Somali British poet Warsan Shire has had many projects, including running a popular Tumblr page and collaborating with Beyoncé. Now, she is out with a new collection of poems called Bless The Daughter Raised By A Voice In Her Head. That title is an ode to how she was raised, having to take on a lot of responsibility from a young age. But Shire told NPR's Sarah McCammon that it's also an ode to the children who are able to turn those voices into their friends instead of struggling with them as she has.
Prime numbers are considered to be the building blocks of mathematics. Every natural number can be broken down into the constituent prime numbers that make it up.
Prime numbers have been known since antiquity and they are one of the most simple aspects of mathematics to understand, yet they remain at the center of some of the most puzzling problems in mathematics.
Learn more about prime numbers, what we know about them, and what we don’t know, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Author Karen Joy Fowler thinks John Wilkes Booth craved attention – and that he's gotten his fair share of it. So her new novel, Booth, instead focuses on his family. Their history might surprise you, given how John turned out. His grandfather was a part of the Underground Railroad. Fowler told NPR's Scott Simon that because of all we know about Booth's family, the path that John took is one of life's great mysteries. And, no, she hasn't solved it.
The Earth is highly imbalanced. Some countries have more resources than others. Some have natural harbors, and some are landlocked.
Some consist primarily of deserts, and others have fertile farmland.
Some countries are islands, and some border many other countries.
These differences between countries result in each having a unique set of interests, desires, and abilities. This results in a system we know as geopolitics.
Learn more about geopolitics and how geography has shaped the density of countries on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Author NoViolet Bulawayo's new novel Glory is quite openly based on Orwell's Animal Farm and the 2017 coup in Zimbabwe that ousted then president Robert Mugabe. Horses rule the country, dogs are the military, cows, goats, sheep, and pigs are the everyday people. The government that has been in control of the country Jidada for 40 years has fallen to rebellion. But, as these things go, it quickly turns sour. Bulawayo told NPR's Scott Simon that "it is simply an issue of the leadership kind of forgetting [...] why the people they – that fought to serve – made the sacrifice that they did."
Almost every day, you might check the forecast to see what the temperature will be like in the near future or if it might rain.
When you hear a forecast, how exactly do they know what the temperature will be or if it will rain? Also, just how accurate are weather forecasts, and how accurate could they possibly be?
Learn more about weather forecasting, its history, and how it works on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The United States has created many cultural institutions which have spread around the world. People all over the Earth have enjoyed and benefited from rock and roll, Hollywood films, and the Internet.
However, we’ve also created some things that have spread to other countries which, to be totally honest, are probably not our best look.
Learn more about Black Friday, the surprising history of the term, and how it manifests around the world today on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
