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...
...see more
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.
Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices
NPR Privacy Poli
Episode 307 • 5 September 2024 • 46m and 19s
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.
Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices
NPR Privacy Policy
Episode 306 • 29 August 2024 • 50m and 20s
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 disa...
Episode 305 • 22 August 2024 • 46m and 51s
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 th...
Episode 304 • 15 August 2024 • 49m and 45s
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 cr...
Episode 303 • 8 August 2024 • 49m and 43s
In 1966, the governing body of the Olympic track and field event started mandatory examinations of all women athletes. These inspections would come to be known as "nude parades," and if you were a woman who refused the test, you couldn't compete.
We're going back almost a century to the first time women were allowed to compete in Olympic track and field games, and to a time when a committee of entirely men decided who was a female and who wasn't.
Today on the show, we bring you an episode from a new podcast from CBC and...
Episode • 6 August 2024 • 35m and 17s
The Second Amendment. In April 1938, an Oklahoma bank robber was arrested for carrying an unregistered sawed-off shotgun across state lines. The robber, Jack Miller, put forward a novel defense: that a law banning him from carrying that gun violated his Second Amendment rights. For most of U.S. history, the Second Amendment was one of the sleepier ones. It rarely showed up in court, and was almost never used to challenge laws. Jack Miller's case changed that. And it set off a chain of events that would fundamentally change how U.S. law deals with guns. Today on Throughline's We...
Episode 302 • 1 August 2024 • 48m and 29s
The First Amendment. 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 stretched and shaped to fit a world they never could have imagined? It's a story that travels through world wars and culture wars. Through the highest courts and the Ku Klux Klan. Today on Throughline's We the People: What exactly is free speech, and how has the answer to that question changed in the history of the...
Episode 301 • 25 July 2024 • 48m and 52s
Sudan has been at the center of a deadly and brutal war for over a year. It's the site of the world's largest hunger crisis, and the world's largest displacement crisis.
On the surface, it's a story about two warring generals vying for power – the latest in a long cycle of power struggles that have plagued Sudan for decades. But it's also a story about the U.S. war on terror, Russia's war in Ukraine, and China's global rise.
Today on the show, we turn back the clock more than a century to untangle the complex we...
Episode 300 • 18 July 2024 • 50m and 25s
The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet over 10 percent of people – nearly 40 million – live in poverty. It's something we see, say, if we live near a tent encampment. And it's also something we feel. More than a third of people in the U.S. say they're worried about being able to pay their rent or mortgage. Medical bills and layoffs can change a family's economic status almost overnight.
These issues are on the minds of Democrats and Republicans, city-dwellers and rural households. And in an election year, they're likely to be a majo...
Episode 299 • 11 July 2024 • 49m and 53s
© 2024 Skill Piper. All rights reserved