Anya is only 8 years old, but she's already got the weight of a nation on her shoulders. The protagonist of Winterland lives in an isolated Arctic town, where she's immersed in the world of 1970s Soviet gymnastics. In today's episode, author Rae Meadows tells NPR's David Folkenflik about her long-lasting fascination with that era of competitive sports, and how it shapes her main character's journey into womanhood.
In the year 79, Mount Vesuvius, a volcano located east of the modern-day city of Naples, erupted.
Vesuvius had erupted before, but this eruption was different. It ejected an enormous amount of ash which completely buried several towns and cities below the mountain.
Almost 2,000 years later, the largest of those cities, Pompeii, was rediscovered, and what archeologists found revolutionized our understanding of the ancient world.
Learn more about the destruction and rediscovery of Pompeii on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Amélie Wen Zhao's fantasy novel, Song of Silver, Flame Like Night, is rooted in the Chinese genres of xianxia and wuxia. It follows a young girl uncovering the secrets of her tumultuous kingdom with the help of a magician. In today's episode, the author talks to Here & Now's Kalyani Saxena about how her imperfect characters make difficult choices in their search for power. Zhao draws clear comparisons between the themes of anti-imperialism and history depicted in the book to real world battles being fought today, including anti-Asian racism.
The titular protagonist of Meredith, Alone has not left her home in three years. In today's episode, author Claire Alexander tells NPR's Scott Simon about the character's self-imposed isolation, and how trauma from earlier in life can leave long-lasting impacts on a person's mental health. And yet Meredith's trauma doesn't define her – so Alexander explains why she wanted to write a story that provided a full scope of what it means to overcome mental and emotional wounds.
In September 1944, despite over half a year remaining in World War II, the Allies began preparing for an eventual post-war world.
One of the biggest questions being discussed was what to do with Germany. After two world wars with Germany in just a quarter century, no one wanted a third.
One American official developed a plan which would basically destroy Germany as a modern country to prevent them from ever making war again.
Learn more about the Morgenthau Plan and the attempt to destroy Germany on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Janet Yellen's career has shattered several glass ceilings; she was the first female head of the Federal Reserve, and she's now the first woman serving as Secretary of Treasury. In this episode, author and journalist Jon Hilsenrath discusses his new biography of her, Yellen, and how her upbringing and marriage reveal a lot about her professional path. Hilsenrath explains to Here & Now's Scott Tong that the love story of Yellen and her husband actually offers insight into the delicate line between democracy and capitalism, and how in a time of economic upheaval, policymakers are bound to make mistakes.
In the year 1900, a crew of sponge divers was looking for sponges off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera. While they were searching, they found the remains of an ancient shipwreck.
The wreck contained over 30 marble statues, pieces of glasswork, and one corroded metal object that no one could identify.
75 years later, using new technology, they discovered what that hunk of metal was designed for.
Learn more about the Antikythera Mechanism and how it forever changed our views of the ancient world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Every form of life which has ever been discovered, regardless of its size or how it metabolizes energy, has one thing in common.
They are based on the element carbon.
Carbon is the most important building block for life. It holds a unique place on the periodic table, and it can combine with itself and other elements in so many different ways that there is an entire branch of chemistry devoted to it.
Learn more about the element carbon, its importance, and its future on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
