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Ramtin Arablouei Ramtin Arablouei is co-host and co-producer of NPR's podcast Throughline.
Ramtin Arablouei, co-host and co-producer of Throughline.
Stories By

Ramtin Arablouei

Thursday

How Korean Culture Went Global (2022)
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Throughline

How Korean Culture Went Global (2022)

From BTS to Squid Game to high-end beauty standards, South Korea reigns as a global exporter of pop culture and entertainment. Just 70 years ago, it would have seemed impossible. For the next episode in our "Superpower" series, exploring U.S. connections to East Asia, we tell the story of South Korea's rise from a war-decimated state to a major driver of global soft power: a story of war, occupation, economic crisis, and national strategy that breaks around the world as the Korean Wave.

How Korean Culture Went Global (2022)

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Tuesday

Africa

How did Ethiopia go from its leader winning the Nobel Peace Prize to war in a year?

In 2019, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize. A year later, he launched what has become the deadliest war of the 21st century. NPR's history podcast Throughline investigates.

How did Ethiopia go from its leader winning the Nobel Peace Prize to war in a year?

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Thursday

By Accident of Birth (2022)

Painted portrait of Wong Kim Ark in the Asian American Community Heroes Mural, located in San Francisco's Chinatown. Julie Caine/Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco hide caption

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Julie Caine/Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco

Throughline

By Accident of Birth (2022)

In August of 1895, a ship called the SS Coptic approached the coast of Northern California. On that boat was a passenger from San Francisco, a young man named Wong Kim Ark. He was returning home after visiting his wife and child in China, and he'd taken similar trips before. But when the ship docked, officials told him he couldn't get off. The customs agent barred him according to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which denied citizenship to Chinese immigrants.

By Accident of Birth (2022)

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Thursday

The Characters That Built China (2022)

Two craftsmen printing a book in kanji (the Chinese logographic system), China, circa 1800. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption

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Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Throughline

The Characters That Built China (2022)

Today, China is a global superpower. But less than two hundred years ago, the nation was in a state of decline. After what became known as the 'century of humiliation' at the hands of Western imperialist powers, its very survival was in question. A movement arose to fight off foreign interference and preserve Chinese culture in the face of intense pressure from a rapidly-changing world. And the key to that movement was language.In this episode, we follow three key reformers who worked to modernize written and spoken Chinese, sometimes risking their lives to do so. Their work simplified Chinese, standardized it, and took it from an inaccessible language built for the elite to a modern language for the masses. It was a struggle that spanned generations, changed the fate of millions of people, and helped create the powerful modern nation-state of China.

The Characters That Built China (2022)

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Wednesday

History

NPR's history podcast 'Throughline' looks back on the 'lavender scare'

The lavender scare was a moral panic that began in the early years of the Cold War. In 1953, President Eisenhower signed an executive order that banned LGBTQ people from serving in government.

NPR's history podcast 'Throughline' looks back on the 'lavender scare'

Listen · 7:06
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Thursday

The Lavender Scare
New York Public Library

Throughline

The Lavender Scare

One day in late April 1958, a young economist named Madeleine Tress was approached by two men in suits at her office at the U.S. Department of Commerce. They took her to a private room, turned on a tape recorder, and demanded she respond to allegations that she was an "admitted homosexual." Two weeks later, she resigned. Madeleine was one of thousands of victims of a purge of gay and lesbian people ordered at the highest levels of the U.S. government: a program spurred by a panic that destroyed careers and lives and lasted more than forty years. Today, it's known as the "Lavender Scare." In a moment when LGBTQ+ rights are again in the public crosshairs, we tell the story of the Lavender Scare: its victims, its proponents, and a man who fought for decades to end it.

The Lavender Scare

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Thursday

Getting to Sesame Street (2022)

'Sesame Street' hosts Matt Robinson (Gordon), Will Lee (Mr. Hooper) Loretta Long (Susan) and Bob McGrath (Bob) stand with Big Bird in a promotional still on the set of the educational public television series, circa 1969. Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption

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Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Throughline

Getting to Sesame Street (2022)

American schools have always been more than where we go to learn the ABCs: They're places where socialization happens and cultural norms are developed. And arguments over what those norms are and how they're communicated tend to flare up during moments of cultural anxiety — like the one we're in now.

Getting to Sesame Street (2022)

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Thursday

The Hidden War
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Throughline

The Hidden War

How does a country go from its leader winning the Nobel Peace Prize to all-out war in just one year? That's the question surrounding Ethiopia, which has become embroiled in one of the deadliest wars of the 21st century. The U.S. has called it an ethnic cleansing campaign against Tigrayans, a minority group in the country; some human rights organizations have called it a genocide. But many people outside Ethiopia and its diaspora had no idea it was happening. In U.S. media, it's hardly discussed, even as violence has intensified throughout the country. In this episode, we tell the story of Ethiopia — the oldest independent country in Africa — and the political, cultural and religious factors that led to this war.

The Hidden War

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Thursday

All Wars Are Fought Twice (2022)

South Vietnamese clamber aboard barges in the port of Saigon in an attempt to escape from advancing North Vietnamese troops on the day of the Fall of Saigon that ended the Vietnam War. Nik Wheeler/CORBIS hide caption

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Nik Wheeler/CORBIS

Throughline

All Wars Are Fought Twice (2022)

"All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. This week on Throughline, we want to pause the news cycle to think about not just how war is experienced or consumed, but how it's remembered. A refugee from the Vietnam War, Nguyen calls himself a scholar of memory — someone who studies how we remember events of the past, both as people and as nations. As the war in Ukraine continues and conflicts around the globe displace millions, we speak with Nguyen about national memory, selective forgetting, and the refugee stories that might ultimately help us move forward.

All Wars Are Fought Twice (2022)

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Thursday

No Bad Ideas?
Cate Gillon/Getty Images

Throughline

No Bad Ideas?

Humans have always created. But historian Samuel W. Franklin argues that "creativity" didn't become a social value until the Cold War. Today, we're at another inflection point for humanity, technology, and national identity. The meaning of originality is blurring; there are legal disputes about what constitutes original art; and AI can write a song like your favorite artist in seconds. So what does it mean to put creativity on a pedestal? And what would it look like to tear it down? On this episode, we talk with Franklin, author of "The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History," about original thinking, AI, and how the human drive to create gets branded, packaged, and sold.

No Bad Ideas?

Listen · 51:12
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Thursday

The Legacy of Henry Kissinger
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Throughline

The Legacy of Henry Kissinger

Depending on where you stand, Henry Kissinger is either a foreign policy mastermind or a war criminal. Some see him as a brilliant strategist who made tough but necessary decisions to advance American interests in a complex world; others point to his infamous order that American warplanes should "bomb anything that flies, on anything that moves" as evidence that he bears responsibility for the loss of countless civilian lives. But one thing both sides agree on is that few figures in the 20th century have had a more profound influence on how the U.S. conducts foreign policy.Kissinger grew up in an orthodox Jewish household in Germany, under the shadow of the Nazis' rise to power; he and his family fled to the U.S. when he was a teenager. Professor Jeremi Suri, author of "Henry Kissinger and the American Century," argues that Kissinger's experiences during the Holocaust have informed his approach to global politics throughout his career, as well as his relationship with democracy, war, and power. Today on the show, how Henry Kissinger shaped, and was shaped by, the 20th century.

The Legacy of Henry Kissinger

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Thursday

After Roe: A New Battlefield (2022)
Marcy Nighswander/AP

Throughline

After Roe: A New Battlefield (2022)

The Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade transformed the landscape of abortion rights overnight. For the doctors, lawyers, feminists, and others who had fought for nationwide legalization, Roe was the end of a long battle. But for the growing movement against abortion rights, it was the beginning of a new battle: to protect the fetus, challenge abortion providers, and ultimately overturn Roe. This is the story of how opponents of abortion rights banded together, built power, and launched one of the most successful grassroots campaigns of the past century.

After Roe: A New Battlefield (2022)

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Tuesday

History

How one woman set out to do something about the financial burden of motherhood

NPR's history podcast Throughline tells the story of Johnnie Tillmon, a Black mother on welfare, who fought for motherhood to be recognized as labor worthy of pay.

How one woman set out to do something about the financial burden of motherhood

Listen · 6:55
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Thursday

The Labor Of Love
David McNew/Getty Images

Throughline

The Labor Of Love

There's a powerful fantasy in American society: the fantasy of the ideal mother. This mother is devoted to her family above all else. She raises the kids, volunteers at the school, cleans the house, plans the birthday parties, cares for her own parents. She's a natural nurturer. And she's happy to do it all for free. Problem is? She's imaginary. And yet the idea of her permeates our culture, our economy, and our social policy – and it distorts them. The U.S. doesn't have universal health insurance or universal childcare. We don't have federally mandated paid family leave or a meaningful social safety net for when times get rough. Instead, we have this imaginary mother. We've structured our society as though she exists — but she doesn't. And we all pay the real-life price.

The Labor Of Love

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Thursday