Indicators of the Week is back, where we dig into three economic snapshots from the global economy. This week, we are exploring consumers' ever so slightly improved perception of the economy, what's going on with carbon offsets, and why China is sending some pandas to U.S. zoos.
Related Episodes: Actors back. Pandas gone. WeBankrupt. (Apple / Spotify) How Red Lobster got cooked and other indicators (Apple / Spotify) Emission Impossible (Apple / Spotify)
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In August of 1964, an event occurred off the waters of North Vietnam that would have repercussions that would echo in US foreign policy for decades.
Two alleged confrontations between US Navy vessels and North Vietnamese ships set off a chain of events that resulted in a dramatic escalation in the United States' involvement in Vietnam and a subsequent backlash that would change military policy to the present day.
Learn more about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the event that began the large-scale US military presence in Vietnam on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Today's episode is all about food – but not in the form of recipes. First, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Victor M. Valle speaks to Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes about The Poetics of Fire, his new book analyzing the history of chiles in Mesoamerican and Indigenous cuisine as a lens to understand Mexican-American and Chicano culture. Then, NPR's Scott Simon asks Michelle T. King about Chop Fry Watch Learn, a part-memoir, part-reported analysis of Taiwanese chef Fu Pei-mei's life and impact on Chinese food around the world.
To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday
We test you, dear listener, on your knowledge of topics that we've covered on The Indicator!
Today's quiz focuses on ch-ch-changes. (That's a David Bowie reference, kids!) We're covering changes in the economy, the environment, the rental market, you get the picture. We're even tossing in a question about an AI-resurrected rapper.
Play along with us and see how you do!
Are you interested in being a contestant on our next Indicator Quiz? Email us your name and phone number at indicator@npr.org and put "Indicator Quiz" in the subject line.
We went digging for dinosaur bones in Chicago and found a bunch of other fossils along the way. We explore the region's prehistoric activity, and we’ll hear about that one time a federal judge found a mastodon in his yard.
One of the most iconic images of America is the cowboy. Cowboys have defined entire genres of literature and movies and are the basis for entire styles of fashion.
But how did cowboys come about, what exactly did they do, and who exactly became cowboys?
Perhaps most importantly, how realistic is our image of cowboys?
Spoiler: It's not very realistic at all.
Learn more about Cowboys, how they came to be, and how realistic their portrayal in media is, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Across seven decades, Claire Messud's novel This Strange Eventful History follows generations of a family from a colonized Algeria to far stretches of the world after the country's independence, always grappling with the idea of identity and belonging and political upheaval. In today's episode, Messud speaks with NPR's Ari Shapiro about how she took inspiration from her own grandparents' story, and how looking back at their past sparked a desire in her to chronicle the world she grew up in for her own kids.
To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday
Eight times a year, we award regional Federal Reserve Banks with our coveted Beigie Award. While the anecdotes within the Beige Book offer us fascinating looks into the economy, to others, it can be difficult to make anything of the stories they tell. That's why we're giving out a special Beigie award today to some economists who found a way to use anecdotes to peer into our economic future.