Jim Thorpe was a Native American of the Sac and Fox Nation. He was born in 1887 in what was then known as the Indian territory and today is known as the state of Oklahoma.
He excelled at every sport he attempted, at every level he played at. He played professional football and baseball, won two Olympic gold medals, and found a place in the Football Hall of Fame.
Many considered him the greatest athlete of all time, yet he died in poverty, with many of his greatest accomplishments taken from him.
Learn more about Jim Thorpe, one of the world’s most gifted athletes, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The two books featured in this episode illustrate the impact of colorism in society. First up is The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid. In conversation with Scott Simon, Hamid talks about his personal experience after 9/11 and how that helped shape the narrative of this novel. Next is Walking Gentry Home by Alora Young, which chronicles her family's history through nine generations of mothers in her life. Young shares with Leila Fadel about how her stories touch on her skin complexion "as a product of uninvited attention" from people who enslaved her family.
Lakeview once had a thriving Japanese community, but it fell victim to a push for assimilation. As one Japanese-American puts it: “You had to basically be unseen.”
Author and audiobook narrator Julia Whelan says narrating her own second book, Thank You for Listening, was "so meta, that it just spins off its axis." It's about a former on-camera actress who suffered a tragic event that ended her on-camera career. She's found work in narrating audiobooks and while she loves it, it isn't the same as being in front of the camera. Whelan chats with Mary Louise Kelly about how this latest novel pokes fun at romance while honoring it, and the different voices she has had to use to represent the "voice" of the book.
