Throughline

How the United States became an empire in the late 1890s — the Spanish-American War, the annexation of Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico — and why it started calling itself 'America' rather than 'the United States.'

How the hunt for Al Capone turned the IRS into one of the most powerful agencies in the US government. The unlikely story of how a tax case against a gangster created the infrastructure of modern federal enforcement.

How the banana became an American staple — and how the United Fruit Company became so powerful that it overthrew governments, created the term 'banana republic,' and shaped US foreign policy for a century.

After the Civil War, some Southern slaveholders fled to Brazil — the only remaining slave-holding nation in the Americas — chasing wealth, land, and a chance to preserve slavery. The story of what happened when they arrived.

The enduring legacy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice — how a novel about marriage in Regency England became a global cultural touchstone that still shapes how we think about romance, class, and gender.

The full arc of US-Iran relations from the 1953 CIA coup through the 1979 revolution to the current nuclear standoff. How a single covert operation in 1953 set in motion 70 years of conflict.

A deep dive into the creation of slave patrols in the 1700s — the organized militias created to control the movement of enslaved Black people — and how they shaped American policing, incarceration, and surveillance.

How the U.S. immigration detention system grew from a small-scale operation into the world's largest immigrant detention infrastructure — spread across federal facilities, private prisons, state prisons, and county jails.

Throughline traces how the hunt for Al Capone transformed the IRS from a sleepy revenue collection agency into one of the most powerful enforcement tools in the federal government.

Throughline traces the history of walls on the U.S.-Mexico border: how the first barriers were built in the 1990s, the bipartisan consensus that created them, and why walls have consistently failed to stop migration.

How the United States built the Panama Canal — after engineering a revolution in Colombia to seize the territory, importing 75,000 workers under brutal conditions, and completing the most ambitious engineering project in history.

The thirteen days in October 1962 when the world came closest to nuclear annihilation. The hosts trace how the crisis emerged from Cold War miscalculation and was resolved through a combination of diplomacy, luck, and individual courage.

How oil discovery transforms countries — almost always for the worse. The 'resource curse' traced from Venezuela to Saudi Arabia to Nigeria: how black gold corrodes democracy, distorts economies, and enriches autocrats.

How suburban sprawl was deliberately created by federal policy — highway funding, FHA mortgages, redlining — and how it reshaped American life, politics, and race relations.

How slavery was embedded into the U.S. Constitution — not as a bug but as a feature. The Three-Fifths Compromise, the Fugitive Slave Clause, and the twenty-year protection of the slave trade.

The history of abortion in America from colonial era to the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. The hosts trace how a medical procedure that was legal and common for most of American history became the most divisive issue in American politics.

The history of Native American boarding schools — where indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities, forbidden to speak their languages or practice their cultures, and subjected to systematic abuse.

The internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during WWII — how wartime fear, racial prejudice, and economic opportunism combined to produce one of America's worst civil liberties violations.

The history of the nuclear family — how the two-parent household became the American ideal, why it was always more aspiration than reality, and how its decline is reshaping American society.

Peabody Award-winning episode. Afghanistan's history from the Great Game to the US withdrawal — how centuries of foreign intervention shaped the country's trajectory and why every invader has ultimately failed.

The modern white power movement — its roots in the Vietnam War, its organizational structure, and how the internet transformed a fringe ideology into a mainstream political force.

The history of voting rights in America — how the franchise was expanded from white male property owners to universal suffrage through 200 years of struggle, and how each expansion was met with new mechanisms of suppression.

Race as a concept was invented — it doesn't exist in nature. This episode traces how racial categories were deliberately constructed by European scientists and philosophers to justify colonialism, slavery, and hierarchy.

Why America doesn't elect its president by popular vote. The Electoral College was designed as a compromise between large and small states — and between those who trusted popular democracy and those who feared it.

The origins of the War on Drugs — how a policy sold as public health became a tool of racial control, mass incarceration, and political power, devastating communities that it was supposed to protect.

The origins of American policing — from slave patrols in the South to private security for Northern industrialists. How the founding DNA of American law enforcement shapes policing today.

The history of the N-95 mask — from plague doctors' bird masks to the 1918 flu to COVID-19. How masks became political symbols and why America's response to pandemics reveals deep cultural fault lines.