エピソード

  • Shadows, war, and finding Moomin joy

    Shadows, war, and finding Moomin joy
    2026/10/29
    The Moomins have been a beloved children’s series around the world for decades. And now these bright, whimsical, and colorful Finnish characters are starting to gain steam in America. Today on Throughline, the story of their creator and the tragic circumstances that gave them life.

    Guests:

    Boel Westin, professor emerita of literature at Stockholm University, and author of Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words

    Stina Ekblad, actor (as the voice of Tove Jansson)

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    52 分
  • The dramatic race to discover Insulin

    The dramatic race to discover Insulin
    2026/10/22
    Looksmaxxing, weight loss, and muscle building have fueled a massive craze for injectable peptides. Some natural and some synthetic. These injectables have unleashed a multi-billion-dollar gray-market industry online and a high-stakes frontier for the pharmaceutical industry. Today, we reach back to the quest to manufacture the first peptide-based medicine: Insulin.

    Guests:

    Alison Li, historian of science and medicine, author of J. B. Collip and the Development of Medical Research in Canada: Extracts and Enterprise

    Grant Maltman, curator of Banting House National Historic Site

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    37 分
  • Can the polygraph test really spot a lie?

    Can the polygraph test really spot a lie?
    2026/10/20
    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.

    Guests:

    Ken Alder, professor of history at Northwestern University and author of The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession

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    20 分
  • Is the death penalty cruel and unusual?

    Is the death penalty cruel and unusual?
    2026/10/15
    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 of Baltimore School of Law, and adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Author of The Death Penalty's Denial of Fundamental Human Rights.

    Carol Steiker, law professor at Harvard Law School and author of Courting Death: the Supreme Court and Capital Punishment.


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    48 分
  • Why does everything get a standing ovation now?

    Why does everything get a standing ovation now?
    2026/10/13
    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 they helped engineer the way we applaud.

    Guests:

    Roger Gilbert,     professor in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell

    Kyle Buchanan, reporter and columnist for the New York Times

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    16 分
  • Four Seasons of Ceasefire in Gaza

    Four Seasons of Ceasefire in Gaza
    2026/10/08
    NPR’s Anas Baba is one of the last remaining journalists in Gaza working full-time for an American news organization. A year into the ceasefire, more than 1400 people have been killed in Israeli attacks, nearly 5,000 injured. And those numbers rise nearly every day. What has the last year looked and felt like on the ground? In this episode, Baba takes us through four seasons of ceasefire—as both a resident trying to survive and a reporter trying to document reality.

    Guests:

    Anas Baba, NPR Gaza reporter

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    43 分
  • How To Avoid The End of the World

    How To Avoid The End of the World
    2026/10/01
    We live in a moment with almost daily reminders of how fragile life on Earth is whether it be from climate change, nuclear weapons or AI. In this episode, we bring you a story from the not-so-distant past when we learned what drove dinosaurs to extinction. And how it might have helped us avoid the same end. This episode was originally published in March 2025.

    Guests:

    David Sepkoski, Thomas M. Siebel Chair in History of Science at the University of Illinois and author of Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity.

    Owen Brian Toon, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

    Alec Nevala-Lee, novelist, critic, and biographer and author of the forthcoming book Collisions: A Physicist's Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs.

    Ann Druyan, co-writer and co-creator of the television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.

    Andrew Revkin, science and environmental journalist.

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    52 分
  • Forty years of what if

    Forty years of what if
    2026/09/29
    On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff. All seven astronauts onboard died. Brian Russell, an engineer who worked on the shuttle, had spent months warning NASA that freezing temperatures could cause a critical seal to fail. In this episode, Brian Russell takes us to the intense meeting where NASA had to decide whether to launch and the 40-year weight of a tragedy he tried to prevent.

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    21 分