Accessibility links
Rund Abdelfatah Rund Abdelfatah is the co-host and producer of Throughline.
Rund Abdelfatah headshot
Stories By

Rund Abdelfatah

Thursday

History

'Throughline': How one company contributed greatly to America's sweet tooth

NPR's history podcast Throughline explains how in the 1970s Dwayne Andreas, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland, used the sugar market to popularize high fructose corn syrup.

'Throughline': How one company contributed greatly to America's sweet tooth

Listen · 7:02
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1145952357/1145952358" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
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)

Listen · 50:19
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1143428885/1200556313" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

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

toggle caption
Keystone Features/Getty Images

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

Listen · 51:57
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1144970360/1198976867" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Thursday

God Wants You To Be Rich (2021)
Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty I

Throughline

God Wants You To Be Rich (2021)

In the New Testament, Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. In the United States today, many Christians believe in something radically different. In what's known as the prosperity gospel, wealth is a sign of virtue and God's favor. The effects of this belief can be seen throughout American life from business to politics to social Policy.

God Wants You To Be Rich (2021)

Listen · 48:37
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1143417231/1200556317" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

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
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1142881052/1200556321" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

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

Listen · 52:21
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1140995918/1200556325" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

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)

Listen · 56:50
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1139470361/1200556329" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Saturday

La Última Copa: El sueño del pibe
Manan Vatsyayana / AFP via Getty Images

Throughline

La Última Copa: El sueño del pibe

Ésta semana te presentamos un episodio muy especial de nuestros amigos en NPR y Futuro Media — su primer episodio del podcast La Última Copa, en Español. Todo comenzó con una gambeta extraordinaria en una ciudad Argentina. A eso le siguió la llegada a España y el club de fútbol que definiría su carrera, el Barça. La periodista Jasmine Garsd explora el camino trazado por Lionel Messi antes de convertirse en uno de los mejores del mundo. En la Argentina, donde el fútbol a menudo se convierte en obsesión, Messi fue el chico que se marchó antes de tiempo.La historia se cruza con las vivencias de la propia Garsd durante el colapso social del 2001 en la Argentina y el impacto de la crisis en la vida de Messi.

La Última Copa: El sueño del pibe

Listen · 41:40
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1138725075/1200556333" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Thursday

The Last Cup: The Kid's Dream
Manan Vatsyayana / AFP via Getty Images

Throughline

The Last Cup: The Kid's Dream

This week we're bringing you something special from our friends at NPR and Futuro Media: the first episode of the podcast, The Last Cup. From his earliest goals on the soccer fields of his hometown in Argentina to his arrival at Spain's Barça Football Club, host Jasmine Garsd follows the journey of a gifted kid who would go on to become one of the best soccer players ever. In Argentina, where the national sport is a fierce obsession, Lionel Messi was the one that got away. As Garsd retraces Messi's early career, she examines the consequences of Argentina's devastating economic crisis of 2001, how it shaped Messi's path, and what it meant for her own life.

The Last Cup: The Kid's Dream

Listen · 41:40
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1138722270/1200556337" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Thursday

How Qatar became this year's World Cup host
Catherine Ivill/Getty Images

Throughline

How Qatar became this year's World Cup host

Football, aka soccer, is life. At least, it is for many people across the globe. There are few things that are universally beloved but this sport comes close. And as teams on nearly every continent prepare for the start of the World Cup, all eyes are on one tiny country at the tip of the desert. Qatar. The first Arab country ever to secure the World Cup bid. But it's been a long and complicated road to get to this moment. Espionage. Embargoes. Covert deals. This is the story of Qatar's decades-long pursuit of the World Cup bid and its role in the nation's transformation into a global power.

How Qatar became this year's World Cup host

Listen · 51:48
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1136875657/1200556341" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Thursday

Middle East

Struggle for gender equality in Iran began generations before the latest protests

In light of the ongoing protests in Iran, NPR history podcast Throughline explores Iranian women's long history of political activism.

Struggle for gender equality in Iran began generations before the latest protests

Listen · 7:08
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1135718958/1135718959" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Dreams, Creatures, and Visions
Chistof Stache/AFP via Getty Images

Throughline

Dreams, Creatures, and Visions

We are in the season of chaos. It can feel like everything is happening at once: You might be sprinting across an airport; or around your kitchen, with a few too many dishes cooking at once. Your phone keeps pinging — texts, weather alerts, and more and more breaking news. Here at Throughline, we're always going to different places in time and space. So this week, come with us: to another time, another place, another realm. In this episode, we'll be your sonic travel guides on a journey through bite-sized pieces of Throughline's most immersive episodes, from the shadowy world of dreams, to the midst of the Revolutionary War, to the haunting music of Radiohead and their visions of the future.

Dreams, Creatures, and Visions

Listen · 48:10
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1135166999/1200556345" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Wednesday

Throughline: How Korean culture went global

Korean band BTS appears at the daily press briefing with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, in the Brady Press Briefing of the White House in Washington, DC, May 31, 2022. SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

Code Switch

Throughline: How Korean culture went global

From BTS to Squid Game to high-end beauty standards, South Korea reigns as a global exporter of pop culture and entertainment. How does a country go from a war-decimated state just 70 years ago, to a major driver of global soft power? Through war, occupation, economic crisis, and national strategy, comes a global phenomenon - the Korean wave. This is an episode from our play cousins Throughline and originally aired September 8th, 2022.

Throughline: How Korean culture went global

Listen · 48:05
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1134772593/1199264759" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Thursday

The Most Sacred Right (2020)
Kaz Fantone

Throughline

The Most Sacred Right (2020)

Born into slavery in the early 1800s, Frederick Douglass would live to see the Civil War, Emancipation, Black men getting the right to vote, and the beginning of the terrors and humiliations of Jim Crow. And through all of that, he kept coming back to one thing, a sacred right he believed was at the heart of American democracy: Voting. Next week is the midterm election. So this week, we're bringing you an episode we originally published right before the 2020 election. And we're tackling a question that still feels very timely — a question that both haunted and drove Frederick Douglass his entire life. Is our democracy set up to include everyone? And if not... can it ever be?

The Most Sacred Right (2020)

Listen · 1:02:29
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1133302141/1200556349" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Thursday

The State of Disunion
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Throughline

The State of Disunion

Is the U.S. on the brink of civil war? It's a question that has been in the air for a while now, as divisions continue to worsen. Beyond the political speeches and debates in the halls of Congress, it's something you're likely feeling in your day-to-day life. Vaccines, school curriculums, climate change, what you define as a human rights issue, even who you call a friend. Some say we've moved beyond the point of discussion. But when words fail, what comes next? In conversation with Malcolm Nance, Anne Applebaum, and Peniel Joseph, we take a deeper look at what we mean when we say civil war, how exactly the country reached this political moment, and where we go from here.

The State of Disunion

Listen · 48:48
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1131732636/1200556353" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript