Throughline
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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...
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378 epizód
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...
California's 'Bum Blockade'
The story of the Los Angeles police chief who, faced with one of the largest internal migrations in American history, tried to close California's bord...
Motherhood
Baby bonuses, childless cat ladies: the rhetoric around motherhood is politically charged right now. And the fantasy of an ideal mother remains powerf...
The Deadly Story of the U.S. Civil Service
When James Garfield won the Presidency in 1880, Charles Guiteau got ready to accept his new government job. No one had actually offered him a job – bu...
The Alien Enemies Act
In March 2025, President Trump issued an executive order invoking a centuries-old law: the Alien Enemies Act. The Act allows a president to detain or...
When Things Fall Apart
Climate disaster, political unrest, random violence: Western society can often feel like what the filmmaker Werner Herzog calls "a thin layer of ice o...
Get Rich Quick: The American Lottery
Want to get rich quick? You're not alone. Right now, Americans spend over $100 billion, yes billion, every year on lottery tickets. Today on the show,...
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...
Sesame Street
Big Bird, politics, and the ABCs: how a television show made to represent New York City neighborhoods like Harlem and the Bronx became beloved by fami...
Winter is Coming
Dinosaurs, Carl Sagan, and nuclear war. There was a moment in the not-so-distant past when we learned what drove the dinosaurs extinct — and that disc...
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...
Health Insurance in America
Millions of Americans depend on their jobs for health insurance. But that's not the case in many other wealthy countries. How did the U.S. end up with...