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Throughline

Throughline is a time machine. Each episode, we travel beyond the headlines to answer the question,

Episodes

Total: 322

The US and Iran have been in some state of conflict for the last 40 years, since the Iranian revolut

Supreme

2020/12/10

When, why, and how did the Supreme Court get the final say in the law of the land? The question of t

It has been nearly twenty years since 9/11 and during that time much of the media coverage and gover

The Spotted Owl

2020/11/26

The story of how the Endangered Species Act went from unanimous passage under a Republican president

The Invention of Race

2020/11/19

The idea that race is a social construct comes from the pioneering work of anthropologist Franz Boas

BONUS: Louder Than A Riot

2020/11/16

This week we're bringing you something extra, an episode from the NPR Music series, Louder Than A Ri

The Constitution is like America's secular bible, our sacred founding document. In her play, What th

In the 2000 presidential election, results weren't known in one night, a week, or even a month. This

The Most Sacred Right

2020/10/29

Frederick Douglass dreamed of a country where all people could vote and he did everything in his pow

How We Vote

2020/10/22

Drunken brawls, coercion, and lace curtains. Believe it or not, how regular people vote was not some

The Electoral College

2020/10/15

What is it, why do we have it, and why hasn't it changed? Born from a rushed, fraught, imperfect pr

America has never been a country of one person, one vote. And that's by design. Our system was built

Billie Holiday helped shape American popular music with her voice and unique style. But, one song in

The Everlasting Problem

2020/10/1

Health insurance for millions of Americans is dependent on their jobs. But it's not like that everyw

The Evangelical Vote

2020/9/24

With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the president is hoping to fill the seat with a more ideologi

James Baldwin's Fire

2020/9/17

In a moment when America is undertaking an uncomfortable reckoning with its racial inequality and vi

The Postal Service

2020/9/10

The US Postal Service has played a role throughout American history - from the Declaration of Indepe

The United States imprisons more people than any other country in the world, and a disproportionate

The banana is a staple of the American diet and has been for generations. But how did this exotic tr

Today the foundations of philosophy are seen as a straight line from Western antiquity, built on thi