On January 3rd, the U.S. military apprehended Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and brought him to the U.S. for trial to face federal drug trafficking and weapons charges. Today, we’re bringing you an episode from our archive: the story of two leaders in Venezuela, separated by nearly two centuries, who shaped the country into what it is today. This episode originally ran in 2019 and has been updated.

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Octavia Butler gave us a new kind of science fiction: not only as one of the first writers to use history to talk about the future, and not only as one of the first Black women to do it, but by sending, along with her warnings, a message of hope, survival, persistence, and repair.

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As a kid, Ramtin fell in love with Frank Herbert's 1965 epic sci-fi novel, Dune. Today, he joins NPR's Books We’ve Loved crew, Andrew Limbong and B.A. Parker, to make the case for why he thinks you'll love it too.

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Christmas wasn't always a national shopping spree — or even a day off work. But when Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 19th-century London, the holiday went viral.


Guests:

Leon Litvack, professor of Victorian Studies at Queen's University in Belfast and editor of the Charles Dickens Letters project.

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, author and historian of Victorian England.
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What if the real story of human history is a story itself? To kick off our winter book club, we talk with bestselling author Tamim Ansary about his book, "The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History Of Human Culture, Conflict And Connection," about why the future of our species might depend on our ability to arrive at a story we all share. This episode originally ran in 2022.

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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:

John Mullan, professor of English Literature at University College London and author of What Matters in Jane Austen

Devoney Looser, professor of English at Arizona State University and author of Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive and Untamed Jane

Lizzie Dunford, director of Jane Austen's House

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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 history sweeps across the globe, and today we’re going on that journey: from the pre–Columbus Americas, to an early 20th century reporter’s hunch about what cocoa production really takes, to a 21st century medical student’s story about his childhood on a farm that produces those holiday treats.

Guests:

Carla Martin, lecturer in African and African American Studies at Harvard University and President of the Board of the Institute for Cacao and Chocolate Research

Catherine Higgs, professor of history at the University of British Columbia in Canada

Shadrack Frimpong, founder of Cocoa360

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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 loomed, pushed for a shared national holiday she thought would keep the United States together. This episode originally ran in 2024.

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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 he disappeared. 

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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 military coup on September 11, 1973. Some supported the coup; many did not. But for the next 17 years, all Chileans lived in the grip of brutal authoritarian rule. Today on the show, the story of a democracy’s collapse and rebirth, told through the eyes of four people who lived through it.

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