After writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning books The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, author Colson Whitehead needed a change of pace. So for his next novel, Harlem Shuffle, he decided to tackle topics near and dear to his heart: heists and New York real estate. In today's episode, Morning Edition host Noel King talks to Whitehead about his book's protagonist, a furniture retailer named Ray Carney, and what draws him to a double life of crime.
Over the centuries, there has been a host of self-proclaimed prophets, astrologers, scientists, and cranks who have predicted the end of the world.
Some of them have been extremely precise in when they predicted when the world will end.
Spoiler: to date, none of the end of the world predictions have come true.
Learn more about end of the world predictions, and how the people who believed it reacted when it didn’t happen, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
For people with autism, simply existing in a neurotypical world can be exhausting. Many learn early on to employ certain strategies to fit in with others, a tactic often referred to as masking. Social psychologist Devon Price, author of Unmasking Autism, spoke to Eric Garcia on Life Kit about the freedom that comes from doing the opposite: unmasking. Price says neurodivergent people can find greater self-acceptance by getting in touch with the person they were before they started trying to fit in. Price and Garcia, who both have autism, talk about how unmasking means progress for disability justice.
In January 1920, an Italian American businessman in Boston started a new enterprise. In order to raise money, he took $100 investments from 18 people and offered them a fabulous return on their money in only 45 days, and he delivered on his promise.
Soon people were lining up to give him their money and everything worked great….
…until it didn’t.
Learn more about Charles Ponzi, the man whose name is synonymous with fraud, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
In 2017, Danica Roem became the first openly transgender woman in office when she was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. In her new memoir, Burn the Page, she writes about the experiences that got her to that moment, the women who inspired her, and the ways in which she reclaimed her own narrative. In an interview on All Things Considered, Roem told Juana Summers that she wrote about things other politicians might try to bury to take control of her own narrative. She says her motto "be vulnerable enough to be visible" has empowered and liberated her in her career.
Located approximately 1500 kilometers or 950 miles south of the equator and split by the International Date Line, is a small chain of islands which was was believed to be the birthplace of Polynesian civilization.
Today these islands are divided between two different countries. Despite a common culture and language, the differences between them keep getting larger over time.
Learn about Samoa, both Western Samoa and American Samoa, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
I’ve done episodes before about people who have saved a large number of human lives. Mostly, these people have done so through inventions or innovations in fields like agriculture or medicine.
What about people who prevented an impending disaster? Like when Superman stops an asteroid from hitting the Earth.
Well, there was such a case, and thanks to the actions of a single man, millions of lives might have been saved.
Learn more about Stanislav Petrov, the man who saved the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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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.
In 1880, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was commissioned to compose a work in honor of the completion of a new cathedral.
What he wrote became one of the best known, over the top, and difficult to produce pieces of music in history. Despite its popularity almost 150 years later, the composer actually thought it was one of his worst works.
Learn more about the 1812 Overture, how it was created, and just how crazy it actually is to properly perform, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
