Episodes

  • A History of Hezbollah (Throwback)

    A History of Hezbollah (Throwback)
    Sep 26 2024
    Hezbollah is a Lebanese paramilitary organization and political party that's directly supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the wake of the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, and Israel's invasion of Gaza, there have been escalating attacks between Hezbollah and Israel across the border they share.

    Today on the show: a history of Hezbollah.

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    49 mins
  • When Things Fall Apart (Throwback)

    When Things Fall Apart (Throwback)
    Sep 19 2024
    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 many people believe that law and order is the only thing protecting us from the savagery of our neighbors, that the fundamental nature of humanity is competition and struggle. This idea is often called "veneer theory." But is this idea rooted in historical reality? Is this actually what happens when societies face disasters? Are we always on the cusp of brutality?

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    50 mins
  • The Conspiracy Files

    The Conspiracy Files
    Sep 12 2024
    9/11 was an inside job. Aliens have already made contact. COVID-19 was created in a lab.

    Maybe you rolled your eyes at some point while reading that list. Or maybe you paused on one and thought... well... it could be true.

    Since the first Americans started chatting online, conspiracy theories have become mainstream — and profitable. It's gotten harder to separate fact and fiction. But if we don't know who we can trust, how does a democracy survive?

    On today's episode, we travel the internet from UFOs, through 9/11, to COVID, to trace how we ended up in a world that can't be believed.

    To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.

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    55 mins
  • How U.S. Unions Took Flight (Throwback)

    How U.S. Unions Took Flight (Throwback)
    Sep 5 2024
    Airline workers — pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, baggage handlers, and more — represent a huge cross-section of the country. And for decades, they've used their unions to fight not just for better working conditions, but for civil rights, charting a course that leads right up to today. In this episode, we turn an eye to the sky to see how American unions took flight.

    To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.

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    46 mins
  • Water in the West

    Water in the West
    Aug 29 2024
    What does it mean to do the greatest good for the greatest number? When the Los Angeles Aqueduct opened in 1913, it rerouted the Owens River from its natural path through an Eastern California valley hundreds of miles south to LA, enabling a dusty town to grow into a global city. But of course, there was a price.

    Today on the show: Greed, glory, and obsession; what the water made possible, and at what cost.

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    50 mins
  • We The People: Canary in the Coal Mine

    We The People: Canary in the Coal Mine
    Aug 22 2024
    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 heard side by side since about the late 1700s.

    At first glance, it might not seem super relevant to modern life. But in fact, the U.S. government has gotten away with violating the Third Amendment several times since its ratification — and every time it's gone largely unnoticed.

    Today on Throughline's We the People: In a time of escalating political violence, police forces armed with military equipment, and more frequent and devastating natural disasters, why the Third Amendment deserves a closer look.

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    47 mins
  • We The People: Equal Protection

    We The People: Equal Protection
    Aug 15 2024
    The Fourteenth Amendment. Of all the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the 14th is a big one. It's shaped all of our lives, whether we realize it or not: Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education, Bush v. Gore, plus other Supreme Court cases that legalized same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, access to birth control — they've all been built on the back of the 14th. The amendment was ratified after the Civil War, and it's packed full of lofty phrases like due process, equal protection, and liberty. But what do those words really guarantee us? Today on Throughline's We the People: How the 14th Amendment has remade America — and how America has remade the 14th (Originally ran as The Fourteenth Amendment).

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    50 mins
  • We The People: Legal Representation

    We The People: Legal Representation
    Aug 8 2024
    The Sixth Amendment. Most of us take it for granted that if we're ever in court and we can't afford a lawyer, the court will provide one for us. And in fact, the right to an attorney is written into the Constitution's sixth amendment. But for most of U.S. history, it was more of a nice-to-have — something you got if you could, but that many people went without.

    Today, though, public defenders represent up to 80% of people charged with crimes. So what changed? Today on Throughline's We the People: How public defenders became the backbone of our criminal legal system, and what might need to change for them to truly serve everyone. (Originally ran as The Right to an Attorney).

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    50 mins