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Throughline The past is never past. Every headline has a history. Join us every week as we go back in time to understand the present. These are stories you can feel and sounds you can see from the moments that shaped our world.
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The past is never past. Every headline has a history. Join us every week as we go back in time to understand the present. These are stories you can feel and sounds you can see from the moments that shaped our world.

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BONUS: Louder Than A Riot

Killer Mike. Dale Edwin Murray for NPR hide caption

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Dale Edwin Murray for NPR

BONUS: Louder Than A Riot

This week we're bringing you something extra, an episode from the NPR Music series, Louder Than A Riot. The series examines the relationship between hip hop and mass incarceration and you can find the rest of the series here.

BONUS: Louder Than A Riot

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The Shadows of the Constitution

The preamble to the US Constitution. Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty hide caption

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Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty

The Shadows of the Constitution

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.

The Shadows of the Constitution

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Bush v. Gore and Why It Matters in 2020

A judge uses a magnifying glass to examine a dimpled chad on a punch card ballot during the vote recount in Florida for the 2000 presidential election. Robert King/Getty Images hide caption

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Robert King/Getty Images

Bush v. Gore and Why It Matters in 2020

In the 2000 presidential election, results weren't known in one night, a week, or even a month. This week, we share an episode we loved from It's Been A Minute with Sam Sanders that revisits one of the most turbulent elections in U.S. history and what it could teach us as we wait for this election's outcome.

Bush v. Gore and Why It Matters in 2020

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The Most Sacred Right
Kaz Fantone

The Most Sacred Right

Frederick Douglass dreamed of a country where all people could vote and he did everything in his power to make that dream a reality. In the face of slavery, the Civil War and the violence of Jim Crow, he fought his entire life for what he believed was a sacred, natural right that should be available to all people - voting.

The Most Sacred Right

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How We Vote
Kaz Fantone

How We Vote

Drunken brawls, coercion, and lace curtains. Believe it or not, how regular people vote was not something the founding fathers thought much about, or planned for. Americans went from casting votes at drunken parties in the town square to private booths behind a drawn curtain. In this episode, the process of voting; how it was originally designed, who it was intended for, moments in our country's history when we reimagined it altogether, and what we're left with today.

How We Vote

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The Electoral College
Kaz Fantone

The Electoral College

What is it, why do we have it, and why hasn't it changed? Born from a rushed, fraught, imperfect process, the origins and evolution of the Electoral College might surprise you and make you think differently about not only this upcoming presidential election, but our democracy as a whole.

The Electoral College

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(mis)Representative Democracy, A New Series From Throughline

(mis)Representative Democracy, a new series from Throughline. NPR hide caption

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NPR

(mis)Representative Democracy, A New Series From Throughline

America has never been a country of one person, one vote. And that's by design. Our system was built by a select few, for a select few. We were never all supposed to get a say.

(mis)Representative Democracy, A New Series From Throughline

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The United States vs. Billie Holiday

Portrait of Billie Holiday singing at the Downbeat club in New York City on February 1947. Library of Congress hide caption

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Library of Congress

The United States vs. Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday helped shape American popular music with her voice and unique style. But, one song in particular has become her greatest legacy — "Strange Fruit." The song paints an unflinching picture of racial violence, and it was an unexpected hit. But singing it brought serious consequences.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday

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The Everlasting Problem

Health care reform supporters participate in a sit-in inside the lobby of a building where Aetna insurance offices are located September 29, 2009 in New York City. Mario Tama/Getty Images hide caption

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Mario Tama/Getty Images

The Everlasting Problem

Health insurance for millions of Americans is dependent on their jobs. But it's not like that everywhere. So, how did the U.S. end up with such a fragile system that leaves so many vulnerable or with no health insurance at all? On this episode, how a temporary solution created an everlasting problem.

The Everlasting Problem

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The Evangelical Vote
Angela Hsieh

The Evangelical Vote

With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the president is hoping to fill the seat with a more ideologically conservative justice. And evangelical Christians, who've become a powerful conservative voting bloc, have been waiting for this moment. But how and when did this religious group become so intertwined with today's political issues, especially abortion? In this episode, what it means to be an evangelical today and how that has changed over time.

The Evangelical Vote

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