This American Life explored Ohio's gerrymandering battle

Hear how gerrymandering is like 'Moneyball applied to politics'

In a 2016 interview, journalist David Daley explained how Republicans used data-driven targeting after the 2010 census to lock in durable advantages, comparing modern gerrymandering strategies to the analytics revolution in baseball.

Can courts end partisan gerrymandering?

This podcast explored whether courts can rein in partisan map-drawing, focusing on North Carolina's 2023 redistricting battle, the Moore v. Harper case, and the controversial "independent state legislature" theory.

Hear about the Supreme Court case so divisive that it caused a justice's breakdown

This podcast episode examines Baker v. Carr, a landmark redistricting ruling that Earl Warren called the most important of his tenure. The case was so divisive it triggered a justice's breakdown and permanently reshaped American democracy.

School integration is designed to improve student outcomes

This American Life follows a Missouri district’s court-ordered integration program that dramatically improved achievement gaps, revealing how desegregation remains an effective yet underused education reform.

An adultery and poisoning case examined whether federal treaty power supersedes state law

This Radiolab podcast unpacks Bond v. United States, where a local love-triangle assault became a federal case under an international treaty—forcing the Supreme Court to confront a founding question: How far can federal power reach into crimes traditionally handled by the states?

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Experience a year inside an American courthouse with 'Serial' Season 3

Season Three of "Serial" immerses listeners in a Cleveland courthouse for a year, showcasing how everyday justice unfolds—through plea deals, judicial decisions, and the quiet mechanics behind daily life in the criminal justice system.

A 1960s effort came close to abolishing the Electoral College

This podcast episode examines the closest attempts in US history to eliminate the Electoral College, focusing on a major 1960s reform push—and why, despite broad support, it ultimately failed.

Explore the unexpected ways people use public libraries in this 'This American Life' episode

Libraries serve as far more than book repositories. This episode follows a family experiencing homelessness that spent months living in their local library, Iranian students reuniting with family across the US-Canada border because the library straddled both countries, and a Vermont man who built his own library to house unpublished manuscripts.

Both parties largely agree that America's immigration system is broken

This three‑part podcast series traces America's immigration system origins, revealing how historically celebrated Ellis Island-era policies evolved into today's fractured, fact‑starved debate—shedding light on economic, cultural, and political forces shaping the current dysfunction.

Hear from both sides of the attempt to ban books across the country, which spiked by more than 1,100% between 2020 and 2022

During that period, more than 2,500 titles were challenged across 37 states, with activists targeting books on race, slavery, and gender identity. This CBS report hears from the founders of Moms for Liberty, a teacher removed for giving students access to banned books, and "Maus" cartoonist Art Spiegelman.

'This American Life' once tried to recreate the original recipe for Coca-Cola

Given that the Coca-Cola formula is one of the company's most closely-guarded secrets, the radio show's team was surprised to come across a 1979 newspaper article with what looked like the original recipe for Coke.

Watch 'I'm Just a Bill' explain how a law gets made

First aired in 1976, "I'm Just a Bill" became a defining civics lesson for generations, using animation and humor to trace the legislative process and cement itself as a lasting piece of US political culture.

The drama of the car dealership quota

Car salespersons are often under a ton of pressure to meet quotas at their dealership, at least partly explaining why they are known to stoop to such lows to sell cars. In this now legendary podcast episode, "This American Life" host Ira Glass and...

Stand-up comedy podcasts have realigned political campaigns

Some of the world’s most popular podcasts, like “The Joe Rogan Experience” and “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von,” are hosted by stand-up comedians. They also now play a role in American politics, with representatives, senators, and even presidents taking part in their freewheeling conversations

Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ inspired a trove of angry letters to The New Yorker

The writer’s short story “The Lottery” is widely taught in American schools and with good reason—it’s a masterful and horrifying story about the dangers of blind tradition. After its initial publication in The New Yorker, 150 readers wrote letters calling the story “outrageous,” “gruesome,” and “utterly pointless.” Listen to a reading of the story below and a discussion of why it provoked such outraged responses.

'Our Towns' offers a portrait of civic life in smaller cities in America

Based on the book of the same name by journalists James and Deborah Fallows, the 2021 documentary follows the pair as they travel across small and mid-sized American cities to show how communities handle economic setbacks and reinvent themselves locally.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

The Founders placed the pursuit of happiness at the center of good governance

This podcast explores the central place happiness played in the American founding, highlighting the influence of Greek and Roman moral philosophy on the founders’ constitutional ideas.

'Ben Franklin’s World' podcast explores the building of the Erie Canal

Historian Janice Fontanella, site manager of the Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, joined the podcast to recount the engineering challenges, local innovations, and broader impact of constructing the Erie Canal.

How one trial tested the limits of satirical music

The rapper Afroman, who earned jokey hits in the '90s with songs like "Because I Got High," was taken into court by police officers by police officers in Adams County, Ohio, who alleged that he'd defamed them in his songs. The music in question was recorded after those officers raided his house and satirized the situation, often in graphic terms. The rapper beat the case, but not before his satirical songs were analyzed in court.

‘Hang On Sloopy,’ Ohio’s unofficial anthem

The McCoys' 1965 single "Hang On Sloopy" isn't technically about the Buckeye State, but it became a fan favorite after appearing in the Ohio State Marching Band repertoire.

Reexamine the Thanksgiving story through this interactive game

This interactive experience casts you as a high school journalist uncovering how the Thanksgiving narrative has become simplified. Through animations, maps, primary sources, expert interviews, and text-message riddles, the game turns historical investigation into an engaging, hands-on mystery.

The Cincinnati Enquirer's Pulitzer-winning look at the opioid epidemic

Synthetic opioids kill someone in the US every 16 minutes. Communities across the country have been ravaged by deaths, overdoses, jail time, and babies born with drug-related medical problems as opioid abuse became a typical feature of many American towns. This seven-part exposé provides an inside look at the effect in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky.

Illinois rolled back its happy hour legislation in 2015, opting to cap reduced-price drink sales at 15 hours per week and prohibit them after 10 pm instead

In this episode of the podcast “The Right to Drink,” alcohol expert and host Jarrett Dieterle explains why some states allow happy hour while others don’t. The host also dives into the fight to change happy hour legislation across the US.

One Native leader tried to save his people's land by building a nation

As the US pushed westward in the 19th century, one leader of the Ojibwe people fought back not with arms but with politics, seeking to preserve his people's territory and way of life by building a formal Native nation capable of negotiating on equal footing with the US government.

IVF is legal across America, but some worry that state bans could curtail this reproductive technology

This reproductive technology is available across the US, but if states take action to prohibit the discarding of unused embryos or pass related legislation, it could affect access to IVF. Laws prohibiting IVF or effectively outlawing the procedure by defining personhood as being conferred at the moment of conception have been under discussion in several states in recent years, including Ohio, Virginia, and Texas.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.