When Shi Zhengrong started making solar panels at the turn of the century, there was basically no solar industry in China. But in the decades that followed, the nation started heavily investing in renewables. Today, we dig into how China became a leader in solar power while following the story of one man: the Sun King.
Related episodes: Rooftop solar's dark side (Apple / Spotify) The debate at the heart of new electricity transmission (Apple / Spotify)
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The Allied invasion of Normandy was one of the most complex military operations ever conducted. Thousands of ships and planes had to work in conjunction with tens of thousands of soldiers who had to do one of the most difficult things in warfare: an amphibious landing.
In addition to all of the planning that went into the invasion, there were many unknowns. The only way to learn was to practice some of the elements of the landing.
In April 1944, about six weeks before D-Day, the Allies conducted a practice exercise off the coast of England, and it turned into one of the biggest disasters of the war.
Learn more about Exercise Tiger and the disastrous rehearsal for D-Day on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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Elvira K. Gonzalez says there was a lot of beauty to growing up in the culturally rich border town of Laredo, Texas. But there were some challenges, too. Her new memoir, Hurdles in the Dark, chronicles some of the more difficult aspects of her adolescence — her mom was kidnapped, Gonzalez was sent to juvenile detention, and she was preyed upon by her hurdling coaches. In today's episode, the author speaks with Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes about the resilience and optimism she carried through all of that, and how it's gotten her to where she is today.
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The ascendance of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has made the topic of free school lunch a political flashpoint. Over the past several years, several states—including Walz's home state of Minnesota—have created free school lunch programs, to the dismay of some House Republicans who believe government subsidies should go only to needy students.
Today on the show, we break down the economics of school lunch and explore whether universal programs are more effective than targeted programs.
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Ever since astronomers figured out that the stars in the sky are just like our sun, they began wondering if those stars had planets just like our sun.
For centuries this remained an unanswerable question. Telescopes and techniques weren’t advanced enough to get an answer one way or another.
Eventually, however, astronomers developed methods to detect if there were planets outside of our solar system, and when they did, they found them everywhere.
Learn more about exoplanets, planets that orbit around other stars, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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From 1911 to 1912, Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka both lived in Prague. A new graphic novel by Ken Krimstein uses both history and artistic imagination to explore how the physicist and writer ran in the same social circles and how their work might have influenced each other. In today's episode, Krimstein speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about Einstein in Kafkaland and the brilliant academic and literary scene in Prague during that time period.
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Every day, whether or not you even realize it, you are subject to a host of unwritten rules. These are rules that are not written down and are not part of any formal law, but they are fundamental to the functioning of any society.
These unspoken rules differ from place to place and have changed over time, and there are even different rules for different groups that you might be a part of.
These unwritten rules of behavior have been with us ever since the dawn of humanity.
Learn more about the Mos Maiorum and the unwritten rules of society on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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Italy as we know it today is a relatively recent invention.
Ever since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Italian Peninsula had been a patchwork of city-states, dutchies, kingdoms, and lands controlled by the pope.
It wasn’t until the 19th century that a group of idealistic Italians sought to unify the Italian Peninsula and all its Italian-speaking people.
Learn more about the Risorgimento, or the 19th-century Unification of Italy, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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Welcome to another edition of Indicators of the Week! On today's show, the large downward revision to jobs numbers, the awkward release of that news and a survey that asks U.S. workers for the minimum salary they would accept a new job for.