Throughline is a time machine. Each episode, we travel beyond the headlines to answer the question, "How did we get here?" We use sound and stories to bring history to life and put you into the middle of it. From ancient civilizations to forgotten figures, we take you directly to the moments that shaped our world. Throughline is hosted by Peabody Award-winning journalists Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei.Subscribe to Throughline+. You'll be supporting the history-reframing, perspective-shifting, time-warping stories you can't get enough of - and you'll unlock access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org/throughline
349 episodes transcribedThe Iran-Iraq war, 9/11, and the story of Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Qassem Soleimani, from his rise to power, to his assassination, by the U...
Military confrontations, early-morning attacks, and digital warfare: the story of Iran and the U.S. from the 1979 Iranian revolution to the fraught mo...
The Supreme Court is issuing its final decisions of the term this month. But it's been extraordinarily active since January, in part because the Trump...
The U.S. and Iran have had a tense relationship for decades — but when did that begin? This week, we feature our very first episode about an event fro...
Abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a fairly common practice: a private decision made by...
Whose job is it to educate Americans? Congress created the first Department of Education just after the Civil War as a way to help reunify a broken co...
From Social Security and the minimum wage to exit signs and fire escapes, Frances Perkins transformed how people in the U.S. lived and worked. Today o...
The Fourth Amendment is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures." But — what's unreasonable? That question h...
On today's episode, we travel from the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War, through the rubble of two world wars, to the hallways of the Hague, to see...
Gangsters, banksters, and politicians. Today on the show, how the hunt for Al Capone helped turn the IRS into one of the U.S. government's most powerf...
The story of the Los Angeles police chief who, faced with one of the largest internal migrations in American history, tried to close California's bord...
Baby bonuses, childless cat ladies: the rhetoric around motherhood is politically charged right now. And the fantasy of an ideal mother remains powerf...
When James Garfield won the Presidency in 1880, Charles Guiteau got ready to accept his new government job. No one had actually offered him a job – bu...
In March 2025, President Trump issued an executive order invoking a centuries-old law: the Alien Enemies Act. The Act allows a president to detain or...
Want to get rich quick? You're not alone. Right now, Americans spend over $100 billion, yes billion, every year on lottery tickets. Today on the show,...
The Fifth Amendment. You have the right to remain silent when you're being questioned in police custody, thanks to the Fifth's protection against self...
Big Bird, politics, and the ABCs: how a television show made to represent New York City neighborhoods like Harlem and the Bronx became beloved by fami...
Dinosaurs, Carl Sagan, and nuclear war. There was a moment in the not-so-distant past when we learned what drove the dinosaurs extinct — and that disc...
The 25th amendment. A few years before JFK was shot, an idealistic young lawyer set out on a mission to convince people something essential was missin...
Millions of Americans depend on their jobs for health insurance. But that's not the case in many other wealthy countries. How did the U.S. end up with...
