Keri Blakinger says there are no rules behind bars. In 2010, she was arrested on a drug charge and spent two years in prison. And although that statement might sound counterintuitive, Blakinger says that inside the prison, no one is watching when it matters. In her memoir Corrections in Ink, she writes about her path from high-achieving teenager to incarcerated woman to reporter and writer. In an interview with Ailsa Chang on All Things Considered, she says reporting on the prison system has been meaningful because she gets to amplify the stories of those who are just where she used to be.
In the late 19th century, the American frontier became famous for its outlaws and gangsters. Men like Billy the Kid and Jesse James became notorious for their criminal exploits.
While this was happening in the American West, there were similar outlaws in the Australian bush.
One, in particular, has captured the imagination of Australia and the reason he became so famous was…..unique.
Learn more about Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang and how they became legendary, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Inspired by a true story from Oakland, California, Leila Mottley's first novel follows a young Black girl who is sexually abused by a group of police officers. Kiara is a 17-year-old girl who comes from a fractured, poor family, and the novel follows her story as she attempts to survive and thrive navigating so much with so little protection. In an interview with Ayesha Roscoe on Weekend Edition Sunday, Mottley talked about the rich internal world she created for her main character, adding nuance to the storylines of poor characters, and the media coverage of the case that inspired her book.
Somewhere in your kitchen, you might have a bottle of olive oil. When you made that purchase you probably didn’t think twice about it, but believe it or not, olive oil used to be one of the most important products in the world.
While today it is almost exclusively used for cooking, in the past it had a wide variety of uses, which is what made it so valuable.
The olive oil you consume today is very similar to the product consumed thousands of years ago. In some cases, literally so.
Learn more about olive oil and how important it was and is to the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Four strangers sitting in the reading room of the Boston Public Library suddenly hear a woman's piercing scream. When the body is found, the four characters quickly become friends as they work to solve the mystery. It's the plot of Sulari Gentill's new novel The Woman in the Library, a thriller set in the cold winter months of Boston, Massachusetts. In an interview on All Things Considered, Gentill told Elissa Nadworny that the idea of strangers bonding during scary events came from her own life experience during the bushfires of Australia.
The industrial revolution began the biggest change to humanity since the dawn of agriculture.
The start of the industrial revolution is largely considered to have begun with the invention of the steam engine. A device that could convert heat to mechanical work.
Yet, the steam engine wasn’t developed all at once. It was an invention that has its roots over 2000 years in the past.
Learn more about the steam engine and how it was developed, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show and independent media, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate.
This episode was originally released in 2016 in the days after the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. It is re-released every year on the anniversary of the incident.
A note on notes: We’d much rather you just went into each episode of The Memory Palace cold. And just let the story take you where it well. So, we don’t suggest looking into the show notes first.
Notes and Reading:
* Most of the specific history of the White Horse was learned from "Sanctuary: the Inside Story of the Nation's Second Oldest Gay Bar" by David Olson, reprinted in its entirety on the White Horse's website.
* "Gayola: Police Professionalization and the Politics of San Francisco's Gay Bars, 1950-1968," by Christopher Agee.
* June Thomas' series on the past, present, and future of the gay bar from Slate a few years back.
* Various articles written on the occasion of the White Horse's 80th anniversary, including this one from SFGATE.Com
* Michael Bronski's A Queer History of the United States.
* Radically Gay, a collection of Harry Hay's writing.
* Incidentally, I watched this interview with Harry Hay from 1996 about gay life in SF in the 30's multiple times because it's amazing.
Secrecy is a huge part of military success. You want to be able to communicate with your own forces without the enemy finding out what your plans are.
As America entered World War II, they were in need of a method of communication that couldn’t be cracked by Germany or Japan. They found the answer they were looking for in the languages of Native Americans.
Learn more about Navajo Code Talkers and the other Native American languages used in World War II, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Today in Western Europe, there is a line that divides speakers of Germanic languages and speakers of Romance languages. While that line has shifted over two thousand years, its existence can be traced back to a battle that took place over 2000 years ago.
That battle rocked the Roman Empire to its core, and finally set limits for how big the empire could grow.
Learn more about the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest and how its impact can still be seen today, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
