Episodios

  • Winter is Coming

    Winter is Coming
    Mar 13 2025
    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 discovery, made during the Cold War, may have helped save humans from the same fate. In this episode, we'll take a journey from prehistoric times to the nuclear age and explore how humans contend with fears of the end.

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    51 m
  • We the People: Succession of Power

    We the People: Succession of Power
    Mar 6 2025
    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 missing from the Constitution: clear instructions for what should happen if a U.S. president was no longer able to serve. On this episode of our ongoing series We the People, the story behind one of the last amendments to the Constitution, and the man who got it done.

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    48 m
  • Health Insurance in America

    Health Insurance in America
    Feb 27 2025
    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 a system that's so expensive, yet leaves so many people vulnerable? On this episode, how a temporary solution created an everlasting problem. This episode originally ran in 2020 as The Everlasting Problem.

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    53 m
  • The Evolution of Presidential Power

    The Evolution of Presidential Power
    Feb 20 2025
    What can and can't the president do — and how do we know? The framers of the U.S. Constitution left the powers of the executive branch powers deliberately vague, and in doing so opened the door for every president to decide how much power they could claim. Over time, that's become quite a lot. This episode originally ran in 2020 and has been updated with new material.

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    52 m
  • The Anti-Vaccine Movement

    The Anti-Vaccine Movement
    Feb 13 2025
    The alleged link between vaccines and autism was first published in 1998, in a since-retracted study in medical journal The Lancet. The claim has been repeatedly disproven: there is no evidence that vaccines and autism are related. But by the mid-2000s, the myth was out there, and its power was growing, fueled by distrust of government, misinformation, and high-profile boosters like Jim Carrey and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In this episode: the roots of the modern anti-vaccine movement, and of the fears that still fuel it – from a botched polio vaccine, to the discredited autism study, to today.

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    49 m
  • Birthright Citizenship

    Birthright Citizenship
    Feb 6 2025
    Wong Kim Ark was born in the U.S. and lived his whole life here. But when he returned from a trip to China in August of 1895, officials wouldn't let him leave his ship. Citing the Chinese Exclusion Act, which denied citizenship to Chinese immigrants, they told him he was not, in fact, a citizen of the United States.

    Today, the story of Wong Kim Ark, whose epic fight to be recognized as a citizen in his own country led to a Supreme Court decision affirming birthright citizenship for all.

    This episode originally ran as By Accident of Birth.

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    58 m
  • The Kingdom Behind Glass

    The Kingdom Behind Glass
    Jan 30 2025
    Who owns stolen art? Today on the show, the bloody journey of a Benin Bronze from West Africa to the halls of one of England's most elite universities — a tale of imperialism, betrayal, and the making of the modern world.

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    48 m
  • We The People: Cruel and Unusual Punishment

    We The People: Cruel and Unusual Punishment
    Jan 23 2025
    The Eighth Amendment. What is cruel and unusual punishment? Who gets to define and decide its boundaries? And how did the Constitution's authors imagine it might change? Today on Throughline's We the People: the Eighth Amendment, the death penalty, and what cruel and unusual really means.

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    48 m