Throughline

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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

What's happening in Iran right now is unprecedented. But the Iranian people's struggle for gender equality began generations before the death of 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, also known by her Kurdish name, Jina Amini. The successes of this struggle, as well as its setbacks and horrors, are well-documented, but often misunderstood. Scholar Arzoo Osanloo argues that women have been at the center of Iran's century-long fight for freedom and self-determination. It's a historical thread that goes all the way back to Iran's Constitutional Revolution in the early 20th century: A complicated story of reform, revolution, and a fundamental questioning of whether Iranian people — and people around the Islamic world — will accept a government of clerics as the sole arbiters of Islam and the state.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Halloween — the night of ghost stories and trick-or-treating — has religious origins that span over two thousand years. Over time, the Catholic Church, pagan groups, and even the brewing company Coors have played a role in shape-shifting the holiday. How did Halloween turn from a spiritual celebration to a multi-billion dollar industry? From the Great Famine of Ireland to the Simpsons, we present the many evolutions of Halloween.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In a world where computer chips run everything from laptops to cars to the Nintendo Switch, Taiwan is the undisputed leader. It's one of the most powerful tech centers in the world — so powerful that both China and the U.S. have vital interests there. But if you went back to the Taiwan of the 1950s, this would have seemed unimaginable. It was a quiet, sleepy island; an agrarian culture. Fifty years later, it experienced what many recall as an "economic miracle" — a transformation into not just one of Asia's economic powerhouses, but one of the world's.This transformation was deliberate: the result of an active policy by the Taiwanese government to lure its people back from Silicon Valley. In the 1970s and 80s the government of Taiwan, led by finance minister K.T. Li, the "father of Taiwan's Miracle," actively recruited restless and ambitious Taiwanese businessmen, many of whom felt like they'd hit a glass ceiling in the U.S., to return to Taiwan and start technology companies. Today, those companies are worth billions.In this special collaboration between Throughline and Planet Money, we talk to one such billionaire: Miin Wu, founder of Macronix, a computer chip company. When he left the U.S., he brought back dozens of Taiwanese engineers with him — one article called it a "reverse brain drain." This episode tells the story of his journey from California's Silicon Valley to Asia's Silicon Island, and the seismic global shift it kicked off.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

We live in divided times, when the answer to the question 'what is reality?' depends on who you ask. Almost all the information we take in is to some extent edited and curated, and the line between entertainment and reality has become increasingly blurred. Nowhere is that more obvious than the world of reality television. The genre feeds off our most potent feelings – love, hope, anxiety, loneliness – and turns them into profit... and presidents. So in this episode, we're going to filter three themes of our modern world through the lens of reality TV: dating, the American dream, and the rage machine.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Over one million Uyghur people have been detained in camps in China, according to estimates, subjected to torture, forced labor, religious restrictions, and even forced sterilization. Last month, the United Nations released a report saying that China's treatment of Uyghurs could be considered "crimes against humanity." The vast majority of this minority ethnic group is Muslim, living for centuries at a crossroads of culture and empire along what was once the Silk Road. This week, we explore who the Uyghur people are, their land, their customs, their music and why they've become the target of what many are calling a genocide.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In American history, schools have not just been places to learn the ABCs – they're places where socialization happens and cultural norms are developed. Arguments over how and what those norms are and how they're communicated tend to flare up during moments of cultural anxiety. Sesame Street was part of a larger movement in the late 1960s to reach lower income, less privileged and more "urban" audiences. It was part of LBJ's Great Society agenda. But Sesame Street is a TV show - not a classroom. And it was funded in part by taxpayer dollars. This story is about how a television show made to represent New York City neighborhoods – like Harlem and the Bronx – has sustained its mark in educating children in a divided country.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy