Throughline
NPR traces current events back to their historical threads, first-hand material and timelines checkable
52:1815,000 People in a Cobalt Pit: Your Phone Battery Has Blood on It
The lithium-ion batteries in smartphones and electric vehicles depend on Congolese cobalt; from Leopold II's rubber terror to the assassination of Lumumba to a few dollars a day today, the same history of plunder is still running.
48:08The Korean Wave isn't a cultural miracle — it's a government-planned industrial counterattack
From the rubble of the Korean War to BTS and Parasite, the Korean Wave looks like a cultural phenomenon. It is actually the route two generations of leaders, from Park Chung-hee to Kim Dae-jung, took to turn culture into an export industry using the instruments of the state.
49:11After Tupperware fired its queen, the company buried her book
Brownie Wise turned Tupperware into an American household brand by selling it through housewives' living-room parties, then was fired for outshining the inventor, had the record of her life destroyed, and got no official recognition until a park was named for her in 2016.