Category: DailyShorts

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NPR's Book of the Day - Jane Goodall doesn’t want you to give up on the planet

Amidst all the bad news (like, really bad news), it can be hard to hold on to hope — especially with the looming threat of climate change. But renowned scientist and chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall says that, despite the dire state of the world, it's too early to give up on our planet. Her new book with co-author Douglas Abrams is all about the state of our planet and how to save it from looming catastrophe for future generations.
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Everything Everywhere Daily - The Real Dracula

Vampires have been been a part of folklore for centuries. Perhaps no mythical vampire is more famous than Count Dracula. While Count Dracula might be fictional, believe it or not, he was based and named on a real person who lived in 15th century Romania. While he might not have been a vampire, he was still plenty deadly. Learn more about Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracula, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Everything Everywhere Daily - A History of Halloween (Encore)

On October 31 every year, we celebrate Halloween. It is especially popular in the United States where we use the holiday as an excuse for kids to dress up and ask for candy, and for adults to dress up and drink. But why do we dress up, and what’s the deal with pumpkins, how does this have anything to do with monsters and bats? Learn more about the history of Halloween and how so many unrelated things got lumped together on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily

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Everything Everywhere Daily - How Casinos Work

Casinos are fascinating places. They can make tons of money, but they don’t really have a product. While it is often called entertainment, unlike other forms of entertainment, no one is entertaining you. In fact, the entire business is really nothing more than applied mathematics. With the proper application of mathematics and a liberal dose of high-tech security and proper management, a casino can become a cash machine.

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39 Ways to Save the Planet - Arnold Schwarzenegger’s favourite ways to save the planet

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the former governor of California and one of America's most influential green voices. He's also one of the biggest movie stars in the world and a big fan of the innovators, activists and entrepreneurs featured in the previous 39 episodes of this series. In this final programme, the Terminator star discusses his favourite ideas from the series with Tom Heap and looks forward to the crucial climate change talks in Glasgow in November.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

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NPR's Book of the Day - Zakiya Dalila Harris and Oliver Jeffers talk about different kinds of hauntings

It's almost Halloween, which means that we're in peak spooky season. So for today's episode, we bring you two books with two very different kinds of frights: a haunted house and...office politics. That's right: In The Other Black Girl, writer Zakiya Dalila Harris captures the all-too-real horror of being the only Black woman in her office. When another Black woman is hired, the tension gets dialed up even higher. And in There's A Ghost In This House, the author-illustrator Oliver Jeffers uses old photographs to create creepy illustrations that will give both children and adults goosebumps.
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Bay Curious - Listen If You Dare! Three Bay Area Ghost Stories

We recommend you listen to this episode on headphones.

Join us around the campfire to hear three ghost stories, some of them decades old, and all of from right here in the Bay Area. Featuring Wes Leslie of The Haunt Ghost Tours, Tommy Netzband of Haunted Haight Walking Tour and the San Francisco Ghost Society and storyteller JP Frary. 

Additional Reading


Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Sebastian Miño-Bucheli and Brendan Willard. Additional support from Erika Aguilar, Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Paul Lancour, Carly Severn, Lina Blanco, Ethan Toven-Lindsey, Vinnee Tong, Don Clyde and Jenny Pritchett.

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Everything Everywhere Daily - Ambergris: The World’s Most Valuable Smelly Substance

One of the rarest and most expensive substances in the world is actually pretty disgusting. The way it is created is pretty gross, it looks pretty gross, and smells even worse. Despite how disgusting it is, there are people who will pay as much for it on a per gram basis as gold, yet when you get right down to it, no one really needs it. Learn more about ambergris, the treasure of the sea, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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NPR's Book of the Day - How Drew Magary rediscovered himself after ‘The Night the Lights Went Out’

The humor writer Drew Magary was at a karaoke bar when his life changed in a flash: He collapsed and cracked his skull. By most accounts, the resulting traumatic brain injury should have been fatal, but he survived. As he recounts in his book The Night the Lights Went Out, recovering from that injury has been tough. Among other things, he permanently lost some of his senses. As Magary tells NPR's Lulu Garcia Navarro, recovery has required him to figure out who he is now, post injury — a challenge that makes for a good story, he says.
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Curious City - The Halloween Episode: Munger Road

On this week’s episode Curious City investigates the origins of the Munger Road haunting. Like any good ghost story, there are several versions of the Munger Road tale, but the ghost story goes something like this: A school bus full of kids was crossing over the train tracks and it stalled. Before the driver could get the bus off the tracks, a train came along and hit the bus. No one bus survived the accident. The legend says the ghosts of the children are still there, and claims that if you drive your car onto the tracks and put it in neutral and sprinkle some baby powder on your car bumper, allegedly, the children are going to push your car off the tracks to safety. And small handprints will appear in the baby powder.