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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 sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org/throughline

Throughline

People used to say "believe your eyes." But these days that's not so easy to do. What we scroll through every day blurs the line between entertainment and fact. And nowhere is that phenomenon more evident than in reality television. Today on the show, we tackle the genre that takes our most potent feelings – love, hope, anxiety, loneliness – and turns them into profit. This episode originally ran in 2022.

Guests:

Goloka Bolte, reality TV casting director 

Dr. Jana Scrivani, licensed clinical psychologist

Racquel Gates, associate professor of film and media studies at Columbia University

Dr. J'tia Hart, nuclear engineer on Survivor (Season 28)

Jeff Jenkins, founder of Jeff Jenkins Productions (JJP)

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Gladiators, real housewives and the pull of reality TV

Jack Johnson was the first world Black heavyweight champion, but winning the title was only part of the battle. Every time Johnson stepped into a boxing ring, he struck a blow to white supremacy. In this week’s episode, the story of Jack Johnson and the legacy of Black athletes pushing for social change in America. 

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The fight that shook America

Starbase. Prospera. California Forever. Mars. From private cities to interstellar colonies, tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have backed experiments designed to operate beyond the borders — and laws — most of us live by. So we wondered: has this happened before? In this episode, we visit an Arctic archipelago, homesteads floating in the ocean, and a startup city in Honduras to explore where places built with the ultra-rich in mind leave all the rest of us.

Guests:

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, author of The Cosmopolites and The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

Wayne Gramlich, retired computer engineer

Dan Girma, producer on NPR's Embedded podcast

Jacob Silverman, author of Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

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The billionaires' utopia blueprint

As the United States expanded into a global superpower, it simultaneously strengthened its national borders and began to limit who could come in and out of the country. In this week’s episode, the story of how one of the very first walls meant to divide people was built on the US Southern border. 

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Why the wall was built

When we call something "clickbait," we don't mean it as a compliment. But let's be real: we also click. It's hard to resist a spicy story, and 19th-century newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst knew it. At a time when most papers merely reported events, his papers created them, sending reporters out to perform daring rescues, solve sensational murders, and even meddle in geopolitics. Today on the show: the man who brought spectacle and scandal to the news — and changed journalism forever.

Guests:

Karen Roggenkamp, professor of English at East Texas A&M University and author of Narrating the News and Sympathy, Madness, and Crime

W. Joseph Campbell, emeritus professor of communication at American University and author of The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms and Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections

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The original clickbait king

In the late 1890s, the United States fought wars and backed independence movements around the world. By the time the fighting was over, the US emerged as a new global power —and with it, a new identity. This week: how the U.S. became an empire, and why it started calling itself America.

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How the US became America

Like it or not, artificial intelligence is deeply rooted in our lives. Its invisible architecture stretches everywhere from dating apps to medical care. In this new world, what remains uniquely human? On today's episode, we explore the tension between our love of AI and our fear of it — and try to decode the humans behind the machines. This episode originally published in March of 2023.

Guests:

George Zarkadakis, author of In Our Own Image: Will Artificial Intelligence Save or Destroy Us?

Francis Collins, physician-geneticist who led the Human Genome Project

Stephanie Dick, assistant professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University

Meredith Broussard, data journalism professor at New York University, and author of More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender and Ability Bias in Tech

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Will AI destroy us... or save us?

The 14th Amendment guaranteed equal citizenship after the Civil War, but who exactly counted as a citizen? Today on the show, the story of Wong Kim Ark, a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, whose Supreme Court case defined birthright citizenship more than a century ago. 

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Who gets to be an American citizen?

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 powerful tools — and most effective weapons. This episode originally published in May of 2025.

Guests: 
Joe Thorndike, historian for Tax Analysts and author of Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR. 

Paul Camacho, retired special agent for the IRS Criminal Investigation Division and member of the board of directors at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. 

Jason Scott Smith, historian at The University of New Mexico and author of two books about FDR and the New Deal.

Lawrence Reed, president emeritus of The Foundation for Economic Education.

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Al Capone and the transformation of the IRS

What do bananas have to do with American history? On this week’s episode, how the sweet fruit became an American staple because of one entrepreneur who took business off US shores, expanding the country’s economic reach and influence.
 

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What the banana tells us about US history

What can and can't the president do, and how do we know? When the framers of the U.S. constitution left vague the powers of the executive branch they opened the door to every president to decide how much power they could claim. This week, how the office of the presidency became more powerful than anything the Founding Fathers imagined possible. 

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Presidential Power

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