Ramtin Arablouei
Ramtin Arablouei is co-host and co-producer of NPR's podcast Throughline, a show that explores history through creative, immersive storytelling designed to reintroduce history to new audiences.
Arablouei got his start at NPR in 2015 with a three-week contract to produce a pilot for How I Built This with Guy Raz, and now produces, reports, mixes, and writes music for such top-rated podcasts as TED Radio Hour, Hidden Brain, Embedded, Invisibilia, The Indicator, Code Switch, Radio Ambulante, and the Center for Investigative Reporting's Reveal.
A trained audio engineer, Arablouei spent most of his early twenties in recording studios. He contributed sound design and music for films and commercials, including the IMAX trailer for 300: Rise of an Empire. He's written music for many award-winning podcasts including "Los Cassettes del Exilio" (Radio Ambulante) and the "All Work. No Pay" episode of Reveal, which won the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi award for investigative reporting.
Born in Iran, Arablouei emigrated to the U.S. with his family as a child. He graduated from St. Mary's College of Maryland with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and history.
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What's the role of government in society? What do we mean when we talk about individual responsibility? What makes us free? 'Neoliberalism' might feel like a squishy term that's hard to define and understand. But this ideology, founded by a group of men in the Swiss Alps, is a political project that has dominated our economic system for decades. In the name of free market fundamentals, the forces behind neoliberalism act like an invisible hand, shaping almost every aspect of our lives. This episode originally ran as "Capitalism: What Makes Us Free?" Please add the following after each blurb on podcast and webpages: To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. -
Captain America: an all-American superhero. Clad in red, white, and blue, he carries only a shield. And he fights only when he must. When it's right. But what happens when what's right isn't so clear? And how does a comic book hero designed to represent America's values survive in a changing world? -
The Supreme Court is issuing its final decisions of the term this month. But it's been extraordinarily active since January, in part because the Trump administration has submitted over a dozen emergency applications asking the court to rule quickly on controversial issues. Those cases are part of what's known as the court's "shadow docket." And increasingly, it's affecting all of our lives. This episode originally published in 2023 and has been updated. -
Abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a fairly common practice: a private decision made by women, and aided mostly by midwives. But in the mid-1800s, a small group of physicians set out to change that. Obstetrics was a new field, and they wanted it to be their domain—meaning, the domain of men and medicine. Led by a zealous young doctor named Horatio Storer, they launched a campaign to make abortion illegal in every state, spreading a potent cloud of moral righteousness and racial panic that one historian later called "the physicians' crusade." And so began the century of criminalization. This episode originally ran as Before Roe: The Physicians' Crusade. -
Whose job is it to educate Americans? Congress created the first Department of Education just after the Civil War as a way to help reunify a broken country. A year later, it was basically shut down. But the story of that first department's birth – and death – set the stage for everything that's come since. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. -
From Social Security and the minimum wage to exit signs and fire escapes, Frances Perkins transformed how people in the U.S. lived and worked. Today on the show: how a middle class do-gooder became one of the savviest and most powerful people in American politics — and built the social safety net we have today. -
The Fourth Amendment is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures." But — what's unreasonable? That question has fueled a century's worth of court rulings that have dramatically expanded the power of individual police officers in the U.S. Today on the show, how an amendment that was supposed to limit government power has ended up enabling it. This episode originally published in 2024. -
The hosts of the Throughline podcast bring us the story of how a presidential assassination gave rise to the modern federal civil service.
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On today's episode, we travel from the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War, through the rubble of two world wars, to the hallways of the Hague, to see how the modern world has tried to define — and prosecute — war crimes. This episode originally aired at "The Rules of War" in 2024. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. -
Gangsters, banksters, and politicians. Today on the show, how the hunt for Al Capone helped turn the IRS into one of the U.S. government's most powerful tools — and most effective weapons. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.
