We the People: Succession of Power

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 ...  Show more

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 ...  Show more

Members of Congress from both parties have requested that the Vice President invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office. Today we explore all four parts of this relatively new amendment with constitutional scholar and author of The Bill of Rights: A Users Gui ...  Show more

The 25th and 26th Amendments — ratified in 1967 and 1971, respectively — are some of the newest additions to our founding document. However, they tackle some pretty basic questions: who gets to rule, and who gets to vote? If a president dies or is incapacitated, who takes over ...

Send us Fan MailJoin Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Monika Wiesak as they discuss one of America's most iconic leaders in, America's Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy. Listen in as they delve into the thrilling saga of a young, audacious visionary who ...  Show more

The process is pretty straightforward. Plenty of people want to make some change. And yet? We've only done it 27 times. So what does it take to amend the U.S. Constitution and why does it barely ever happen? Robinson Woodward Burns, Associate Professor of Political Science at How ...  Show more