The Electoral College

After the Civil War, while America was rebuilding itself, some Southerners made a different kind of move — they packed up and left. Today on the show: the Confederados, the American settlers who fled to Brazil chasing wealth, land, and a chance to keep slavery alive.To access bon ...  Show more

Military confrontations, early-morning attacks, and digital warfare: the story of Iran and the U.S. from the 1979 Iranian revolution to the fraught moment we're in today. This episode originally ran in 2019 as Rules of Engagement. You can find more of Throughline's coverage into ...  Show more

Be it suspicion of voter fraud, fear of hackers or the general belief that something is amiss, legislators across the country have passed election laws designed to make our elections more secure. Those very same laws are widely criticized for making voting less accessible, especi ...  Show more

Presidential elections have taken place in America every four years since 1788, but the 2020 election was unlike anything we had experienced before. Amid a pandemic, an economic crisis, and a long overdue reckoning with systemic racism, Americans made their votes and voices heard ...  Show more

When you vote in an American presidential election, you're not voting for your candidate - you're voting for a group of people you hope will in turn vote for your candidate. Listen in to learn more about the strange process for electing the president, in this classic episode.< ...

There have been 5 acknowledged presidential elections in US history where the winner of the popular vote did not win in the electoral college. However, there is a very good argument to be made that there is a sixth election that should be added to that list. The conventional wisd ...  Show more