Super Bowl ads this year relied heavily on nostalgia and surprise –– a few tricks that turn out to embed information into our brains. Today, neuroscientist Charan Ranganath joins the show to dissect the world of marketing to its biological fundamentals and reveal advertisers' bag of tricks.
Phillip B. Williams' debut novel, Ours, is a sweeping story that takes place in the 19th century. It takes off with a conjuror named Saint who destroys plantations and enslavers, and creates a community of freed people, Ours, that grapples with mysticism, spirituality and liberation over the course of several decades. In today's episode, Williams speaks with NPR's Ari Shapiro about the different interpretations and experiences of freedom in the novel, and the importance of community in the story.
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
Any day now, social media platform Reddit is expected to launch an initial public offering (IPO), earmarking shares for its most dedicated users. On today's show, our friends at WBUR podcast Endless Thread help us unpack why Reddit is making this move, and what it might mean for Reddit's stock.
There's a moment in Carrie Sun's memoir, Private Equity, when she remembers trying to answer a text for her high-pressure hedge fund job while running on the treadmill. It ended poorly — and Sun says, looking back, it was a good metaphor for the toll her career was taking on her life. In today's episode, Sun speaks with Here & Now's Scott Tong about the moral, mental and physical sacrifices we normalize for work, and why maybe that's not such a good thing.
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
One of the most common food items consumed today is cruciferous vegetables. Even if you aren’t familiar with the term, you almost certainly have consumed some before, and there is a good chance you do so on a regular basis.
What many people don’t know is that these vegetables are actually rather modern.
Early neolithic humans never ate broccoli, cabbage, or Brussels sprouts because humans invented these foods.
Learn more about cruciferous vegetables and where they came from on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
During the Second World War, one of the most distinguished American aviation units was one that no one thought would even have existed when the war began.
It was a unit of African American aviators who were trained at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabam.
Over a thousand airmen were trained and served in the European theater of the war and were some of the most decorated pilots of the conflict.
Learn more about the Tuskegee Airmen and their incredible story on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Indicators of the week is back! This time, we explore why oil and gas companies are pulling in record profits, whether bad commercial property debt is likely to spark a financial crisis and how much a lost tooth goes for in this economy.
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The American Civil War wasn’t just a military conflict. There was also a major political and legal struggle that took place alongside the military campaigns.
In the last months of the war, President Abraham Lincoln knew that if the war was to truly be the end of the conflict, it was necessary to ban slavery once and for all.
That would require changing the constitution.
Learn more about the 13th Amendment and the battle for its ratification on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.