On today's show, we find out what the buzz is around something called a "spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund." Despite a volatile year for cryptocurrency companies, U.S. federal regulators are expected to approve this new financial product. So WTF is a bitcoin ETF?
In 1914, a minor league baseball team in Baltimore, Maryland, signed a young player from the St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys—a school for delinquent boys and orphans.
Unbeknownst to them, the wayward boy would go on to completely transform the game of baseball and become one of the most famous people in American history.
The changes in the sport that he ushered in can still be seen today, and even 100 years later, he is still considered to be the greatest baseball player of all time.
Learn more about the legend of Babe Ruth on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The new novel by Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors, is a project of historical fiction immersed in the culturally rich island of Penang in the 1920s. A once revered, now flailing British writer arrives to visit a friend and find inspiration for a new book. What he uncovers – secret affairs, a murder trial, and deeply complicated relationships – proves to be more than he expected. In today's episode, NPR's Ari Shapiro asks the author about using the real writer W. Somerset Maugham as his protagonist, and about what writing from the perspective of the Brits reveals about imperialism.
News about inflation made a lot of noise in the past two years, but the national CPI reports seem to indicate that inflation is starting to normalize within the Federal Reserve's target range. However, the national CPI basket of goods can have trouble representing inflation at a local level.
Today, we're joined by Drew Hawkins of the Gulf States Newsroom as he goes to the supermarket in New Orleans where the national CPI may not be the best measure of inflation for folks living in the South.
For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
Hugo Contreras, the protagonist of Raul Palma's new novel, is a babaláwo; he can cleanse evil spirits. Except he doesn't really believe in the whole thing. So when he's able to strike up a deal with a debt collector – get rid of the ghosts in his house in exchange for a clean slate – he assumes he can mostly fake it. In today's episode, Palma joins NPR's Scott Simon to discuss A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens, and how the concept of debt – not just financial, but personal, too – stirs up a lot of trauma for Hugo.
The Red Sea is a crucial piece of the global supply chain, accounting for around 15% of the world's shipping. This includes oil tankers and massive container ships transporting everything from microchips to furniture. Recent attacks by Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, have destabilized the region and prompted the U.S. to organize a multinational naval force to protect commercial ships. Today on the show, what's going on with shipping in the Red Sea.
Related Episodes: A drought, a jam, a canal — Panama! (Apple / Spotify)
For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
There are an infinite number of numbers, but some numbers are more important than others.
One number, which might just be the most important number, lies hidden in a wide variety of things in the natural world. It can be found in everything from the mathematics of radioactive decay to population growth and even compound interest.
The number even turns out to have a central role in calculus and mathematics's most elegant equation.
Learn more about e, also known as Euler’s Number, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.