Lollapalooza is a popular music festival that takes place in Chicago's Grant Park each year. But it was conceived as a farewell tour for the band Jane's Addiction, kicking off with a series of chaotic performances across the United States in the summer of 1991. Lollapalooza, a new oral history by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour, documents the wild early days of the festival through interviews with bands like Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails and Green Day. In today's episode, the book's authors speak with NPR's A Martínez about the way the festival united genres and helped bring alternative music into the mainstream.
To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday
Sometime around eight to nine thousand years ago, ancient people in Asia Minor found a very dull grey metal that turned out to be easy to manipulate when it was heated.
For thousands of years, it was used for a variety of purposes, including as a food additive.
4
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, even more uses were found for this unique metal.
However, by the 20th century, scientists realized that maybe this stuff wasn’t really so good for us.
Learn more about lead, how it has been used throughout history, and how our perception of it has changed on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Today on the show, we meet Canada's new Prime Minister, economist Mark Carney.
What's it like when your former job — being a non-political banker who decides a country's interest rate — bleeds into your now-political decisions on everything?
Related episodes: A polite message from Canada to the U.S. (Apple / Spotify)
Annie is 37 weeks pregnant. She's shopping at IKEA in Portland, Oregon, when everything around her begins to shake. It's an earthquake – the big one. Unable to get in touch with her husband or anyone else, she starts to walk. This is the setup for Emma Pattee's new novel Tilt, which the author says was inspired by the major earthquake predicted to hit the Pacific Northwest in the next 50 years. In today's episode, Pattee talks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about millennial disappointment, striving for scientific accuracy in the writing process, and what it means to prepare for disaster.
To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday
Episode: 2010 George McJunkin and Ales Hrdlicka: Who discovered the Clovis culture? Today, guest historian Cathy Patterson looks at an unlikely anthropologist.
The Solar System is a pretty big place. When most people think of our Solar System, they probably think of the Sun, the planets, and all their moons.
However, the solar system is much larger than most people realize. In fact, it is vastly larger than the model they have in their heads.
Only in the last few years, with the advent of larger telescopes and better techniques, have we been able to learn more about the outer edge of our Solar System.
Learn about the Kuiper Belt, Oort Cloud, and the outer reaches of the solar system on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
President Trump claims a main goal of his crippling tariffs is to address the U.S. trade deficit. So is the U.S. trade deficit a problem? On today's show, why we'll never have a trade surplus with every single country; what the benefits of a trade deficit are; and whether or not the trade deficit affects jobs.
Related episodes: Tarrified! We check in on businesses (Apple / Spotify) Why there's no referee for the trade war (Apple / Spotify) Common economic myths debunked (Apple / Spotify)
For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.