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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

Christmas wasn't always a national shopping spree — or even a day off work. But when Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 19th-century London, the holiday went viral.

Guests:

Leon Litvack, professor of Victorian Studies at Queen's University in Belfast and editor of the Charles Dickens Letters project.

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, author and historian of Victorian England.
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Winter Book Club: A Christmas Carol

What if the real story of human history is a story itself? To kick off our winter book club, we talk with bestselling author Tamim Ansary about his book, "The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History Of Human Culture, Conflict And Connection," about why the future of our species might depend on our ability to arrive at a story we all share. This episode originally ran in 2022.

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Winter Book Club: The Story of Us?

Rund takes Ramtin on a tour of the enduring world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice... and our two hosts make a bet.

Guests:

John Mullan, professor of English Literature at University College London and author of What Matters in Jane Austen

Devoney Looser, professor of English at Arizona State University and author of Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive and Untamed Jane

Lizzie Dunford, director of Jane Austen's House

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Pride, Prejudice, and Peer Pressure

What's better than holiday hot chocolate? If just thinking about it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, well – that’s by design. Chocolate's big history sweeps across the globe, and today we’re going on that journey: from the pre–Columbus Americas, to an early 20th century reporter’s hunch about what cocoa production really takes, to a 21st century medical student’s story about his childhood on a farm that produces those holiday treats.

Guests:

Carla Martin, lecturer in African and African American Studies at Harvard University and President of the Board of the Institute for Cacao and Chocolate Research

Catherine Higgs, professor of history at the University of British Columbia in Canada

Shadrack Frimpong, founder of Cocoa360

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The Bitter History of Chocolate

On today's show, a Thanksgiving story you might never have heard -- not about Pilgrims or Native people, but instead about a woman who, as civil war loomed, pushed for a shared national holiday she thought would keep the United States together. This episode originally ran in 2024.

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The Mother of Thanksgiving

Rund Abdelfatah and Cristina Kim try to unravel the mystery of a Soviet scientist who was helping to spread the word about nuclear winter theory—until he disappeared. 

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What Happened to Vladimir Alexandrov?

How quickly can a government fall? Chile was once one of Latin America's oldest democracies, but that all changed in a matter of hours after a military coup on September 11, 1973. Some supported the coup; many did not. But for the next 17 years, all Chileans lived in the grip of brutal authoritarian rule. Today on the show, the story of a democracy’s collapse and rebirth, told through the eyes of four people who lived through it.

We’ve got a favor to ask: We know there are a lot of great NPR shows out there.. but we all know who's the best. NPR is celebrating the best podcasts of the year, and YOU get to crown the winner of the People’s Choice Award. Vote for Throughline at npr.org/peopleschoice. May the best pod win!

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Democracy Dies in a Day

On the surface, the story of Sudan’s war is about two generals vying for power. But it’s also about a vast web of international interests involving the U.S., China, Russia, and the UAE. Today on the show, the story of how things in Sudan got to this point, and the effects of the conflict around the world. This episode originally ran in 2024 and has been updated.

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The Creeping Coup

Late last month, President Trump announced that the United States would be restarting nuclear weapons tests after a break of over 30 years. We’ve since learned that they won’t be the explosive kind of tests, but this sent us down a rabbit hole — where we found a story about dinosaurs, Carl Sagan, and nuclear war. Because 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. This episode originally published in March 2025.

Guests:

David Sepkoski, Thomas M. Siebel Chair in History of Science at the University of Illinois and author of Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity. 

Owen Brian Toon, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Alec Nevala-Lee, novelist, critic, and biographer and author of the forthcoming book Collisions: A Physicist's Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs. 

Ann Druyan, co-writer and co-creator of the television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. 

Andrew Revkin, science and environmental journalist.

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Winter is Coming

The word "genocide" can seem like it’s everywhere right now: So it can be easy to forget that, fundamentally, it's a legal term that dates to World War II — and wasn’t used in court for half a century afterwards. Today on the show, the story of what happened during the Bosnian War in the 1990s and the work that went into building the legal case to prove genocide.
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Prosecuting Genocide

The Constitution is like America's secular bible, our sacred founding document. In her play, What the Constitution Means to Me, Heidi Schreck goes through a process of discovering what the document is really about – who wrote it, who it was for, who it protected and who it didn't. Through Heidi's personal story, we learn how the Constitution and how it has been interpreted have affected not just her family but generations of Americans.

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The Shadows of the Constitution

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