The Invention of Race

A listener emailed the Throughline team with a stunning factoid: Teddy Roosevelt helped create the NCAA to make college football safer. But is it true? What we find is weirder, grislier, and pettier than we expected.Guests:Denis Crawford, historian and exhibit designer at the Col ...  Show more

Millions of Americans depend on their jobs for health insurance. But that's not the case in many other wealthy countries. How did the U.S. end up with a system that's so expensive, yet leaves so many people vulnerable? On this episode, how a temporary solution created an everlast ...  Show more

To understand and eradicate racist thinking, start at the beginning. That's what journalist and documentarian John Biewen did, leading to a trove of surprising and thought-provoking information on the "origins" of race. He shares his findings, supplying answers to fundamental que ...  Show more

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Sam Harris speaks with Thomas Chatterton Williams about the reality and politics of race. They discuss his book "Self Portrait in Black and White," race as a social and biological construct, the prospects of achieving a "post-racial" society, in ...

Race is a social construct — so why are DNA test kits like the ones from 23andMe coded like they reveal biological fact about the user's racial makeup? This episode, Short Wave Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber talks to anthropologist Agustín Fuentes about the limits of at- ...  Show more