Throughline

By NPR

Society & Culture History

What's Throughline about?

The past is never past. Every headline has a history. Join us every week as we go back in time to understand the present. These are stories you can feel and sounds you can see from the moments that shaped our world.

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How U.S. Unions Took Flight

11.23.2023

Hot Labor Summer has continued into fall as workers in industries from retail and carmaking to healthcare and Hollywood have organized and gone on strike. Public support for the U.S. labor movement is close to the highest it's been in ...

Throughline episodes:

11.23.2023 How U.S. Unions Took Flight Hot Labor Summer has continued into fall as workers in industries from retail and carmaking to healthcare and Hollywood have organized and gone on strike. Public support for the U.S. labor movement is close to the highest it's been in ...
11.16.2023 A History of Hamas On October 7th, the organization Hamas, which is also the ruling government of Gaza, perpetrated an attack just across the border in Israel. The Israeli government says that the attack killed around 1200 people, most of them civilians. And Hamas ...
11.09.2023 Grenada: Nobody's Backyard (2021) 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 Grenada. Forty years later, many Americans don't remember why — or that ...
11.02.2023 The Supreme Court's Shadow Docket Roe. Brown. Obergefell. Dobbs. These Supreme Court decisions are the ones that make headlines, and eventually history books. But today, the vast majority of the Court's work actually happens out of the public eye, on what's become known as the ...
10.26.2023 The Three Faces of Ataturk "Authority, without any condition and reservation, belongs to the nation." A military commander named Mustafa Kemal uttered these words in 1923, on the eve of the founding of the Republic of Turkey. He would later rename himself Ataturk, "Father of ...
10.19.2023 The Dance of the Dead (2021) Long before it was a sugary moviefest, the Halloween we know was called Samhain. The Celts of ancient Ireland believed Samhain was a night when the barrier between worlds was thin, the dead could cross over, and if you didn't ...
10.12.2023 The Contradictions of Abraham Lincoln In 1855, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to his best friend, Joshua Speed. Speed was from a wealthy, slave-owning Kentucky family; Lincoln believed slavery was wrong. You are mistaken about this, Lincoln wrote to Speed. But, differ we must." One ...
10.05.2023 Two Miles Down The Road Deborah and Ken Ferruccio saw the toxic chemical spill while they were driving home late one summer night in 1978: a big smelly swath of brown oil on the side of the road. Reverend Willie T. Ramey saw it too. ...
09.28.2023 Tenochtitlán: A Retelling of the Conquest (2021) In a sense, 1521 is Mexico's 1619. A foundational moment that for centuries has been shaped by just one perspective: a European one. The story of how Hernán Cortés and a few hundred Spaniards conquered the mighty Aztec Empire, in ...
09.21.2023 David v Goliath In the year 1258, more than 100,000 soldiers amassed outside the great Islamic city of Baghdad. They were the Mongol Army, led by the grandson of the fearsome Genghis Khan. Within weeks, they'd left the city – which had stood ...
09.14.2023 A Tale of Two Tribal Nations The word "reservation" implies "reserved" – as in, this land is reserved for Native Americans. But most reservation land actually isn't owned by tribes. Instead it's checkerboarded into private farmland, federal forests, summer camps, even resorts. That's true for the ...
09.07.2023 Silicon Island (2022) In a world where computer chips run everything from laptops to cars to the Nintendo Switch, Taiwan is the undisputed leader. It's one of the most powerful tech centers in the world — so powerful that both China and the ...
08.31.2023 How Korean Culture Went Global (2022) From BTS to Squid Game to high-end beauty standards, South Korea reigns as a global exporter of pop culture and entertainment. Just 70 years ago, it would have seemed impossible. For the next episode in our "Superpower" series, exploring U.S. ...
08.24.2023 By Accident of Birth (2022) 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 man named Wong Kim Ark. He was returning home after visiting his wife ...
08.17.2023 The Characters That Built China (2022) 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 'century of humiliation' at the hands of Western imperialist powers, its very survival ...
08.10.2023 The Lavender Scare One day in late April 1958, a young economist named Madeleine Tress was approached by two men in suits at her office at the U.S. Department of Commerce. They took her to a private room, turned on a tape recorder, ...
08.03.2023 Getting to Sesame Street (2022) American schools have always been more than where we go to learn the ABCs: They're places where socialization happens and cultural norms are developed. And arguments over what those norms are and how they're communicated tend to flare up during ...
07.27.2023 The Hidden War How does a country go from its leader winning the Nobel Peace Prize to all-out war in just one year? That's the question surrounding Ethiopia, which has become embroiled in one of the deadliest wars of the 21st century. The ...
07.20.2023 All Wars Are Fought Twice (2022) "All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. This week on Throughline, we want to pause the news cycle to think about not just how ...
07.13.2023 No Bad Ideas? Humans have always created. But historian Samuel W. Franklin argues that "creativity" didn't become a social value until the Cold War. Today, we're at another inflection point for humanity, technology, and national identity. The meaning of originality is blurring; there ...
07.06.2023 The Legacy of Henry Kissinger Depending on where you stand, Henry Kissinger is either a foreign policy mastermind or a war criminal. Some see him as a brilliant strategist who made tough but necessary decisions to advance American interests in a complex world; others point ...
06.29.2023 After Roe: A New Battlefield (2022) The Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade transformed the landscape of abortion rights overnight. For the doctors, lawyers, feminists, and others who had fought for nationwide legalization, Roe was the end of a long battle. But for the growing ...
06.22.2023 The Labor Of Love There's a powerful fantasy in American society: the fantasy of the ideal mother. This mother is devoted to her family above all else. She raises the kids, volunteers at the school, cleans the house, plans the birthday parties, cares for ...
06.15.2023 Affirmative Action This conversation was recorded ahead of the Supreme Court's expected decision on affirmative action. As of publishing, no decision has been issued. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on affirmative action sometime this month. Most of us understand that ...
06.08.2023 Before Roe: The Physicians' Crusade (2022) Abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a fairly common practice: a private decision made by women, and aided mostly by midwives. But in the mid-1800s, a small group of physicians set out ...
06.01.2023 The Ghost in Your Phone It's hot. A mother works outside, a baby strapped to her back. The two of them breathe in toxic dust, day after day. And they're just two of thousands, cramped so close together it's hard to move, all facing down ...
05.25.2023 The Freedom of Speech Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us. What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they created the First Amendment, and how have the words they wrote in the 18th century been ...
05.18.2023 History Is Over (2021) 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 the edges. Many people had high hopes for the new millennium, but ...
05.11.2023 Mythos and Melodrama in the Philippines Corruption. Wealth. Authoritarianism. Torture. These are the words many people associate with Ferdinand Marcos, the former dictator of the Philippines, and his wife, Imelda. But in 1965, on the day of his presidential inauguration, clad in bright white traditional Filipino ...
05.04.2023 What's Your Worth? The credit score: even if you don't think much about it, that three-digit number can change your life. A high score can mean the keys to a new apartment or a new car, while a low score can keep you ...
04.27.2023 Cinco de Mayo and the Rise of Modern Mexico (2022) 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 as it's come to be associated with sales and cervezas and margaritas in ...
04.20.2023 The Way Back Our society is saturated in apologies. They're scripted, they're public, and they often feel less than sincere. Political, corporate, celebrity apologies – they can all feel performed. It's not even always clear who they're for. So what purpose do these ...
04.13.2023 Past is Prologue: Talking Taxes Benjamin Franklin said the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Sifting through receipts, deciphering confusing codes, and filling out forms is an annual ritual that's about much more than money. The history of the income tax and the ...
04.06.2023 Student Loans: The Fund-Eating Dragon (2022) At the start of the 20th century, only the most privileged could afford to go to college. Today, millions of students pursue higher ed — and owe $1.7 trillion in debt. Would you believe us if we said it started ...
04.04.2023 Throughline Presents: Louder Than A Riot Louder Than A Riot breaks down how hip-hop history is told. Who gets to be remembered and who gets left out? Decades before hip-hop's current renaissance of women rappers, there was MC Sha-Rock. Despite her influence on future generations, her ...
03.30.2023 The Mystery of Inflation (2022) Rising interest rates. Layoffs. A shrinking dollar. Over the past year, the US economy has been squeezed: The same amount of money gets you less stuff. It's inflation: a concept that's easy to feel but hard to understand. Its causes ...
03.23.2023 Everyone Everywhere All At Once This year's Oscars were one of the most diverse in history, in all kinds of ways. Everything Everywhere All At Once swept some of the biggest categories, notching incredible victories for Asian and Asian American actors, directors, and writers. At ...
03.16.2023 Meltdown (2020) What happens when an accident puts the public at risk? In the early hours of March 28, 1979, a system malfunction set off what would become the worst nuclear accident in American history. What ensued punctured the public's belief in ...
03.09.2023 A More Perfect Human The dream of AI — artificial intelligence — has been around for centuries: the idea of an intelligent machine without free will popped up in ancient Taoist scrolls, Buddhist fables, and the tales of medieval European courts. But it wasn't ...
03.02.2023 Dance Yourself Free Ever since Beyonce's Renaissance dropped last summer, house music has found its way back to mainstream audiences, prompting some to ask "Is house back?" But the truth is, it never went away. Born out of the ashes of disco in ...
02.23.2023 Of Rats and Men (2022) Rats. Love 'em or hate 'em, (though you probably hate 'em), they're part of our world. And they've been out in full force: In New York City, health data show rat sightings doubled in the past year. It turns out ...
02.16.2023 Throughline Presents: White Lies It all started with a photograph. A photograph from 1991 of a prison takeover in rural Alabama. A photograph of a group of men on the roof of that prison holding a bedsheet scrawled with a message: "Pray for us." ...
02.09.2023 The Whiteness Myth In 1923, an Indian American man named Bhagat Singh Thind argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that he was a white man and was therefore eligible to become a naturalized citizen. He based his claim on the fact that he ...
02.02.2023 The Real Black Panthers (2021) In 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said the Black Panther Party "without question, represents the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." And with that declaration he used United States federal law enforcement to wage war on ...
01.26.2023 When Things Fall Apart Climate change, political unrest, random violence - Western society can often feel like what the filmmaker Werner Herzog calls, "a thin layer of ice on top of an ocean of chaos and darkness." In the United States, polls indicate that ...
01.19.2023 Extremist Futures It's 2074 and a suicide bomber has killed the President of the United States. Months later Marines open fire on protesters killing dozens. The Second American Civil War has just begun and once again the North and South are pitted ...
01.12.2023 Do Not Pass Go (2022) 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 actually went up during the pandemic — and it's been an iconic part of American life at ...
01.09.2023 Nancy Pelosi (2019) Nancy Pelosi is the highest-ranking woman in American politics. She made her first run for public office at 47 years old and went on to become Speaker of the House twice. How has she had such an enduring career, and ...
01.05.2023 The Monster of We (2021) 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 — that selfishness is not a vice but a virtue — and that capitalism is ...
12.29.2022 The New Gilded Age (2022) Philanthropic foundations are a fundamental part of our society: they support media, the arts, education, medical research, and more. NPR, and even this show, is supported by many personal and family foundations. But it wasn't always that way. In this ...

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Throughline

What's Throughline about?

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Throughline episodes:

How U.S. Unions Took Flight

A History of Hamas

Grenada: Nobody's Backyard (2021)

The Supreme Court's Shadow Docket

The Three Faces of Ataturk

The Dance of the Dead (2021)

The Contradictions of Abraham Lincoln

Two Miles Down The Road

Tenochtitlán: A Retelling of the Conquest (2021)

David v Goliath

A Tale of Two Tribal Nations

Silicon Island (2022)

How Korean Culture Went Global (2022)

By Accident of Birth (2022)

The Characters That Built China (2022)

The Lavender Scare

Getting to Sesame Street (2022)

The Hidden War

All Wars Are Fought Twice (2022)

No Bad Ideas?

The Legacy of Henry Kissinger

After Roe: A New Battlefield (2022)

The Labor Of Love

Affirmative Action

Before Roe: The Physicians' Crusade (2022)

The Ghost in Your Phone

The Freedom of Speech

History Is Over (2021)

Mythos and Melodrama in the Philippines

What's Your Worth?

Cinco de Mayo and the Rise of Modern Mexico (2022)

The Way Back

Past is Prologue: Talking Taxes

Student Loans: The Fund-Eating Dragon (2022)

Throughline Presents: Louder Than A Riot

The Mystery of Inflation (2022)

Everyone Everywhere All At Once

Meltdown (2020)

A More Perfect Human

Dance Yourself Free

Of Rats and Men (2022)

Throughline Presents: White Lies

The Whiteness Myth

The Real Black Panthers (2021)

When Things Fall Apart

Extremist Futures

Do Not Pass Go (2022)

Nancy Pelosi (2019)

The Monster of We (2021)

The New Gilded Age (2022)

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