In an interview with the author of Solitary, the issue of criminal justice reform is central. Alfred Woodfox, who served 43 years in prison – most in solitary confinement, for a crime he says he didn't commit – died in August. He told NPR's Scott Simon that after his release, he struggled with claustrophobia because of the decades he spent in prison. This is an encore episode from February 2022.
As soon as automobiles were created, people began racing them.
As with many sports, early were often unorganized and disjointed. After world war II, however, an effort was made to provide an organized championship series for the world’s best drivers.
Over the last 70 years, it has grown into the world’s foremost racing circuit and become a business worth billions of dollars.
Learn more about Formula 1 and how it became such big business on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Over the last several centuries, there has been a concerted effort to raise literacy rates around the world.
For the most part, although there is still work to be done, we’ve done a pretty good job. The vast majority of people around the world know how to read and write.
While literacy has improved, despite our world becoming ever more dependent on technology, overall mathematical literacy has not improved.
Learn more about numeracy, or mathematical literacy, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
With an atomic number of three, Lithium is the third lightest element and the lightest solid at room temperature and pressure.
For almost two centuries after its discovery, Lithium didn’t have much in the way of practical uses. However, in the last few decades, its status changed, and it went from one of the least useful elements to one of the most important to the world’s economy.
Lithium is also the source of one of the biggest unexplained problems in physics.
Learn more about Lithium, one of the oddest elements on the periodic table, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Today's interviews center on children's books with wildly different topics, but they both aim to make reading more accessible for kids. Nikole Hannah Jones, working with Renee Watson, turned the 1619 Project into a picture book called Born On The Water. They told NPR their goal was "to say to young people - to young Black Americans, you belong here." Next, Adam Rubin has on his collection of short stories that are all different but share the same title: The Ice Cream Machine. Rubin told NPR's Rachel Martin that there are so many ways to tell a story. This is an encore episode from March 2022.
Russell City used to be a thriving community in the 1940s and 50s. But in the 1960s Alameda County and the city of Hayward used eminent domain to seize the land, evict the residents and build an industrial park. We hear stories from former Russell City residents about what it used to be like there.
Reported by Spencer Whitney and Katrina Schwartz. 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 Kyana Moghadam, Jen Chien, Jasmine Garnett, Carly Severn, Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, Jenny Pritchett and Holly Kernan.
Author Imani Perry is a child of the South. In her newest book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, she gives the reader a look at the South's complicated history, interwoven with her own personal anecdotes. Even though the South has a difficult history, Perry contends, it provides important context for America today. Perry told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that in order to write this book she had to stop romanticizing the place she calls home – and, instead, look at it starkly. This is an encore episode from January 2022.
