Throughline

Tue, 24 Dec 2024

In the Xinjiang region of western China, the government has rounded up and detained hundreds of thou...

Thu, 19 Dec 2024

"History" can seem big and imposing. But it's always intensely personal – it's all of our individu...

Mon, 16 Dec 2024

Throughline associate producer Anya Steinberg talks to supervising senior editor Julie Caine about h...

Thu, 12 Dec 2024

Christmas wasn't always a national shopping spree — or even a day off work. But in 19th-century Lo...

Thu, 05 Dec 2024

The U.S. has long professed to be a country where people can seek refuge. That's the promise etched ...

Thu, 28 Nov 2024

By the time his book went to press in London, on November 18, 1633, Thomas Morton had been exiled fr...

Thu, 21 Nov 2024

The Thanksgiving story most of us hear is about friendship and unity. And that's what Sarah Josepha ...

Thu, 14 Nov 2024

Today on the show, we're taking you behind the scenes. We'll tell you how Throughline was born, some...

Thu, 07 Nov 2024

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

Thu, 31 Oct 2024

The question of settlements has loomed over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, and has on...

Thu, 24 Oct 2024

Today on the show, two stories of building power in swing states: from the top down, and the bottom ...

Thu, 17 Oct 2024

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

Thu, 10 Oct 2024

References to God and Christianity are sprinkled throughout American life. Our money has "In God We ...

Thu, 03 Oct 2024

Today, the city of Jerusalem is seen as so important that people are willing to kill and die to cont...

Thu, 26 Sep 2024

Hezbollah is a Lebanese paramilitary organization and political party that's directly supported by t...

Thu, 19 Sep 2024

Climate change, political unrest, random violence - Western society can often feel like what the fil...

Thu, 12 Sep 2024

9/11 was an inside job. Aliens have already made contact. COVID-19 was created in a lab.Maybe you ro...

Thu, 05 Sep 2024

Airline workers — pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, baggage handlers, and more — represent a...

Thu, 29 Aug 2024

What does it mean to do the greatest good for the greatest number? When the Los Angeles Aqueduct ope...

Thu, 22 Aug 2024

The Third Amendment. Maybe you've heard it as part of a punchline. It's the one about quartering tro...

Thu, 15 Aug 2024

The Fourteenth Amendment. Of all the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the 14th is a big one. It'...

Thu, 08 Aug 2024

The Sixth Amendment. Most of us take it for granted that if we're ever in court and we can't afford ...

Tue, 06 Aug 2024

In 1966, the governing body of the Olympic track and field event started mandatory examinations of a...

Thu, 01 Aug 2024

The Second Amendment. In April 1938, an Oklahoma bank robber was arrested for carrying an unregister...

Thu, 25 Jul 2024

The First Amendment. Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates ...

Thu, 18 Jul 2024

Sudan has been at the center of a deadly and brutal war for over a year. It's the site of the world'...

Thu, 11 Jul 2024

The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet over 10 percent of people –...

Thu, 04 Jul 2024

Birmingham, Alabama was one of the fiercest battlegrounds of the Civil Rights Movement. And in order...

Thu, 27 Jun 2024

Today, the U.S. popular music industry is worth billions of dollars. And some of its deepest roots a...

Thu, 20 Jun 2024

One day in late April 1958, a young economist named Madeleine Tress was approached by two men in sui...

Thu, 13 Jun 2024

Since October 7th, the term Zionism has been everywhere in the news. It's been used to support Israe...

Thu, 06 Jun 2024

In 1923, an Indian American man named Bhagat Singh Thind told the U.S. Supreme Court that he was whi...

Thu, 30 May 2024

International courts investigating alleged war crimes have made headlines often in recent months. An...

Thu, 23 May 2024

Welcome to the "Epic of Marcos." In this tale of a family that's larger than life, Ferdinand Marcos,...

Thu, 16 May 2024

For nearly thirty years, the South African government held a man it initially labeled prisoner numbe...

Thu, 09 May 2024

There's a powerful fantasy in American society: the fantasy of the ideal mother. This mother is devo...

Thu, 02 May 2024

The Fourth Amendment is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits "unreasonable searches and sei...

Thu, 25 Apr 2024

It's hot. A mother works outside, a baby strapped to her back. The two of them breathe in toxic dust...

Thu, 18 Apr 2024

Whether it's pesticides in your cereal or the door plug flying off your airplane, consumers today ha...

Thu, 11 Apr 2024

Of all the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the 14th is a big one. It's shaped all of our lives,...

Thu, 04 Apr 2024

Tipping is a norm in the United States—and it's always been controversial. The practice took off a...

Thu, 28 Mar 2024

Hezbollah is a Lebanese paramilitary organization and political party that's directly supported by t...

Thu, 21 Mar 2024

What is school for? Over a hundred years ago, a man named Harold Rugg published a series of textbook...

Tue, 19 Mar 2024

What was the worst year to be alive on planet Earth? We make the case for 536 AD, which set off a ca...

Thu, 14 Mar 2024

In 2011, the world was shaken by the Arab Spring, a wave of "pro-democracy" protests that spread thr...

Thu, 07 Mar 2024

For most of its early history, Israel was dominated by left-leaning, secular politicians. But today,...

Thu, 29 Feb 2024

Most of us take it for granted that if we're ever in court and we can't afford a lawyer, the court w...

Thu, 22 Feb 2024

Beyonce's Renaissance brought house music back to mainstream audiences. But even when it wasn't grac...

Thu, 15 Feb 2024

We asked you to call us with your stories of looking for love in the 21st century — and man, did y...

Thu, 08 Feb 2024

What if we told you that the key to time travel has been right in front of our eyes this whole time?...

Thu, 01 Feb 2024

James Baldwin believed that America has been lying to itself since its founding. An insightful comme...

Tue, 30 Jan 2024

In October of 1983, Grenada's Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was assassinated in a coup, along with s...

Thu, 25 Jan 2024

In 1899, Elie Metchnikoff woke up in Paris to learn that he had defeated old age. At least, that's w...

Thu, 18 Jan 2024

In April 1938, an Oklahoma bank robber was arrested for carrying an unregistered sawed-off shotgun a...

Thu, 11 Jan 2024

Climate change, political unrest, random violence: modern society can often feel like what the filmm...

Thu, 04 Jan 2024

They say "everything old becomes new again." Today, that's baggy jeans, shag haircuts, 90s music, TV...

Thu, 28 Dec 2023

We live in divided times, when the answer to the question 'what is reality?' depends on who you ask....

Thu, 21 Dec 2023

Our society is saturated in apologies. They're scripted, they're public, and they often feel less th...

Thu, 14 Dec 2023

Sometimes, the most dangerous and powerful thing a person can do is to stand up not against their en...

Thu, 07 Dec 2023

On November 18, 1633, a book went to press in London. Its author, Thomas Morton, had been exiled fro...

Thu, 30 Nov 2023

The Americans with Disabilities Act is considered the most important civil rights law since the 1960...

Thu, 23 Nov 2023

Hot Labor Summer has continued into fall as workers in industries from retail and carmaking to healt...

Thu, 16 Nov 2023

On October 7th, the organization Hamas, which is also the ruling government of Gaza, perpetrated an ...

Thu, 09 Nov 2023

A Marxist revolution, a Cold War proxy battle, and a dream of a Black utopia. In 1983, Ronald Reagan...

Thu, 02 Nov 2023

Roe. Brown. Obergefell. Dobbs. These Supreme Court decisions are the ones that make headlines, and e...

Thu, 26 Oct 2023

"Authority, without any condition and reservation, belongs to the nation." A military commander name...

Thu, 19 Oct 2023

Long before it was a sugary moviefest, the Halloween we know was called Samhain. The Celts of ancien...

Thu, 12 Oct 2023

In 1855, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to his best friend, Joshua Speed. Speed was from a wealthy, ...

Thu, 05 Oct 2023

Deborah and Ken Ferruccio saw the toxic chemical spill while they were driving home late one summer ...

Thu, 28 Sep 2023

In a sense, 1521 is Mexico's 1619. A foundational moment that for centuries has been shaped by just ...

Thu, 21 Sep 2023

In the year 1258, more than 100,000 soldiers amassed outside the great Islamic city of Baghdad. They...

Thu, 14 Sep 2023

The word "reservation" implies "reserved" – as in, this land is reserved for Native Americans. But...

Thu, 07 Sep 2023

In a world where computer chips run everything from laptops to cars to the Nintendo Switch, Taiwan i...

Thu, 31 Aug 2023

From BTS to Squid Game to high-end beauty standards, South Korea reigns as a global exporter of pop ...

Thu, 24 Aug 2023

In August of 1895, a ship called the SS Coptic approached the coast of Northern California. On that ...

Thu, 17 Aug 2023

Today, China is a global superpower. But less than two hundred years ago, the nation was in a state ...

Thu, 10 Aug 2023

One day in late April 1958, a young economist named Madeleine Tress was approached by two men in sui...

Thu, 03 Aug 2023

American schools have always been more than where we go to learn the ABCs: They're places where soci...

Thu, 27 Jul 2023

How does a country go from its leader winning the Nobel Peace Prize to all-out war in just one year?...

Thu, 20 Jul 2023

"All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory," writes Pu...

Thu, 13 Jul 2023

Humans have always created. But historian Samuel W. Franklin argues that "creativity" didn't become ...

Thu, 06 Jul 2023

Depending on where you stand, Henry Kissinger is either a foreign policy mastermind or a war crimina...

Thu, 29 Jun 2023

The Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade transformed the landscape of abortion rights overnight. ...

Thu, 22 Jun 2023

There's a powerful fantasy in American society: the fantasy of the ideal mother. This mother is devo...

Thu, 15 Jun 2023

This conversation was recorded ahead of the Supreme Court's expected decision on affirmative action....

Thu, 08 Jun 2023

Abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a f...

Thu, 01 Jun 2023

It's hot. A mother works outside, a baby strapped to her back. The two of them breathe in toxic dust...

Thu, 25 May 2023

Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us. Wh...

Thu, 18 May 2023

As the end of the 20th century approached, Radiohead took to the recording studio to capture the sou...

Thu, 11 May 2023

Corruption. Wealth. Authoritarianism. Torture. These are the words many people associate with Ferdin...

Thu, 04 May 2023

The credit score: even if you don't think much about it, that three-digit number can change your lif...

Thu, 27 Apr 2023

Does history have a border? That is the question at the heart of Cinco de Mayo, May 5th, a holiday t...

Thu, 20 Apr 2023

Our society is saturated in apologies. They're scripted, they're public, and they often feel less th...

Thu, 13 Apr 2023

Benjamin Franklin said the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Sifting through receipts, d...

Thu, 06 Apr 2023

At the start of the 20th century, only the most privileged could afford to go to college. Today, mil...

Tue, 04 Apr 2023

Louder Than A Riot breaks down how hip-hop history is told. Who gets to be remembered and who gets l...

Thu, 30 Mar 2023

Rising interest rates. Layoffs. A shrinking dollar. Over the past year, the US economy has been sque...

Thu, 23 Mar 2023

This year's Oscars were one of the most diverse in history, in all kinds of ways. Everything Everywh...

Thu, 16 Mar 2023

What happens when an accident puts the public at risk? In the early hours of March 28, 1979, a syste...

Thu, 09 Mar 2023

The dream of AI — artificial intelligence — has been around for centuries: the idea of an intell...

Thu, 02 Mar 2023

Ever since Beyonce's Renaissance dropped last summer, house music has found its way back to mainstre...

Thu, 23 Feb 2023

Rats. Love 'em or hate 'em, (though you probably hate 'em), they're part of our world. And they've b...

Thu, 16 Feb 2023

It all started with a photograph. A photograph from 1991 of a prison takeover in rural Alabama. A ph...

Thu, 09 Feb 2023

In 1923, an Indian American man named Bhagat Singh Thind argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that h...

Thu, 02 Feb 2023

In 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said the Black Panther Party "without question, represents the...

Thu, 26 Jan 2023

Climate change, political unrest, random violence - Western society can often feel like what the fil...

Thu, 19 Jan 2023

It's 2074 and a suicide bomber has killed the President of the United States. Months later Marines o...

Thu, 12 Jan 2023

There's more to Monopoly than you might think. It's one of the best-selling board games in history —...

Mon, 09 Jan 2023

Nancy Pelosi is the highest-ranking woman in American politics. She made her first run for public of...

Thu, 05 Jan 2023

Are most modern problems caused by selfishness or a lack of it? Ayn Rand, a Russian American philoso...

Thu, 29 Dec 2022

Philanthropic foundations are a fundamental part of our society: they support media, the arts, educa...

Thu, 22 Dec 2022

In the New Testament, Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for...

Thu, 15 Dec 2022

What happens when a nation splits apart? It's a question many of us are asking ourselves today. It h...

Thu, 08 Dec 2022

In the 1970s, a savvy CEO named Dwayne Andreas hit on an idea: take surplus corn from America's hear...

Thu, 01 Dec 2022

The global pandemic spawned a different type of epidemic, one of an entirely different nature: a nos...

Sat, 26 Nov 2022

Ésta semana te presentamos un episodio muy especial de nuestros amigos en NPR y Futuro Media — su...

Thu, 24 Nov 2022

This week we're bringing you something special from our friends at NPR and Futuro Media: the first e...

Thu, 17 Nov 2022

Football, aka soccer, is life. At least, it is for many people across the globe. There are few thing...

Thu, 10 Nov 2022

We are in the season of chaos. It can feel like everything is happening at once: You might be sprint...

Thu, 03 Nov 2022

Born into slavery in the early 1800s, Frederick Douglass would live to see the Civil War, Emancipati...

Thu, 27 Oct 2022

Is the U.S. on the brink of civil war? It's a question that has been in the air for a while now, as ...

Thu, 20 Oct 2022

What's happening in Iran right now is unprecedented. But the Iranian people's struggle for gender eq...

Thu, 13 Oct 2022

Halloween — the night of ghost stories and trick-or-treating — has religious origins that span o...

Thu, 06 Oct 2022

In a world where computer chips run everything from laptops to cars to the Nintendo Switch, Taiwan i...

Thu, 29 Sep 2022

We live in divided times, when the answer to the question 'what is reality?' depends on who you ask....

Thu, 22 Sep 2022

Over one million Uyghur people have been detained in camps in China, according to estimates, subject...

Thu, 15 Sep 2022

In American history, schools have not just been places to learn the ABCs – they're places where so...

Thu, 08 Sep 2022

From BTS to Squid Game to high-end beauty standards, South Korea reigns as a global exporter of pop ...

Thu, 01 Sep 2022

It's been over a century since a self-described socialist was a viable candidate for president of th...

Thu, 25 Aug 2022

Unseen, they stalk their targets from thousands of feet in the air. Operators are piloting them from...

Thu, 18 Aug 2022

How did a small group of Islamic students go from local vigilantes to one of the most infamous and e...

Thu, 11 Aug 2022

Afghanistan has, for centuries, been at the center of the world. Long before the U.S. invasion — b...

Thu, 04 Aug 2022

Gas. Meat. Flights. Houses. The price of things have gone up by as much as nine percent since last y...

Thu, 28 Jul 2022

Is history always political? Who gets to decide? What happens when you challenge common narratives? ...

Thu, 21 Jul 2022

At the start of the 20th century, only the most privileged could afford to go to college. Today, mil...

Thu, 14 Jul 2022

Things in the U.S. feel tense right now. Two years after a police officer killed George Floyd outsid...

Thu, 07 Jul 2022

School District 28 is located in one of the most racially and ethnically diverse places in the U.S.:...

Thu, 30 Jun 2022

There's more to Monopoly than you might think. It's one of the best-selling board games in history —...

Thu, 23 Jun 2022

When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, the door opened on one of those rare opportunit...

Thu, 16 Jun 2022

The Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade transformed the landscape of abortion rights overnight. ...

Thu, 09 Jun 2022

In August of 1895, a ship called the SS Coptic approached the coast of Northern California. On that ...

Thu, 02 Jun 2022

The recent shooting in Buffalo, New York, which authorities are investigating as a hate crime, has y...

Thu, 26 May 2022

Today, China is a global superpower. But less than two hundred years ago, the nation was in a state ...

Thu, 19 May 2022

Abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a f...

Tue, 17 May 2022

MLK Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin are household names, but what about their mothers? This hour, a...

Thu, 12 May 2022

The Constitution is like America's secular Bible, our sacred founding document. As the Supreme Court...

Thu, 05 May 2022

Does history have a border? That is the question at the heart of Cinco de Mayo, May 5th, a holiday t...

Thu, 28 Apr 2022

Philanthropic foundations are a fundamental part of our society: they support media, the arts, educa...

Thu, 21 Apr 2022

Rivers on fire, acid rain falling from the sky, species going extinct, oil spills, polluted air, and...

Thu, 14 Apr 2022

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

Thu, 07 Apr 2022

What's the role of government in society? What do we mean when we talk about individual responsibili...

Thu, 31 Mar 2022

Tipping is a norm in the United States—and it's always been controversial. The practice took off a...

Thu, 24 Mar 2022

"All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory," writes Pu...

Thu, 17 Mar 2022

A Japanese American activist whose early political awakenings came while incarcerated in the concent...

Thu, 10 Mar 2022

Months before Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, he published an ess...

Thu, 03 Mar 2022

Rats. Love 'em or hate 'em, (though you probably hate 'em), they're part of our world. And during th...

Thu, 24 Feb 2022

It may seem bleak, but Robin D.G Kelley's view of the world says there is no promise of liberation, ...

Thu, 17 Feb 2022

Black people deserve nothing less than everything: This was Marcus Garvey's simple, uncompromising m...

Thu, 10 Feb 2022

The fight over the filibuster brings up some deeper questions that we as a country are facing. How d...

Thu, 03 Feb 2022

We've been seeing a lot of debate recently about how history should be taught. For example, some bel...

Thu, 27 Jan 2022

As tensions between Ukraine and Russia escalate, we decided to take a look at the man who has been r...

Tue, 25 Jan 2022

Life can be tough. Every day brings new challenges. And in order to get through the waking hours we ...

Thu, 20 Jan 2022

Our dreams can haunt us: literally. Recurring dreams about failing tests or running late are a commo...

Thu, 13 Jan 2022

Bayard Rustin, the man behind the March on Washington, was one of the most consequential architects ...

Thu, 06 Jan 2022

When a mob of pro-Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 they also i...

Thu, 30 Dec 2021

Today, electricity in the U.S. is a utility we notice only when it's suddenly unavailable. But over ...

Tue, 28 Dec 2021

What happens to police officers who use excessive force, tamper with evidence or sexually harass som...

Thu, 23 Dec 2021

American workers are reaching a breaking point. We're seeing a wave of resignations and labor strike...

Thu, 16 Dec 2021

Are most modern problems caused by selfishness or a lack of it? Ayn Rand, a Russian American philoso...

Thu, 09 Dec 2021

As the end of the 20th century approached, Radiohead took to the recording studio to capture the sou...

Thu, 02 Dec 2021

The Arab Spring erupted eleven years ago when a wave of "pro-democracy" protests spread throughout t...

Thu, 25 Nov 2021

Uncontrollable western wildfires and a hidden family history — two puzzles that can only be solved...

Thu, 18 Nov 2021

Is history always political? Who gets to decide? What happens when you challenge common narratives? ...

Thu, 11 Nov 2021

In 1927, the most destructive river flood in U.S. history inundated seven states, displaced more tha...

Tue, 09 Nov 2021

Rund and Ramtin speak to sci-fi writer and Princeton historian, Haris Durrani, about why the lore of...

Thu, 04 Nov 2021

Unseen, they stalk their targets from thousands of feet in the air. Operators are piloting them from...

Thu, 28 Oct 2021

Halloween — the night of ghost stories and trick-or-treating — has religious origins that span o...

Thu, 21 Oct 2021

Astrology has existed for thousands of years and has roots that span the globe. But is it a science ...

Thu, 14 Oct 2021

The global pandemic has spawned a different type of epidemic, one of an entirely different nature: a...

Thu, 07 Oct 2021

In a sense, 1521 is Mexico's 1619. A foundational moment that has for a long time been shaped by jus...

Tue, 05 Oct 2021

When Soul Train was first nationally syndicated in October 1971, there was nothing else like it on T...

Thu, 30 Sep 2021

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

Tue, 28 Sep 2021

This week we're featuring an episode from Life Kit that focuses on myths surrounding autism, how to ...

Thu, 23 Sep 2021

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

Thu, 16 Sep 2021

How did a small group of Islamic students go from local vigilantes to one of the most infamous and e...

Thu, 09 Sep 2021

Afghanistan has, for centuries, been at the center of the world. Long before the U.S. invasion - bef...

Thu, 02 Sep 2021

What happens after everything falls apart? The end of the Bronze Age was a moment when an entire net...

Thu, 26 Aug 2021

Octavia Butler's alternate realities and 'speculative fiction' reveal striking, and often devastatin...

Thu, 19 Aug 2021

Venezuela is facing an economic and humanitarian crisis as extreme poverty and violence have forced ...

Thu, 12 Aug 2021

The Great Depression was a revolutionary spark for all kinds of things — health insurance, social ...

Thu, 05 Aug 2021

You've been looking at screens for what feels like forever. Now it's time to sit back, close your ey...

Thu, 29 Jul 2021

A Marxist revolution, a Cold War proxy battle, and a dream of a Black utopia. In 1983, Ronald Reagan...

Thu, 22 Jul 2021

The Olympics originated in Ancient Greece, and were resurrected in the 1890's after a 1,500 year ban...

Tue, 20 Jul 2021

What do we owe innocent civilians who are killed or injured in war? This is one of the thorniest eth...

Thu, 15 Jul 2021

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

Mon, 12 Jul 2021

This week we're featuring an episode from Code Switch, Do The Golden Arches Bend Toward Justice?. Ca...

Thu, 08 Jul 2021

In the New Testament, Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for...

Thu, 01 Jul 2021

What's the role of government in society? What do we mean when we talk about individual responsibili...

Tue, 29 Jun 2021

This week we're featuring an episode from Radiolab's latest new series, The Vanishing of Harry Pace....

Thu, 24 Jun 2021

What do we mean when we talk about capitalism? Our economic system might seem inevitable, but it's a...

Thu, 17 Jun 2021

In 1969, a gay bar in New York City called The Stonewall Inn was raided by police. It was a common f...

Thu, 10 Jun 2021

Who is the media meant to serve? And why does it matter today, arguably, more than ever? 50 years ag...

Thu, 03 Jun 2021

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

Fri, 28 May 2021

The recent violence that engulfed Gaza and Jerusalem began with an issue that's plagued the region f...

Thu, 20 May 2021

The Arab Spring erupted ten years ago when a wave of "pro-democracy" protests spread throughout the ...

Thu, 13 May 2021

Over one million Uyghur people have been detained in camps in China, according to estimates, subject...

Thu, 06 May 2021

An estimated 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed by the Ottoman government during World War ...

Thu, 29 Apr 2021

James Baldwin believed that America has been lying to itself since its founding. He wrote, spoke, an...

Thu, 22 Apr 2021

Rivers on fire, acid rain falling from the sky, species going extinct, oil spills, polluted air, and...

Thu, 15 Apr 2021

The Black Panther Party's battles for social justice and economic equality are the centerpiece of th...

Thu, 08 Apr 2021

Black Americans being victimized and killed by the police is an epidemic. As the trial of Derek Chau...

Thu, 01 Apr 2021

"Build bridges, not walls." Solidarity was at the heart of Yuri Kochiyama's work. A Japanese-America...

Thu, 25 Mar 2021

Tipping is a norm in the U.S. But it hasn't always been this way. A legacy of slavery and racism, ti...

Thu, 18 Mar 2021

What happens when teenagers are shipwrecked on a deserted island? Can you find the fingerprint of Go...

Thu, 11 Mar 2021

The N95 respirator has become one of the most coveted items in the world during the pandemic, especi...

Thu, 04 Mar 2021

In this episode from WNYC's La Brega, Alana Casanova-Burgess traces back the story of the boom and b...

Thu, 25 Feb 2021

Bayard Rustin, the man behind the March on Washington, was one of the most consequential architects ...

Thu, 18 Feb 2021

Octavia Butler's alternate realities and 'speculative fiction' reveal striking, and often devastatin...

Thu, 11 Feb 2021

Decades before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey attracted millions with a sim...

Sun, 07 Feb 2021

Why does Whitney Houston's 1991 Super Bowl national anthem still resonate 30 years later? Listen to ...

Thu, 04 Feb 2021

What happens after everything falls apart? The end of the Bronze Age was a moment when an entire net...

Thu, 28 Jan 2021

Russian-born journalist Masha Gessen talks to us about how the rule of the people becomes the rule o...

Thu, 21 Jan 2021

When a mob of pro-Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, they also incite...

Thu, 14 Jan 2021

When Andrew Johnson became president in 1865, the United States was in the midst of one of its most ...

Thu, 07 Jan 2021

In the mid-1980's a woman who didn't consider herself a feminist was asked to solve perhaps the bigg...

Thu, 31 Dec 2020

The Sunni-Shia divide is a conflict that most people have heard about - two sects with Sunni Islam b...

Thu, 24 Dec 2020

50 years ago the world watched as man first landed on the moon, an incredible accomplishment by the ...

Thu, 17 Dec 2020

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

Thu, 10 Dec 2020

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

Thu, 03 Dec 2020

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

Thu, 26 Nov 2020

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

Thu, 19 Nov 2020

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

Mon, 16 Nov 2020

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

Thu, 12 Nov 2020

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

Thu, 05 Nov 2020

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

Thu, 29 Oct 2020

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

Thu, 22 Oct 2020

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

Thu, 15 Oct 2020

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

Thu, 08 Oct 2020

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

Thu, 08 Oct 2020

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

Thu, 01 Oct 2020

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

Thu, 24 Sep 2020

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

Thu, 17 Sep 2020

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

Thu, 10 Sep 2020

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

Thu, 03 Sep 2020

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

Thu, 27 Aug 2020

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

Thu, 20 Aug 2020

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

Thu, 13 Aug 2020

There is more waste in the world today than at any time in history, and the responsibility for keepi...

Thu, 06 Aug 2020

"Race" is often used as a fundamental way to understand American history. But what if "caste" is the...

Thu, 30 Jul 2020

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is considered th...

Thu, 23 Jul 2020

The Great Depression was a revolutionary spark for all kinds of things — health insurance, social ...

Thu, 16 Jul 2020

Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory in 1898 and for much of the next fifty years Puerto Ricans fough...

Thu, 09 Jul 2020

Starting in 1965, summer after summer, America's cities burned. There was civil unrest in more than ...

Thu, 02 Jul 2020

Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, is effectively canceled this year, due to concerns arou...

Thu, 25 Jun 2020

When a cook who carried typhoid fever refused to stop working, despite showing no symptoms, the auth...

Thu, 18 Jun 2020

Protests, racial divisions, political polarization, and a law-and-order president – it's easy to d...

Thu, 11 Jun 2020

What can and can't the president do, and how do we know? When the framers of the U.S. constitution l...

Thu, 04 Jun 2020

Black Americans being victimized and killed by the police is an epidemic. A truth many Americans are...

Thu, 28 May 2020

Last week, the Chinese government made the latest and perhaps the most serious move yet to crack dow...

Thu, 21 May 2020

Since the beginning of the pandemic, conspiracy theories about the coronavirus have exploded. But co...

Thu, 14 May 2020

The N95 respirator has become one of the most coveted items in the world, especially by medical pro...

Thu, 07 May 2020

North Korea's famous for being a black box, one of the most secretive and authoritarian countries in...

Thu, 30 Apr 2020

In the early hours of March 28, 1979, a system malfunction began what would become the worst nuclear...

Thu, 23 Apr 2020

In 1927, the most destructive river flood in U.S. history inundated seven states, displaced more tha...

Thu, 16 Apr 2020

In the whole of human history, no predator has killed more of us than the lowly mosquito. And this k...

Thu, 09 Apr 2020

The Principal Chief of Cherokee Nation told his people to stay strong during this pandemic, and to r...

Thu, 02 Apr 2020

For nearly as long as there has been a United States there has been a census, it is in some ways how...

Thu, 26 Mar 2020

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic it's tempting to draw comparisons to the most severe pandem...

Thu, 19 Mar 2020

It's been over a century since a self-described socialist was a viable candidate for President of th...

Thu, 12 Mar 2020

In the past few weeks Delhi has become the latest place in India convulsed with religious violence a...

Thu, 05 Mar 2020

America in the run-up to the Revolutionary War wasn't just a period of dramatic political change, it...

Thu, 27 Feb 2020

Today, the border that divides Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is "soft", in most place...

Thu, 20 Feb 2020

Astrology has existed for thousands of years and has roots that span the globe. But is it a science ...

Thu, 13 Feb 2020

When the United States of America was founded, it was only a union of a small number of states. By t...

Thu, 06 Feb 2020

There are more female candidates in this presidential campaign cycle than at any other time in Ameri...

Thu, 30 Jan 2020

It's a longstanding fight in the U.S., whether people can opt out of vaccination if that means jeopa...

Thu, 23 Jan 2020

When Qassem Soleimani was assassinated by the United States on January 3rd, the Iranian Revolutionar...

Thu, 16 Jan 2020

In the mid-1980's a woman who didn't consider herself a feminist was asked to solve perhaps the bigg...

Thu, 09 Jan 2020

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

Thu, 02 Jan 2020

Artificial intelligence, gene modification, and self-driving cars are causing fear and uncertainty a...

Thu, 26 Dec 2019

Vladimir Putin has been running Russia since 2000 when he was first elected as President. How did a ...

Thu, 19 Dec 2019

Have you ever wondered why your smartphone or toaster oven doesn't seem to last very long, even thou...

Thu, 12 Dec 2019

A record number of Americans have died from opioid overdoses in recent years. But how did we get her...

Thu, 05 Dec 2019

Today, electricity in the U.S. is a utility we notice only when it's suddenly unavailable. But over ...

Thu, 28 Nov 2019

This week we're revisiting one of our favorite episodes about one of our favorite topics: Conspiracy...

Thu, 21 Nov 2019

As extreme weather wreaks havoc around the globe we look at a natural disaster more than 200 hundred...

Thu, 14 Nov 2019

On November 20th, 1979, a group of Islamic militants seized Islam's holiest site — the Masjid al-H...

Sat, 09 Nov 2019

NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel shares the story of Nazi Germany's attempt to build a nucle...

Thu, 07 Nov 2019

Over the decades the Kurds have been inspired by, allied with, relied upon and betrayed by the Unite...

Thu, 31 Oct 2019

Zombies have become a global phenomenon — there have been at least ten zombie movies so far this y...

Thu, 24 Oct 2019

50 years ago the world watched as man first landed on the moon, an incredible accomplishment by the ...

Thu, 17 Oct 2019

Over the past six months, demonstrations in Hong Kong have increasingly become more violent and more...

Thu, 10 Oct 2019

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

Thu, 03 Oct 2019

When Andrew Johnson became president in 1865, the United States was in the middle of one of its most...

Thu, 26 Sep 2019

For centuries, the United States has been a prime destination for migrants hoping for better economi...

Thu, 19 Sep 2019

Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory in 1898 and for much of the next fifty years Puerto Ricans fough...

Thu, 12 Sep 2019

When Lil Nas X released his viral hit "Old Town Road" last year, he sparked a conversation about wha...

Thu, 05 Sep 2019

There is more waste in the world today than at any time in history, and the responsibility for keepi...

Thu, 29 Aug 2019

When Colin Kaepernick stopped standing for the national anthem at NFL games it sparked a nationwide ...

Thu, 22 Aug 2019

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

Thu, 15 Aug 2019

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

Thu, 08 Aug 2019

The term "concentration camp" is most associated with Nazi Germany and the systematic killing of Jew...

Thu, 01 Aug 2019

Huey Pierce Long: you either loved him, or hated him. He combined progressive economic ideas with an...

Thu, 25 Jul 2019

After the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, public schools across the country were s...

Thu, 18 Jul 2019

After Iran shot down an American surveillance drone in June, tensions between the two countries have...

Thu, 11 Jul 2019

The U.S. and Iran have had a tense relationship for decades — but when did that begin? Over the ne...

Thu, 04 Jul 2019

The Star-Spangled Banner is the official anthem for the United States, but there are plenty of songs...

Thu, 27 Jun 2019

Fifty years ago, a gay bar in New York City called The Stonewall Inn was raided by police, and what ...

Thu, 20 Jun 2019

In 1965, Jimmie Lee Jackson was an unarmed black civil rights activist who was murdered in Marion, A...

Thu, 13 Jun 2019

Evangelicals have played an important role in modern day American politics - from supporting Preside...

Thu, 06 Jun 2019

Mitch McConnell has been described as "opaque," "drab," and even "dull." He is one of the least popu...

Thu, 30 May 2019

Right-wing Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi has won reelection as India's Prime Minister. As the poli...

Thu, 23 May 2019

China is a world superpower today. But just over a century ago, the country was in complete turmoil ...

Thu, 16 May 2019

Venezuela is facing an economic and humanitarian crisis as extreme poverty and violence have forced ...

Thu, 09 May 2019

The white nationalist ideas of Madison Grant influenced Congress in the 1920s, leaders in Nazi Germa...

Thu, 02 May 2019

More than 700 measles cases have been recorded in the U.S. in the recent outbreak, the worst being i...

Thu, 25 Apr 2019

Artificial intelligence, gene modification, and self-driving cars are causing fear and uncertainty a...

Thu, 18 Apr 2019

The Sunni-Shia divide is a conflict that most people have heard about - two sects with Sunni Islam b...

Thu, 11 Apr 2019

Nancy Pelosi is the highest-ranking woman in American politics. She made her first run for public of...

Thu, 04 Apr 2019

A record number of Americans have died from opioid overdoses in recent years. But how did we get her...

Thu, 28 Mar 2019

Have you ever wondered why your smartphone or toaster oven doesn't seem to last very long, even thou...

Thu, 21 Mar 2019

In February, President Trump declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border. Last year, he or...

Thu, 14 Mar 2019

Vladimir Putin has been running Russia since 2000 when he was first elected as President. How did a ...

Thu, 07 Mar 2019

Conspiracy theories are a feature of today's news and politics. But they've really been a part of Am...

Thu, 28 Feb 2019

When Andrew Johnson became president in 1865, the United States was in the middle of one of its most...

Thu, 21 Feb 2019

President Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un are preparing to meet for a second nuclear summi...

Thu, 14 Feb 2019

When Colin Kaepernick stopped standing for the national anthem at NFL games it sparked a nationwide ...

Thu, 07 Feb 2019

It's no secret that Iran and the U.S. have a history of animosity toward each other. But when and ho...

Wed, 30 Jan 2019

NPR's new history podcast hosted by Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah. New episodes every Thursda...