Month: April 2024

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the memory palace - Episode 215: An Eighth Wonder

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

Music

  • Momento Ritmico and Papete aru by Piero Umiliani
  • Opus 13 from Sven Libaek's score to The Set
  • French Doll by Larry Ashmore and David Francis
  • The wonderful Sewentuwa by Hailu Meriga
  • Wave I by Elor Saxl
  • Green by Hiroshi Yoshimura

Notes

  • I originally learned about the Elephantine Colossus years ago in David McCullough's Brooklyn... and How it Got That Way, which still holds up.
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Curious City - What Happened To The Crows?

A listener thought she’d noticed a change in Chicago’s crow population. And she was right. More than twenty years ago, the crow population of Illinois was at an all-time high. But just a few years later, half of the birds were dead. The crows were hit by a deadly virus. And it’s one that humans are susceptible to as well. So where was this virus coming from? Reporter Claire Caulfield finds the answer.
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NPR's Book of the Day - ‘Grief Is for People’ is Sloane Crosley’s memoir about losing a close friend

Editor's note: This episode contains a discussion of suicide.

Early in today's episode, writer Sloane Crosley tells NPR's Ayesha Rascoe something that troubled her when paging through the self-help books she was gifted after a big loss. There was no chapter for how to grieve a close friend – partners, siblings, parents, sure. But while not everyone has those relationships, she says, friendships are universal. Her new memoir, Grief Is for People, chronicles how she's coped with losing one of the most important people in her life.


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The Indicator from Planet Money - Can an old law bring down grocery prices?

Since 2020, grocery prices have shot up. If you're looking to save a buck, it's often more affordable to shop for groceries at a big retailer like Walmart. But some smaller grocers say those low prices are the result of an unfair playing field—and they're looking to a little-used antitrust law from the 1930s as a solution. Today, we consider the Robinson-Patman Act and whether reviving it could bring consumers some relief.

Related episodes:
Grocery delivery wars (Apple / Spotify)
Feeling inflation in the grocery store (Apple / Spotify)

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Everything Everywhere Daily - The Legend of Bigfoot (Encore)

Long before Europeans arrived in North America, native people told stories of large hairy men who lived in the woods. 

For the last several centuries, periodic reports of such creatures have appeared all over the United States and Canada. 

In the late '60s and early '70s, photos and movies started to appear that seemed to provide evidence of these creatures…..seemed.

Learn more about the legend of Sasquatch, aka Bigfoot, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. 


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NPR's Book of the Day - ‘Wuhan’ analyzes China’s management and response to the COVID-19 pandemic

It's been four years since the world went into lockdown mode as COVID-19 rapidly spread across the globe. But a new book by political scientist Dali Yang dives into the information about, and mitigation of, the disease in its earliest days in China. In today's episode, Yang speaks with Here & Now's Scott Tong about the research that went into Wuhan, the way local governments and medical officials abstained from disclosing crucial intelligence in the early days, and the strict lockdown that followed.


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Influenced - Left the Chat: No 3. Several People Are Typing

During the pandemic, a combination of fears over Covid, anger over police racism and sheer cabin fever saw company Slack channels boil with discontent. One day in February 2021, Mike Pesca, a contrarian podcaster, made the mistake of getting stuck in, voicing controversial opinions to his colleagues - in between shovelling snow from his parents’ driveway.

And then he saw the dreaded words, "several people are typing …".

A Tempo & Talker production for BBC Radio 4

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Influenced - Left the Chat: No 2. Fax Machines and Foxy Natashas

In 2016, amid the post-EU referendum chaos, one man had an idea. His name was Steve Baker, and he was a low-profile Tory MP. But his WhatsApp group - the home of the hard Brexiteers - soon became the most powerful force in British politics. Sam Coates of Sky News thinks that political WhatsApp groups like Baker’s helped bring down three Conservative prime ministers in a row.

The second of these, Boris Johnson, was a “WhatsApp addict”, according to his former chief of staff Dominic Cummings. And so, during Covid when Number 10 was still using fax machines to get NHS data, everyone turned to instant messaging instead. Forget “sofa government”, this was even more informal - as well as faster, more fluid and full of swearing.

But, Helen Lewis asks Cummings, is this really the best way to govern a country? What about the possibility of leaks, hacks - and conveniently lost messages when an inquiry rolls around?

Producer: Tom Pooley Assistant Producer: Orla O'Brien Sound Design: Louis Blatherwick Editor: Craig Templeton Smith Original music: Coach Conrad

A Tempo & Talker production for BBC Radio 4

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Influenced - Left the Chat: No 1. Whatsapp Mishaps

In 1998, Helen’s family got their first home computer - and she logged on to chat with existing friends and strangers she met online. Since then, instant messaging has taken over our lives, with an estimated 2.7 billion users on WhatsApp alone.

But what is happening in the secrecy of our direct message inboxes and neighbourhood group chats? Three stories of chaos, confusion - and comedy - highlight just how strange it can feel to make sense of the fast paced, casual world of instant messaging.

Producer: Tom Pooley Assistant Producer: Orla O'Brien Sound Design: Louis Blatherwick Editor: Craig Templeton Smith Original music: Coach Conrad

A Tempo & Talker production for BBC Radio 4