From dating shows to police interrogation rooms, the polygraph test has long been marketed as a way to detect deception. But can it really? And who decided we needed a truth machine in the first place? In this episode, a Throughline listener sends us on a quest to uncover the story of the lie detector.…
Carl von Clausewitz is one of the most celebrated, referenced, and original military strategists: his magnum opus On War is eclipsed in popularity and impact on the philosophy of war only by The Art of War. The philosophy of war according to Clausewitz is illustrated in the book’s most enduring quote: ‘War is merely the…
As young men, both Winston Churchill and Napoleon’s only son were certain that destiny had marked them out for greatness. Here, Bilal Junejo asks why one lived to save his country while the other died at 21, remembered today as little more than a footnote. Winston Churchill in 1900. Source: Public domain, Imperial War Museum,…
The reporting team visits Somali Olympic legend Abdi Bile in Minnesota where he is training the next generation of Somali runners – runners like Samia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Eighth Amendment. What is cruel and unusual punishment? Who gets to define and decide the amendment’s boundaries? And how did the Constitution’s authors imagine it might change? In this hour, the shifting definition of cruel and unusual punishment. This episode was originally published in January 2025. Guests: John Bessler, law professor at the University…
A casual chat between two neighbours in snow-covered Edgemont, Alberta, Canada, led to an unexpected connection between two sons—one from the freezing Canadian winter and the other from a bushfire-ravaged property in Queensland, Australia. Their fathers shared a heroic bond during World War Two, and neither family knew of the other’s existence before their contact.…
On the night of February 1, 1959, nine experienced hikers pitched a tent on the open eastern shoulder of Kholat Syakhl, a bare, wind-scoured mountain in the northern Urals whose Mansi name is usually translated as “Dead Mountain.” Sometime that night they cut their way out of the tent and walked, most of them without…
by Connor Williams What can Americans learn about our divided country today from the Civil War that divided us in the past? Connor Williams’s The Confederacy Myth answers that question with a blistering historical exposé that reframes our understanding of the Confederacy towards what it really was—a relatively small insurrection of uncompromising fanatics that plunged…
Call it standing ovation inflation: these days, it feels like it’s mandatory to stand and clap for live performances. Has our please clap era gone too far? That’s what one Throughline listener wanted to know. So we traced the winding road from Shakespeare’s epilogues to Broadway divas to ridiculously long film festival ovations… and how…
In the year 1066, England stood at the edge of one of the most consequential transformations in its history. It was not an impoverished or primitive kingdom waiting to be rescued by a more advanced civilization. On the contrary, England was wealthy, organized and politically sophisticated, with an established legal system, an effective administration, a…