It was a grand time to be a rich New Yorker. The wealthy architect Stanford White was responsible for designing several iconic public, institutional and religious buildings in the city in a decadent beaux arts “American Renaissance” style, including the original Madison Square Garden, which he owned. White, more than any other man, was responsible for the look of what was quickly becoming the wealthiest city on Earth. This week, we tell the story of the murder of Stanford White. White’s killer w...
Apr 03, 2019•35 min•Season 4Ep. 4
In 1981, on his way to look for the actress Jodi Foster at Yale, where he had been stalking her, John Hinckley Jr. stopped off in Washington, D.C., and ended up shooting U.S. President Ronald Reagan in front of the Hilton Hotel. Hinckley claimed he was trying to impress Foster, with whom he was infatuated. He later described the incident in a letter to The New York Times as “the greatest love offering in the history of the world. ... I am Romeo and she is Juliet.” Learn more about your ad-choice...
Mar 27, 2019•31 min•Season 4Ep. 3
The ultimate act of revenge or the act of a woman driven so crazy by domestic violence that she could not comprehend what she was doing? It seemed crazy to raise that defense given the deliberateness of the act, the fact her husband was asleep at the time and more. And prosecutors thought the defense had no chance: They were ready to argue that Lorena was not insane, and one sign of that is that she acted out of revenge. Revenge, the prosecution argued, is a rational act, not an irrational one. ...
Mar 20, 2019•31 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Shortly after midnight on July 20, 2012, in Aurora, Colorado, a man in dark body armor and a gas mask entered a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises with a tactical shotgun, a high-capacity assault rifle, and a sidearm. He threw a canister of tear gas into the crowd and began firing. Soon 12 were dead and 58 were wounded; young children and pregnant women were among them. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy inform...
Mar 20, 2019•34 min•Season 4Ep. 1
This season of The Thread, from the trial of James Hadfield in 1800 to the trial of Aurora gunman James Holmes over two centuries later, we explore six of the most high-profile murder cases in history through the lens of the controversial legal defense that unites them all: not guilty by way of insanity. The Thread examines the question: does the insanity defense represent a way of recognizing the psychological complications that underlie criminal culpability or rather a misguided means for esca...
Mar 15, 2019•3 min
Would Martin Luther King, Jr. have taken a knee alongside Colin Kaepernick? Is there any precedent for the protests being waged by high school students in Parkland, Florida? This special bonus episode of The Thread examines how the impact of Dr. King and the civil rights movement continues to influence nonviolent resistance today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Oct 29, 2018•12 min•Season 3Ep. 7
In the final episode of this season, we trace the path of the revolutionary idea that spread across the globe to become the dominant form of political resistance today. We also examine the role that personal psychology, and even mental illness, play in what Gandhi, King and others recognized as the secret ingredient of any nonviolent approach: empathy. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Oct 15, 2018•35 min•Season 3Ep. 6
William Lloyd Garrison, one of the leading figures of the early abolitionist movement in America, was a major influence on Leo Tolstoy. Garrison believed in using “moral suasion” rather than violence to achieve social change. Armed only with his newspaper and pen, the social reformer forced America to confront the most defining moral issue in its history, kick-starting a nonviolent revolution that would change the world. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Se...
Oct 08, 2018•28 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Just before his death in 1910, the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy struck up a correspondence with a young lawyer in South Africa named Mohandas Gandhi, one that would change the young Indian’s life. Today Tolstoy is best known for penning War and Peace and Anna Karenina. But the Russian writer’s biggest legacy — and gift to the world — might be his ideas on nonviolent resistance, which emerged after he had a profound spiritual crisis in midlife. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.ihea...
Oct 01, 2018•27 min•Season 3Ep. 4
The Indian lawyer and activist Mohandas Gandhi was the first leader to take up the age-old doctrines of love and nonviolence and transform them into tools of political and social resistance. In doing so, he would inspire Bayard Rustin and other activists across the world. Armed only with love, humility and disobedience, Gandhi brought the most powerful empire on earth to the bargaining table — and eventually to its knees. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com S...
Sep 24, 2018•32 min•Season 3Ep. 3
The seasoned activist and Quaker Bayard Rustin was King’s mentor in nonviolence and the organizing genius behind the March on Washington in 1963. Many felt that Rustin was on his way to becoming the “American Gandhi.” There was just one problem: Rustin was gay, and as a result, would be forced to the sidelines of the civil rights struggle, and to the margins of American history. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy infor...
Sep 17, 2018•30 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated after leading the most influential protest movement in American history. King revolutionized the use of nonviolent resistance to combat racial injustice in the United States, but the Alabama preacher did not always believe in nonviolence. In fact, early on, King relied on armed guards for his protection until an older Quaker activist named Bayard Rustin walked into King’s home and changed the direction of the civil rights movement. Learn m...
Sep 10, 2018•26 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Coming September 10, Season 3 of the Thread will chart how a revolutionary idea--nonviolent resistance--changed the course of history. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Aug 27, 2018•2 min
The Hollywood casting couch existed long before Harvey Weinstein. In this final episode of the season, we explore some of Weinstein's antecedents in the industry, the scandals and crimes they covered up and how a new generation of Gloria Steinem-inspired women is starting to put an end to the old practices of Hollywood and other male-dominated industries. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 16, 2018•29 min•Season 2Ep. 6
The film legend Clark Gable was a key figure at the heart of the glamour and excess of the Golden Age of Hollywood. But his rise and scandal-buried reign at the top of the movie world reveal a great deal about a young industry both obsessed with adhering to morality codes, and incapable of being moral. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 09, 2018•29 min•Season 2Ep. 5
In 1931, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Nevada legislature passed two bills: one to legalize gambling, the other to legalize a six-week waiting period for a divorce. Over the next few decades, hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, would journey to the desert state for a quickie divorce, a chance to forget their problems and a shot at reinvention. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 02, 2018•27 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Marilyn Monroe was larger than life. But beneath the soft-spoken movie star and sex goddess was another woman, one far bolder than most people realize. Monroe was an actress ahead of her time, one who was not afraid to stand up to some of the most powerful men in Hollywood - the men she called "wolves". Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Mar 26, 2018•27 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Riding the wave of the sexual revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, Hugh Hefner created a male fantasy world in the pages of his Playboy magazine, one that would have lasting consequences for American life and culture. Behind closed doors, however, Hefner's life in the celebrated Playboy Mansion was rather different than the sophisticated one portrayed in his magazine. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Mar 19, 2018•30 min•Season 2Ep. 2
A writer, activist and co-founder of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem has played a pivotal role in the women's movement. But she first garnered national attention in 1963 when she went undercover as a Playboy Bunny and wrote a damning expose about her experiences inside the famous men's club. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Mar 12, 2018•24 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Coming March 12. Season Two of The Thread will connect the dots between Gloria Steinem and the casting couches of early Hollywood. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mar 08, 2018•2 min
A century before his grandson, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, rose to power, Warren Delano grew very rich from trafficking a highly addictive drug. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dec 18, 2017•9 min
In this bonus episode, OZY brings you our first mini-Thread which begins with one of William Shakespeare's characters uttering a single word in 1597 and ends as a passenger plane plunges into the waters outside Boston almost four centuries later. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dec 11, 2017•11 min
In this final episode of the season, host Sean Braswell ties up some of our thread's loose ends, explores some more surprising connections between our characters and reflects on the nature of art, life, fate and redemption. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Oct 30, 2017•23 min•Season 1Ep. 6
We chronicle the life and times of Louise Bryant and her husband, John Reed, two Greenwich Village Bohemians who ended up at ground zero for the greatest revolution the world has ever known. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Oct 23, 2017•23 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Considered by many to be “America’s Shakespeare,” Eugene O’Neill revolutionized American drama. But O’Neill suffered greatly for his art, battling alcoholism and depression for decades, and many, including his daughter, suffered for it as well. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Oct 16, 2017•22 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Wooed by perhaps the greatest American writer of the 20th century, born from the loins of its greatest playwright and ultimately wed to the most famous performer on the planet, Oona O'Neill Chaplin lived in the shadow of three of the greatest artists of the 20th century, and her story is interwoven with them all. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Oct 09, 2017•22 min•Season 1Ep. 3
If The Catcher in the Rye resonates with people in dark places like Mark David Chapman, then it may be because the novel, and its author, passed through hell itself on the way to publication. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Oct 02, 2017•22 min•Season 1Ep. 2
After shooting the rock star John Lennon in front of the Dakota Building in Manhattan on December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman remained at the crime scene reading his favorite book, The Catcher in the Rye, until police arrived. Chapman identified powerfully with Holden Caulfield, the novel’s alienated protagonist, and in this episode we explore Chapman’s motivations, their grounding in Catcher, and ask the question: What makes someone kill their own hero in cold blood? Learn more about your ad-ch...
Sep 24, 2017•18 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Coming September 25. The Thread's first season will connect the dots between John Lennon's murder and Vladimir Lenin's revolution 63 years earlier. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sep 13, 2017•1 min
