Category: DailyShorts

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is stepping down after 16 years. Author and former NPR correspondent Kati Marton has written a new biography of Merkel titled, appropriately, The Chancellor. Marton told NPR's Sarah McCammon that Merkel's upbringing in East Germany before the wall fell prepared her for a future as a politician. But it also created some blind spots in her governing; allowing the far right movement, centered in former East Germany, to gain a foothold in the German Parliament.

According to the records of the Catholic Church, there have been 266 men who have been pope. However, for centuries it was thought that there was another pope not on the list that was different from all of the others. What made this pope different is that the pope was a woman. Learn more about the legend of Pope Joan, both the fact and the fiction, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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One of the technologies which have helped make the modern world is the internal combustion engine. Without it, the world would be a very different place today. Yet it wasn’t a technology that appeared fully formed. It was developed incrementally over a century. To get it to a point where it was viable for use in vehicles took numerous innovations.

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Hosting the Olympics can be a huge honor for the city that hosts the event. Cities from around the world have competed for the privilege. However, some cities which have hosted the Olympics have come to regret the decisions. In fact, they paid for the privilege of hosting the event decades after the fact. Learn more about Olympic boondoggles and the very complicated economics behind hosting the Olympic games on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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There are all different kinds of ghost stories and types of ghosts. Maybe the ghost is a malicious spirit out for revenge, or a marshmallow man parade float come to life, or maybe it's truly a friendly ghost — Casper, here to be pals. In today's first featured interview, Here & Now's Robin Young talks with Louise Erdrich about her novel The Sentence which is set in a haunted bookstore in Minneapolis. Then NPR's Ailsa Chang interviews Kevin Brockmeier about his book of short spooky stories The Ghost Variations.

The term “banana republic” is often used pejoratively to describe small, poor, unstable developing countries. Being called a banana republic is never a good thing. However, that term has a very real origin which involved actual bananas, mercenaries, corporate money, and the American government. Learn more about Banana Republics, where the name comes from, and the history behind them, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Camilla Pang talks with NPR's Short Wave host Emily Kwong about her award-winning memoir, An Outsider's Guide to Humans: What Science Taught Me About What We Do And Who We Are. Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at age 8, the scientist and writer pairs her favorite scientific principles with human behavior and navigating daily life.

The Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus oversaw the rise of Sweden as one of the great powers in Europe. In 1626, he ordered the construction of a warship that would be the most powerful floating platform in Northern Europe. Its maiden voyage in 1628 was one of the most memorable of any ship in history. Learn more about the Vasa, its incredible maiden voyage, and its status today, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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All That She Carried is the history of a single bag. Historian and author Tiya Miles used what few historical records she could find to tell the stories of three generations of Black women with ties to that sack dating back to 1850. Miles' journey started because of a simple message embroidered on the bag by one of its owners, Ruth Middleton. She told Here & Now's Scott Tong that people have emotional reactions to seeing the sack, because it means the families survived to pass it down to future generations.