Throughline

The 25th amendment. A few years before JFK was shot, an idealistic young lawyer set out on a mission to convince people something essential was missing from the Constitution: clear instructions for wh...

14 Aug 202547min

The Eighth Amendment. What is cruel and unusual punishment? Who gets to define and decide its boundaries? And how did the Constitution's authors imagine it might change? Today on Throughline's We the ...

7 Aug 202547min

The Fifth Amendment. You have the right to remain silent when you're being questioned in police custody, thanks to the Fifth's protection against self-incrimination. But most people end up talking to ...

31 Jul 202549min

In the mid-1980s, an OBGYN in Brazil noticed that far fewer pregnant women at his hospital were dying from abortion complications. It wasn't a coincidence. Brazilian women had made a discovery that al...

29 Jul 202540min

The Third Amendment.Maybe you've heard it as part of a punchline. It's the one about quartering troops — two words you probably haven't heard side by side since about the late 1700s.At first glance, i...

24 Jul 202547min

Act now to ensure public media remains free and accessible to all. Your donation will help this essential American service survive and thrive. Visit donate.npr.org now.See pcm.adswizz.com for informat...

18 Jul 20252min

Edward Said brought the question of Palestine into the American mainstream. He taught at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, and today, more than two decades after his death, pro-Palestine studen...

17 Jul 202550min

What's the role of government in society? What do we mean when we talk about individual responsibility? What makes us free? 'Neoliberalism' might feel like a squishy term that's hard to define and und...

10 Jul 202549min