Podcast Episodes

Line. Fence. Wall.

The U.S. - Mexico border, according to a video on the official White House website, is very quiet: nothing but tires crunching on gravel and the wind whistling around a high, solid-looking wall. But …

Published on 1 month, 3 weeks ago

ICE

What is ICE? What was it created to do? And what’s changed in 2025? Today on the show, the history of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and how it tracks the story of immigration, and politics, in …

Published on 2 months ago

A History of Settlements

The Israeli government recently approved a new settlement project in the occupied West Bank that would effectively cut it in half. The plan is illegal under international law and has been widely cond…

Published on 2 months, 1 week ago

A Primer On The Federal Reserve's Independence

President Donald Trump has been loudly critical of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for years now. Since January, the President has accused him of playing politics by keeping interest rates high. …

Published on 2 months, 1 week ago

The Queen of Tupperware

Who ushered housewives into the workforce and plastic storage containers into America’s kitchens? Today on the show, the rise and fall of Brownie Wise, the woman behind Tupperware's plastic empire — …

Published on 2 months, 2 weeks ago

We the People: Succession of Power

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 w…

Published on 2 months, 3 weeks ago

We the People: Cruel and Unusual Punishment

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…

Published on 2 months, 4 weeks ago

We the People: The Right to Remain Silent

Episode 353

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-incrimination. But most people end up talking to…

Published on 3 months ago

Embedded: The Network

In the mid-1980s, an OBGYN in Brazil noticed that far fewer pregnant women at his hospital were dying from abortion complications. It wasn't a coincidence. Brazilian women had made a discovery that a…

Published on 3 months, 1 week ago

We The People: Canary in the Coal Mine

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, …

Published on 3 months, 1 week ago