History

President Biden just issued an executive order that can temporarily shut down the U.S.-Mexico border to asylum seekers once a daily threshold of crossings is exceeded. On this episode, we dig into how the political panic surrounding what many are calling an immigration "crisis" at the border, isn't new. And in fact...it's a problem of our own creation.

Archivists at the University of Houston have saved decades-worth of episodes of local LGBT radio shows that started in the 1970s. Together they tell the story of a complex, diverse community.

Two skulls from ancient Egypt appear to show marks left by cancerous tumors -- and one of the skulls appears to have markings that indicate an attempt at surgery to remove them.

The Rosetta Stone, the Kohinoor diamond, sculptures from Greece's Parthenon known as the Elgin Marbles are all dazzling objects that bear the history of early civilizations.

But these objects were also taken by colonizers, and still remain on display in museum galleries far from their homes.

Over the past several years museums around the world have been reckoning with the looted treasures they have kept and benefited from.

Now one small museum in Nashville, Tennessee is returning ancient objects excavated in Mexico.

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NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Tim Naftali, a historian and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, about the historic significance of Trump's guilty verdict.

International courts investigating alleged war crimes have made headlines often in recent months. An arrest warrant has been issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin; arrest warrants have also been requested for senior Hamas and Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

What are these courts, where did they come from, and how did they come to decide the rules of war?

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 trace modern attempts to define and prosecute war crimes.

When Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, it heralded an end to racial segregation in professional baseball.

And even though Major League Baseball teams were integrated, official recordkeepers refused to acknowledge stats from the Negro Leagues – where Black players were relegated to for decades.

Author and historian Larry Lester is one of the people who has fought to change that for years.

He's spent over 50 years compiling statistics from the Negro Leagues. Now, that effort is getting recognition from the MLB, and Lester spoke to Ari Shapiro on the battle for inclusion.

Statistics from the Negro Leagues have now been incorporated into the MLB's records – and it's reshaping the history of baseball.

For generations, Black baseball players' contributions to the sport have been ignored. Now, their legacies are being recognized.

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As war continues to rage in the Middle East, attention has been turned to how American Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians relate to the state of Israel. But when we talk about the region, American Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, are often not part of that story. But their political support for Israel is a major driver for U.S. policy — in part because Evangelicals make up an organized, dedicated constituency with the numbers to exert major influence on U.S. politics.

When the USS Eagle sank eighty years ago off the coast of Maine, it was ruled an accident. Now it's known to be one of the last US ships sunk by the Germans in World War Two, and the crew is recognized with a memorial.