Journalist and Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa thinks the world is facing a sort of World War III – especially as it relates to information. Her new book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator, details the relationship between trust, truth and democracy, and how social media's pull to inflammatory falsehoods can threaten that delicate balance. In this episode, she tells NPR's Scott Simon how the Philippines have become "a testing ground for attacks against America," and how investigative reporting on the matter is worth the risks it poses.
One of the most ubiquitous forms of payment today is credit cards. The odds are good that you have one, and most probably have one on your person right now.
But how did it come about that you could pay for something by just giving someone a piece of plastic and who exactly came up with this idea?
Learn more about credit cards, where they came from and how they work, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
There is a common hurdle for many first generation immigrants: feeling out of place. Whether that's in school, speaking a different language, or living through parents' expectations. Today: two books about overcoming those feelings of inadequacy. First, Simu Liu, Marvel's first Asian superhero, discusses his memoir We Were Dreamers, where he talks about his complicated relationship with his parents and what he calls his "immigrant superhero origin story." Then, Cuban-American author Margarita Engle explores what it's like to be an outsider as a bilingual speaker and the creative freedom she found in writing Spanish without italics in her book.
A group of Black ministers convinced a local Richmond developer to build homes that would be available to all Americans, including Black Americans, in the early 1950s long before the Fair Housing Act. We trace the history of that activism and the fate of the community over the decades.
This story was reported by Ariana Proehl. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Amanda Font and Brendan Willard. Our Social Video Intern is Darren Tu. Additional support from Cesar Saldana, Jen Chien, Jasmine Garnett, Carly Severn, Jenny Pritchett and Holly Kernan.
Soon after the start of the space race, a major problem with space flight became obvious: it was really expensive.
The high cost of space flight was in large part due to the fact that every rocket and spacecraft was expendable. Every trip meant a new rocket and a new vehicle.
To solve this problem, in the early 1970s, the United States launched a new program to create a reusable spacecraft.
Learn more about the rise and fall of the Space Transportation System, aka the Space Shuttle on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Bonnie Garmus' new novel Lessons In Chemistry has been getting a lot of buzz. Elizabeth Zott is a talented chemist but because it's the 1960s, she faces sexism in her quest to work as a scientist. So instead she has a cooking show that is wildly popular. Garmus told NPR's Scott Simon that the character of Elizabeth lived in her head for many years before she started writing this novel.
