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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 access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org/throughline

Throughline

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 that's not the whole story. Today on the show, how that border went from a line in the sand, to a fence, to a wall.

Guests:

Rachel St. John, associate professor of history at U.C. Davis, and author of Line in the Sand: A History of the Western US Mexico Border

Miguel Levario, associate professor of history at Texas Tech University and author of Militarizing the Border: When Mexicans Became the Enemy

Silvestre Reyes, former Congressman (D-TX), and former Border Patrol Sector Chief 

Eduardo Contreras, realtor in Brownsville, Texas

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Line. Fence. Wall.

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 the U.S.

Guests:

Peter Markowitz, professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York City and founder of the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic.

Rodger Werner is co-author of “The History and Evolution of Homeland Security in the United States” and currently employed by the Department of Homeland Security. The views he expresses in this episode are his own and do not represent the views of DHS or the U.S. government.To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.

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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 condemned. To get a sense of why settlements continue to be such a big issue for both Palestinians and Israelis, we wanted to bring you this episode about their history that’s part of our series, "The Cycle." This episode originally published in October 2024.

Guests:
Khaled El-Gindy, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.

Sara Yael Hirschhorn, author of City on a Hilltop, American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement

Gideon Aran, former anthropology and sociology professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem

Avi Shlaim, author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World

Diana Buttu, former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization

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A History of Settlements

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. Trump has also threatened to oust Powell — which would mark an extraordinary shift away from the independence of the central bank.Today from our friends at The Indicator from Planet Money: a short history of the Federal Reserve and why it’s insulated from day-to-day politics; how the Fed amassed a ton of power in recent years; and a Trump executive order that took some of that power away.

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A Primer On The Federal Reserve's Independence

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 — and a revolution in women’s work.

Guests:
Alison Clarke, author of Tupperware, the Promise of Plastic in 1950s America
Bob Kealing, author of Life of the Party: The Remarkable Story of How Brownie Wise Built, and Lost, a Tupperware Party Empire

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The Queen of Tupperware

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. This story originally published in March 2025.

Guest:
John Feerick, Norris Professor of Law at Fordham Law School and author of The Twenty-Fifth Amendment - Its Complete History and Applications.

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We the People: Succession of Power

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. This episode was originally published in January 2025.

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We the People: Cruel and Unusual Punishment

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 police anyway. Why? Today on Throughline's We the People: the Fifth Amendment, the right to remain silent, and how hard it can be to use it. This episode originally ran in March 2025.

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We the People: The Right to Remain Silent

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 allowed them to safely have abortions at home, despite the country's abortion restrictions. That discovery eventually spread across the globe.

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Embedded: The Network

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.

In a time of escalating political violence, police forces armed with military equipment, and more frequent and devastating natural disasters, why the Third Amendment deserves a closer look. This episode originally ran in 2024.

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We The People: Canary in the Coal Mine

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 the show: how the 14th Amendment has remade America – and how America has remade the 14th.

Clarification: A previous version of this episode did not make clear that the 14th amendment guarantees equal protection and due process to all people in the United States, regardless of citizenship.

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The 14th Amendment

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