The effects of th...
Fighting Fires and Family Secrets
25 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Uncontrollable western wildfires and a hidden family history — two puzzles that can only be solved with knowledge buried in the past. Indigenous peo...
Nikole Hannah-Jones and the Country We Have
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Is history always political? Who gets to decide? What happens when you challenge common narratives? In this episode, Throughline's Rund Abdelfatah and...
Aftermath (2020)
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1927, the most destructive river flood in U.S. history inundated seven states, displaced more than half a million people for months, and caused abo...
Bonus: The Deep History of Dune
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Rund and Ramtin speak to sci-fi writer and Princeton historian, Haris Durrani, about why the lore of Dune still proves so relevant and the ways in whi...
Drone Wars
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Unseen, they stalk their targets from thousands of feet in the air. Operators are piloting them from military bases halfway across the world. At any m...
The Dance of the Dead
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Halloween — the night of ghost stories and trick-or-treating — has religious origins that span over two thousand years and over time, the Catholic...
The Stars (2020)
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Astrology has existed for thousands of years and has roots that span the globe. But is it a science or a religion or just a kind of personality test? ...
The Nostalgia Bone
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The global pandemic has spawned a different type of epidemic, one of an entirely different nature: a nostalgia outbreak. Longing for 'simpler times' a...
Tenochtitlan: A Retelling of The Conquest
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In a sense, 1521 is Mexico's 1619. A foundational moment that has for a long time been shaped by just one perspective, a European one. The story of ho...
Bonus: Soul Train
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When Soul Train was first nationally syndicated in October 1971, there was nothing else like it on TV. It was the iconic Black music and dance show, a...
The Shadows of the Constitution (2020)
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Constitution is like America's secular bible, our sacred founding document. In her play, What the Constitution Means to Me, Heidi Schreck goes thr...
Bonus: We're Not Broken
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're featuring an episode from Life Kit that focuses on myths surrounding autism, how to talk about it and how to help your autistic loved ...
The Supreme Court (2020)
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When, why, and how did the Supreme Court get the final say in the law of the land? The question of the Court's role, and whether its decisions should ...
Afghanistan: The Rise of the Taliban
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did a small group of Islamic students go from local vigilantes to one of the most infamous and enigmatic forces in the world? The Taliban is a nam...
Afghanistan: The Center of the World
09 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Afghanistan has, for centuries, been at the center of the world. Long before the U.S. invasion - before the U.S. was even a nation - countless civiliz...
The Aftermath of Collapse: Bronze Age Edition (2021)
02 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What happens after everything falls apart? The end of the Bronze Age was a moment when an entire network of ancient civilizations collapsed, leaving b...
Octavia Butler: Visionary Fiction (2021)
26 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Octavia Butler's alternate realities and 'speculative fiction' reveal striking, and often devastating parallels to the world we live in today. She was...
El Libertador and Venezuela's Rise and Fall (2019)
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Venezuela is facing an economic and humanitarian crisis as extreme poverty and violence have forced many to flee the country in recent years. How did ...
Lives of the Great Depression (2020)
12 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Great Depression was a revolutionary spark for all kinds of things — health insurance, social safety nets, big government — all of which were ...
Stories of How We Cope With Chaos (2021)
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You've been looking at screens for what feels like forever. Now it's time to sit back, close your eyes, and come with us to worlds you've never seen, ...
Grenada: Nobody's Backyard
29 Jul 2021
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...
Olympics: Behind The Five Rings
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Olympics originated in Ancient Greece, and were resurrected in the 1890's after a 1,500 year ban. Since then, the International Olympic Committee ...
Home/Front: Marla's War
20 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What do we owe innocent civilians who are killed or injured in war? This is one of the thorniest ethical questions that any military faces, but it was...
The Most Sacred Right (2020)
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Frederick Douglass dreamed of a country where all people could vote and he did everything in his power to make that dream a reality. In the face of sl...
Bonus: Do The Golden Arches Bend Toward Justice?
12 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're featuring an episode from Code Switch, Do The Golden Arches Bend Toward Justice?. Calls for racial justice are met with a lot of diffe...
Capitalism: God Wants You To Be Rich
08 Jul 2021
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 a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. In the Un...
Capitalism: What Makes Us Free?
01 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What's the role of government in society? What do we mean when we talk about individual responsibility? What makes us free? 'Neoliberalism' might fee...
Bonus: The Vanishing of Harry Pace
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're featuring an episode from Radiolab's latest new series, The Vanishing of Harry Pace. Harry Pace founded the first major Black-owned re...
Capitalism: What Is It?
24 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What do we mean when we talk about capitalism? Our economic system might seem inevitable, but it's a construction project hundreds of years in the mak...
Before Stonewall (2019)
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1969, a gay bar in New York City called The Stonewall Inn was raided by police. It was a common form of harassment in those days but what followed,...
Who is NPR (For)?
10 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Who is the media meant to serve? And why does it matter today, arguably, more than ever? 50 years ago, National Public Radio began as a small, scrappy...
The Supreme Court
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When, why, and how did the Supreme Court get the final say in the law of the land? The question of the Court's role, and whether its decisions should ...
Palestine
28 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The recent violence that engulfed Gaza and Jerusalem began with an issue that's plagued the region for a century now: settlements. In East Jerusalem, ...
A Symphony of Resistance
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Arab Spring erupted ten years ago when a wave of "pro-democracy" protests spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The effects of the u...
Five Fingers Crush The Land
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over one million Uyghur people have been detained in camps in China, according to estimates, subjected to torture, forced labor, religious restriction...
Operation Nemesis
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An estimated 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed by the Ottoman government during World War I, in what came to be known as the Armenian Genoci...
James Baldwin's Shadow
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
James Baldwin believed that America has been lying to itself since its founding. He wrote, spoke, and thought incessantly about the societal issues th...
Force of Nature
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Rivers on fire, acid rain falling from the sky, species going extinct, oil spills, polluted air, and undrinkable water. For so long, we didn't think o...
The Real Black Panthers
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Black Panther Party's battles for social justice and economic equality are the centerpiece of the Oscar-nominated film 'Judas and The Black Messia...
Policing in America
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Black Americans being victimized and killed by the police is an epidemic. As the trial of Derek Chauvin plays out, it's a truth and a trauma many peop...
Our Own People
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Build bridges, not walls." Solidarity was at the heart of Yuri Kochiyama's work. A Japanese-American activist whose early political awakenings came w...
The Land of the Fee
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tipping is a norm in the U.S. But it hasn't always been this way. A legacy of slavery and racism, tipping took off in the post-Civil War era. The case...
Chaos
18 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when teenagers are shipwrecked on a deserted island? Can you find the fingerprint of God in warzones? Why was the concept of zero so revo...
N95
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The N95 respirator has become one of the most coveted items in the world during the pandemic, especially by medical professionals. But how did this se...
Levittown: Where the Good Life Begins
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode from WNYC's La Brega, Alana Casanova-Burgess traces back the story of the boom and bust of the Puerto Rican Levittown. For many Americ...
Bayard Rustin: The Man Behind the March on Washington
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bayard Rustin, the man behind the March on Washington, was one of the most consequential architects of the civil rights movement you may never have he...
Octavia Butler: Visionary Fiction
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Octavia Butler's alternate realities and 'speculative fiction' reveal striking, and often devastating parallels to the world we live in today. She was...
Marcus Garvey: Pan-Africanist
11 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Decades before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey attracted millions with a simple, uncompromising message: Black people deserved...
The Lasting Power Of Whitney Houston's National Anthem
07 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why does Whitney Houston's 1991 Super Bowl national anthem still resonate 30 years later? Listen to this episode from our friends at It's Been A Minut...
What Happened After Civilization Collapsed
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What happens after everything falls apart? The end of the Bronze Age was a moment when an entire network of ancient civilizations collapsed, leaving b...
The Anatomy Of Autocracy: Masha Gessen
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Russian-born journalist Masha Gessen talks to us about how the rule of the people becomes the rule of the one, the role of the media, and what we can ...
The Anatomy of Autocracy: Timothy Snyder
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When a mob of pro-Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, they also incited a defining moment in United States history. Now ...
Impeachment
14 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When Andrew Johnson became president in 1865, the United States was in the midst of one of its most volatile chapters. The country was divided after f...
Outside/In: Everybody Knows Somebody
07 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid-1980's a woman who didn't consider herself a feminist was asked to solve perhaps the biggest problem women face. How she and a small group ...
Outside/In: War of the Worlds
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Sunni-Shia divide is a conflict that most people have heard about - two sects with Sunni Islam being in the majority and Shia Islam the minority. ...
Outside/In: The Dark Side Of The Moon
24 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
50 years ago the world watched as man first landed on the moon, an incredible accomplishment by the engineers and scientists of NASA. But what if some...
Outside/In: Rules of Engagement
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The US and Iran have been in some state of conflict for the last 40 years, since the Iranian revolution. This week, we look at three key moments in th...
Supreme
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When, why, and how did the Supreme Court get the final say in the law of the land? The question of the Court's role, and whether its decisions should ...
The Modern White Power Movement
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It has been nearly twenty years since 9/11 and during that time much of the media coverage and government attention has been directed at the threat of...
The Spotted Owl
26 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The story of how the Endangered Species Act went from unanimous passage under a Republican president to becoming a deeply partisan wedge. The act was ...
The Invention of Race
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The idea that race is a social construct comes from the pioneering work of anthropologist Franz Boas. During a time when race-based science and the eu...
BONUS: Louder Than A Riot
16 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're bringing you something extra, an episode from the NPR Music series, Louder Than A Riot. The series examines the relationship between h...
The Shadows of the Constitution
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Constitution is like America's secular bible, our sacred founding document. In her play, What the Constitution Means to Me, Heidi Schreck goes thr...
Bush v. Gore and Why It Matters in 2020
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the 2000 presidential election, results weren't known in one night, a week, or even a month. This week, we share an episode we loved from It's Been...
The Most Sacred Right
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Frederick Douglass dreamed of a country where all people could vote and he did everything in his power to make that dream a reality. In the face of sl...