Category: DailyShorts

The Queen of Tejano music is having a moment in pop culture once again, even 26 years after her murder. Selena Quintanilla's face not only adorns T-shirts and hoodies, but she's also the subject of a Netflix series, a podcast and a new novel by poet Melissa Lozada-Oliva. It's called Dreaming of You, and imagines what would have happened if Selena hadn't been killed when she was 23. Lozada-Oliva tells us about the story, which is written in verse, and the pop star's impact on her life since she was a child.

At the start of the American Revolution, a young American major general was one of the brightest stars of the war. He was responsible for several major campaigns and he had a great future ahead of him in his new country. By the end of the war, he was a British General fighting against the United States and his name would forever be spoken by Americans as a synonym for traitor. Learn more about Benedict Arnold and why he decided to turn on his country, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Amidst all the bad news (like, really bad news), it can be hard to hold on to hope — especially with the looming threat of climate change. But renowned scientist and chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall says that, despite the dire state of the world, it's too early to give up on our planet. Her new book with co-author Douglas Abrams is all about the state of our planet and how to save it from looming catastrophe for future generations.

Vampires have been been a part of folklore for centuries. Perhaps no mythical vampire is more famous than Count Dracula. While Count Dracula might be fictional, believe it or not, he was based and named on a real person who lived in 15th century Romania. While he might not have been a vampire, he was still plenty deadly. Learn more about Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracula, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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On October 31 every year, we celebrate Halloween. It is especially popular in the United States where we use the holiday as an excuse for kids to dress up and ask for candy, and for adults to dress up and drink. But why do we dress up, and what’s the deal with pumpkins, how does this have anything to do with monsters and bats? Learn more about the history of Halloween and how so many unrelated things got lumped together on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily

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Casinos are fascinating places. They can make tons of money, but they don’t really have a product. While it is often called entertainment, unlike other forms of entertainment, no one is entertaining you. In fact, the entire business is really nothing more than applied mathematics. With the proper application of mathematics and a liberal dose of high-tech security and proper management, a casino can become a cash machine.

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It's almost Halloween, which means that we're in peak spooky season. So for today's episode, we bring you two books with two very different kinds of frights: a haunted house and...office politics. That's right: In The Other Black Girl, writer Zakiya Dalila Harris captures the all-too-real horror of being the only Black woman in her office. When another Black woman is hired, the tension gets dialed up even higher. And in There's A Ghost In This House, the author-illustrator Oliver Jeffers uses old photographs to create creepy illustrations that will give both children and adults goosebumps.

One of the rarest and most expensive substances in the world is actually pretty disgusting. The way it is created is pretty gross, it looks pretty gross, and smells even worse. Despite how disgusting it is, there are people who will pay as much for it on a per gram basis as gold, yet when you get right down to it, no one really needs it. Learn more about ambergris, the treasure of the sea, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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The humor writer Drew Magary was at a karaoke bar when his life changed in a flash: He collapsed and cracked his skull. By most accounts, the resulting traumatic brain injury should have been fatal, but he survived. As he recounts in his book The Night the Lights Went Out, recovering from that injury has been tough. Among other things, he permanently lost some of his senses. As Magary tells NPR's Lulu Garcia Navarro, recovery has required him to figure out who he is now, post injury — a challenge that makes for a good story, he says.