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Devin Katayama Devin Katayama is a Senior Producer for NPR's Throughline podcast.
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Devin Katayama

Thursday

The Mystery of Inflation (2022)
Francesco Carta fotografo/Getty Images

Throughline

The Mystery of Inflation (2022)

Rising interest rates. Layoffs. A shrinking dollar. Over the past year, the US economy has been squeezed: The same amount of money gets you less stuff. It's inflation: a concept that's easy to feel but hard to understand. Its causes are complex, but it isn't some kind of naturally-occurring phenomenon — and neither are the ways in which governments try to fight it.

The Mystery of Inflation (2022)

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Thursday

Everyone Everywhere All At Once
imaginima/Getty Images

Throughline

Everyone Everywhere All At Once

This year's Oscars were one of the most diverse in history, in all kinds of ways. Everything Everywhere All At Once swept some of the biggest categories, notching incredible victories for Asian and Asian American actors, directors, and writers. At the same time, huge gaps persist – to take just one example, only seven women have ever been nominated for Best Director, and only three have won.

Everyone Everywhere All At Once

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Thursday

A More Perfect Human
Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images

Throughline

A More Perfect Human

The dream of AI — artificial intelligence — has been around for centuries: the idea of an intelligent machine without free will popped up in ancient Taoist scrolls, Buddhist fables, and the tales of medieval European courts. But it wasn't until the 20th century that science caught up to our imaginations.

A More Perfect Human

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Thursday

From the Warehouse to the world: Chicago and the birth of house music

BBoy B, Flash, 38 Slugs and Skol's 'Frankie Knuckles' tribute mural is displayed in the Fulton Market neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois on July 6, 2019. Raymond Boyd/Getty Images hide caption

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Music Features

From the Warehouse to the world: Chicago and the birth of house music

For the people who were there when it was invented in small clubs and basement parties in Chicago in the 1980s, house music was a force of nature. Four decades later, its impact is bigger than ever.

Dance Yourself Free
John M Lund Photography Inc/Getty Images

Throughline

Dance Yourself Free

Ever since Beyonce's Renaissance dropped last summer, house music has found its way back to mainstream audiences, prompting some to ask "Is house back?" But the truth is, it never went away. Born out of the ashes of disco in the underground clubs of Chicago by Black queer youth in the late 1970s and 80s, house music has been the continued soundtrack of parties around the world, and laid the groundwork for one of the most popular musical genres in history – electronic dance music. And yet, the deeper you dig into the origins of house music, the more clear it becomes that the history of house, like the history of rock and roll, is a complicated tale of Black cultural resistance.

Dance Yourself Free

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Thursday

The Whiteness Myth
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Throughline

The Whiteness Myth

In 1923, an Indian American man named Bhagat Singh Thind argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that he was a white man and was therefore eligible to become a naturalized citizen. He based his claim on the fact that he was a member of India's highest caste and identified as an Aryan and therefore white. His claims were supported by the so-called Indo-European language theory, a controversial idea at the time that says nearly half the world's population speak a language that originated in one place. Theories about who lived in that place inspired a racist ideology that contended that the original speakers of the language were a white supreme race that colonized Europe and Asia thousands of years ago. This was used by many to define whiteness and eventually led to one of the most horrific events in history. On this episode of Throughline, we unpack the myths around this powerful idea and explore the politics and promise of the mother tongue.

The Whiteness Myth

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Thursday

When Things Fall Apart
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Throughline

When Things Fall Apart

Climate change, political unrest, random violence - Western society can often feel like what the filmmaker Werner Herzog calls, "a thin layer of ice on top of an ocean of chaos and darkness." In the United States, polls indicate that many people believe that law and order is the only thing protecting us from the savagery of our neighbors, that the fundamental nature of humanity is competition and struggle. This idea is often called "veneer theory." But is this idea rooted in historical reality? Is this actually what happens when societies face disasters? Are we always on the cusp of brutality?

When Things Fall Apart

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Wednesday

Thursday

Extremist Futures
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Throughline

Extremist Futures

It's 2074 and a suicide bomber has killed the President of the United States. Months later Marines open fire on protesters killing dozens. The Second American Civil War has just begun and once again the North and South are pitted against each other. This is all according to the dystopian world chronicled in Omar El Akkad's novel, American War. El Akkad's imagined, yet familiar, world is reflective of today's deep political and societal fissures, but it also pushes us to understand the universal language of war and ruin, to what happens after the violence begins and why it's so hard to end.

Extremist Futures

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Thursday

Do Not Pass Go (2022)
Mark Lennihan/AP

Throughline

Do Not Pass Go (2022)

There's more to Monopoly than you might think. It's one of the best-selling board games in history — despite huge economic instability, sales actually went up during the pandemic — and it's been an iconic part of American life at other pivotal moments: a cheap pastime during the Great Depression; a reminder of home for soldiers during WWII; and an American export during its rise as a global superpower. It endured even as it reflected some of the ongoing inequities in American society, from segregation and redlining, to capitalism run rampant. That's because Monopoly is also built on powerful American lore – the idea that anyone, with just a little bit of cash, can rise from rags to riches. Writer Mary Pilon, the author of The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game, describes Monopoly as "the Great American Dream in a board game – or, nightmare."This week: how a critique of capitalism grew from a seed of an idea in a rebellious young woman's mind into a game legendary for its celebration of wealth at all costs. And behind that legend — there's a lie.

Do Not Pass Go (2022)

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Thursday

The New Gilded Age (2022)
Library of Congress

Throughline

The New Gilded Age (2022)

Philanthropic foundations are a fundamental part of our society: they support media, the arts, education, medical research, and more. NPR, and even this show, is supported by many personal and family foundations. But it wasn't always that way. In this episode, we go back to the beginning — the Gilded Age. We trace the birth and evolution of what many today call "big philanthropy," and ask what all this private wealth means for the public good.

The New Gilded Age (2022)

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Friday

Road To Partition

Afghan traders leaving Amritsar, Punjab, with all their belongings, after communal violence in the city during the Partition of British India, March 1947. (Photo by Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Keystone Features/Getty Images hide caption

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The NPR Politics Podcast

Road To Partition

What happens when a nation splits apart? It's a question many of us are asking ourselves today. It happened 75 years ago with Partition, when India and Pakistan became independent nations, divided by a somewhat arbitrary line that separated neighbors, families, and communities. 15 million people were displaced, leaving a trail of chaos and violence that in some ways has never ended. In today's special episode of the NPR Politics Podcast, from our friends at Throughline, Asma Khalid takes us back in time to learn how the road to Partition was paved, and to try to understand how people and nations reach a tipping point when neighbors realize it's no longer possible to live side by side.

Road To Partition

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Thursday

Road to Partition
Keystone Features/Getty Images

Throughline

Road to Partition

What happens when a nation splits apart? It's a question many of us are asking ourselves today. It happened 75 years ago with Partition, when India and Pakistan became independent nations, divided by a somewhat arbitrary line that separated neighbors, families, and communities. 15 million people were displaced, leaving a trail of chaos and violence that in some ways has never ended. In today's episode, NPR politics reporter Asma Khalid takes us back in time to learn how the road to Partition was paved, and to try to understand how people and nations reach a tipping point when neighbors realize it's no longer possible to live side by side.

Road to Partition

Listen · 52:24
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Thursday

400 Years of Sweetness
Christina Vega Rhor / AFP via Getty Images

Throughline

400 Years of Sweetness

In the 1970s, a savvy CEO named Dwayne Andreas hit on an idea: take surplus corn from America's heartland, process it into a sweetener, and start selling it to anyone who would buy, all in the name of patriotism. Within a decade, high fructose corn syrup dominated the U.S. sweetener market; today, American diets are saturated with sweeteners, including cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and dozens of others.

400 Years of Sweetness

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Thursday

The Nostalgia Bone (2021)
Hokyoung Kim

Throughline

The Nostalgia Bone (2021)

The global pandemic spawned a different type of epidemic, one of an entirely different nature: a nostalgia outbreak. Longing for 'simpler times' and 'better days', many of us turned to 90s dance playlists, TV sitcoms, and sports highlights. We looked for comfort and safety in the permanence of the past, or at least, what we think the past was. But, when it first appeared, nostalgia itself wasn't considered a feeling; it was a deadly disease. This episode traces the history of nostalgia from its origins as an illness to the dominating emotion of our time. And in doing so, we wrestle with its eternal paradox to both hold us back and keep us going.

The Nostalgia Bone (2021)

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