During World War II, as American publishers sought ways to support the troops abroad, they began printing small, pocket-sized books that soldiers could fit anywhere. In When Books Went to War, Molly Guptill Manning tells the story of these little printed editions and how they served as a way of entertainment for soldiers looking for an escape from war. In an interview with Morning Edition, Guptill Manning told Renee Montagne about how reading helped soldiers feel like they were home.
"School choice" is among the most politicized phrases in America, mainly because it means different things to different people. Charter schools are at the heart of that divisive debate, pitting progressives and conservatives against one another in a shouting match over what "choice" truly means and who deserves to have it. Ravi sits down with Shavar Jeffries, the president of Democrats for Education Reform, to talk about fighting for charter schools, the many progressives who resist school choice, the sweeping influence of teachers unions, and the most important factor in this and all discussions of education: what's best for students.
When Europeans arrived in the New World in 1492, it was the beginning of a series of events that ws the biggest change in humanity since the discovery of agriculture.
The magnitude of those changes wasn’t even known at the time, or even for several centuries after the fact. It has only been recently that researchers have discovered the magnitude of what happened.
Learn more about The Great Dying of the Americas on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
This week Science in Action comes from a vast gathering of earth scientists in Vienna, at the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union.
Roland Pease hears the latest insights into the cataclysmic eruption of Hunga Tonga in the Pacific ocean from volcanologist Shane Cronin of the University of Auckland. He also talks to NASA's Michael Way about how the planet Venus might have acquired its hellish super-greenhouse atmosphere, and how the same thing could happen to planet Earth. There’s intriguing research from geologist John Tarduno of the University of Rochester that hints of a link between the ups and downs of the Earth’s magnetic field and the evolutionary history of animals. Fraser Lott of the UK's Hadley Centre explains his ideas for calculating an individual person's responsibility for climate change-driven extreme weather events.
And ...
On Crowd Science, why can't I find gold in my back yard?
If you go outside with a spade and start digging, the chances are you won't find any gold. You might get lucky or just happen to live in a place where people have been finding gold for centuries. But for the most part, there'll be none. But why is that? Why do metals and minerals show up in some places and not others?
It's a question that's been bothering CrowdScience listener Martijn in the Netherlands, who has noticed the physical effects of mining in various different places while on his travels. It’s also a really important question for the future – specific elements are crucial to modern technology and renewable energy, and we need to find them somewhere.
Marnie Chesterton heads off on a hunt for answers, starting in a Scottish river where gold can sometimes be found. But why is it there, and how did it get there? Marnie goes on a journey through the inner workings of Earth's geology and the upheaval that happens beneath our feet to produce a deposit that’s worth mining.
On the way she discovers shimmering pools of lithium amongst the arid beauty of the Atacama Desert, meets researchers who are blasting rocks with lasers and melting them with a flame that’s hotter than the surface of the sun, and heads to the bottom of the ocean to encounter strange potato-sized lumps containing every single element on Earth.
And maybe, just maybe, she’ll also find gold.
Image: Multi-beam sonar map of Hunga Tonga volcano post-eruption
Credit: Shane Cronin/Uni of Auckland/Tonga Geological Services
Presented by Roland Pease and Marnie Chesterton
Report by Jane Chambers
Produced by Andrew Luck-Baker and Ben Motley
In the past two weeks the nation has borne witness to the tragedy of two mass shootings. In Uvalde, Texas, a gunman killed 19 students and their two teachers inside a fourth grade classroom at Robb Elementary School. At least 17 were wounded.
In Buffalo, New York, a man is accused of shooting and killing 10 members of the Black community who were shopping at Tops supermarket. In a long internet screed, he wrote about how online racist ideology and white supremacist conspiracy theories fueled his violence. Witnessing the aftermath of these horrific acts leaves us wondering, once again, what can be done to identify the warning signs of those who plan to commit mass violence—before it's too late?
We speak with Joanna Schroeder about ways to protect young people from being indoctrinated into violent white supremacist groups. Schroeder chronicles her sons' exposure to content from online racist hate groups and how she intervened.
On this installment of Best Of The Gist, we listen back to an interview from November 25, 2015, which, sadly, is still relevant in the wake of recent mass shootings. Three years before this interview with Ron Davis and Lucia McBath, they experienced a parent’s worst nightmare, when their 17-year-old son was shot while Black Friday shopping with his friends. The HBO documentary 3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets tells the story of how they pursued justice for their son. After that, we listen back to this past Wednesday’s show, in which, Mike calls for a ban on the AR-15.
The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia, a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts.
This episode originally appeared in the winter of 2019.
A note on shownotes. In a perfect world, you go into each episode of the Memory Palace knowing nothing about what's coming. It's pretentious, sure, but that's the intention. So, if you don't want any spoilers or anything, you can click play without reading ahead.
On July 20, 1976, Viking 1 became the first robotic lander to land on Mars. On September 3, its sister Viking 2 followed suit.
Both of them carried experiments to test for biology on Mars, something which no subsequent Mars lander since has replicated.
The results from these chemical experiments have divided researchers for decades and have been the cause of one of the greatest debates in planetary science.
Learn more about if we have already found evidence of life on Mars on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
