Throughline
Rásarupplýsingar
Throughline
Throughline is a time machine. Each episode, we travel beyond the headlines to answer the question, "How did we get here?" We use sound and stories to bring history to life and put you into the middle of it. From ancient civilizations to forgotten figures, we take you directly to the moments that sh...
Nýlegir þættir
389 þættir
Pride, Prejudice, and Peer Pressure
Rund takes Ramtin on a tour of the enduring world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice... and our two hosts make a bet.
Guests:
The Bitter History of Chocolate
What's better than holiday hot chocolate? If just thinking about it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, well – that’s by design. Chocolate's big histor...
The Mother of Thanksgiving
On today's show, a Thanksgiving story you might never have heard -- not about Pilgrims or Native people, but instead about a woman who, as civil war l...
What Happened to Vladimir Alexandrov?
Rund Abdelfatah and Cristina Kim try to unravel the mystery of a Soviet scientist who was helping to spread the word about nuclear winter theory—until...
Democracy Dies in a Day
How quickly can a government fall? Chile was once one of Latin America's oldest democracies, but that all changed in a matter of hours after a militar...
The Creeping Coup
On the surface, the story of Sudan’s war is about two generals vying for power. But it’s also about a vast web of international interests involving th...
Winter is Coming
Late last month, President Trump announced that the United States would be restarting nuclear weapons tests after a break of over 30 years. We’ve sinc...
Prosecuting Genocide
The word "genocide" can seem like it’s everywhere right now: So it can be easy to forget that, fundamentally, it's a legal term that dates to World Wa...
Throughline Dances
Stuck in traffic? Glued to your desk chair? Folding yet another pile of your kids’ laundry? We GOT you!! Take a break, turn up the volume, and shake i...
The Internet Under the Sea
What powers the global internet? The answer might surprise you: not satellites, but hundreds of thin cables that run along the ocean floor. They’re an...
The Rise of the Right Wing in Israel
Israel and Hamas have agreed to a plan to end fighting in Gaza, just over two years after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023 and Isra...
A History of Hamas
With peace talks once again underway between Israel and Hamas, and hopes again growing for a permanent ceasefire, we’re bringing you our episode on th...
From the Frontlines
Journalism is under unprecedented threat worldwide. At least 220 journalists have been killed in Gaza alone since the October 7th, 2023 Hamas-led atta...
Throughline Sleeps
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 Anti-Vaccine Movement
The alleged link between vaccines and autism is back in the news this week, being regularly speculated on by both President Trump and Health and Human...
The Business of Migrant Detention
The U.S. immigration detention system is spread out across federal facilities, private prisons, state prisons, and county jails. It’s grown under both...
Line. Fence. Wall.
The U.S. - Mexico border, according to a video on the official White House website, is very quiet: nothing but tires crunching on gravel and the wind...
ICE
What is ICE? What was it created to do? And what’s changed in 2025? Today on the show, the history of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and how it t...
A History of Settlements
The Israeli government recently approved a new settlement project in the occupied West Bank that would effectively cut it in half. The plan is illegal...
A Primer On The Federal Reserve's Independence
President Donald Trump has been loudly critical of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for years now. Since January, the President has accused him of...
The Queen of Tupperware
Who ushered housewives into the workforce and plastic storage containers into America’s kitchens? Today on the show, the rise and fall of Brownie Wise...
We the People: Succession of Power
The 25th amendment. A few years before JFK was shot, an idealistic young lawyer set out on a mission to convince people something essential was missin...
We the People: Cruel and Unusual Punishment
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...
We the People: The Right to Remain Silent
The Fifth Amendment. You have the right to remain silent when you're being questioned in police custody, thanks to the Fifth's protection against self...
Embedded: The Network
In the mid-1980s, an OBGYN in Brazil noticed that far fewer pregnant women at his hospital were dying from abortion complications. It wasn't a coincid...
We The People: Canary in the Coal Mine
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...
Congress has voted to eliminate government funding for public media
Act now to ensure public media remains free and accessible to all. Your donation will help this essential American service survive and thrive. Visit d...
Edward Said and the Question of Palestine
Edward Said brought the question of Palestine into the American mainstream. He taught at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, and today, more than...
What Makes Us Free?
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...
Does America Need a Hero?
Captain America: an all-American superhero. Clad in red, white, and blue, he carries only a shield. And he fights only when he must. When it's right.<...
Iran and the U.S., Part Three: Soleimani's Iran
The Iran-Iraq war, 9/11, and the story of Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Qassem Soleimani, from his rise to power, to his assassination, by the U...
Iran and the U.S., Part Two: Rules of Engagement
Military confrontations, early-morning attacks, and digital warfare: the story of Iran and the U.S. from the 1979 Iranian revolution to the fraught mo...
What the Supreme Court Does in the Shadows
The Supreme Court is issuing its final decisions of the term this month. But it's been extraordinarily active since January, in part because the Trump...
Iran and the U.S., Part One: Four Days in August
The U.S. and Iran have had a tense relationship for decades — but when did that begin? This week, we feature our very first episode about an event fro...
Abortion Before Roe
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 First Department of Education
Whose job is it to educate Americans? Congress created the first Department of Education just after the Civil War as a way to help reunify a broken co...
The Woman Behind The New Deal
From Social Security and the minimum wage to exit signs and fire escapes, Frances Perkins transformed how people in the U.S. lived and worked. Today o...
We the People: Search and Seizure
The Fourth Amendment is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures." But — what's unreasonable? That question h...
War Crimes
On today's episode, we travel from the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War, through the rubble of two world wars, to the hallways of the Hague, to see...
The Tax Collector
Gangsters, banksters, and politicians. Today on the show, how the hunt for Al Capone helped turn the IRS into one of the U.S. government's most powerf...