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Content across Particle API is classified into a hierarchical topic taxonomy. Topics form a tree — broad categories like “Technology” contain subtopics like “Artificial Intelligence”, which in turn contain “Machine Learning” and “AI Safety”. You can browse the full taxonomy or retrieve topics for specific content.

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Browse the taxonomy

# Top-level topics
curl "https://api.particle.pro/v1/topics" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"

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Response schema

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data
Topic[]
required
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has_more
boolean
required
Whether more results exist beyond this page.
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cursor
string
Pass to the next request for the next page.
Example response
{
  "data": [
    {"id": "R3Rpeks", "name": "Technology", "children_count": 15},
    {"id": "RmRrd2I", "name": "Politics", "children_count": 8},
    {"id": "TnhLbVk", "name": "Business", "children_count": 12}
  ],
  "has_more": false
}
Get subtopics by passing parent_id: 
curl "https://api.particle.pro/v1/topics?parent_id=R3Rpeks" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"
Returns the direct children of the specified topic.

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Topic detail

Get a single topic with its ancestor breadcrumb and direct children: 
curl "https://api.particle.pro/v1/topics/R3Rpeks" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"
Example response
{
  "id": "R3Rpeks",
  "name": "Artificial Intelligence",
  "children_count": 4,
  "ancestors": ["Technology"],
  "children": [
    {"id": "WnRMcDk", "name": "Machine Learning", "children_count": 0},
    {"id": "QmN4VzI", "name": "AI Safety", "children_count": 0}
  ]
}
The ancestors array provides the full path from the root to the parent, making it easy to render a breadcrumb trail.

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Topics for an episode

Podcast episodes are classified into topics automatically. Get the topic classifications for a specific episode: 
curl "https://api.particle.pro/v1/podcasts/episodes/6OdMXSZK8XxM89hbS3eanr/topics" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY"
See Episodes for more on episode sub-resources.