We spend a lot of time in Austin talking about how many new people move here. But most of us don’t talk much about the people who came before us — way before us.
If you’ve ever taken a walk along Shoal Creek or gone to Barton Springs on a hot summer day, you’re doing something that people have done here for thousands of years. Because all of this was actually once — and in some ways still is — Indigenous land.
On September 13, 1848, a 25-year-old man named Phineas Gage received a horrific brain injury while working on a railroad in Vermont. The odds of anyone surviving such an accident were a million to one.
Yet, despite astronomical odds, he survived his injury and he became a case study for neuroscientists ever since.
Learn more about Phineas Gage and his incredible story, and how it helped us to understand the workings of the human brain, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Journalist Frank Bruni had lots of professional success: he was a White House correspondent, food critic, and opinion columnist. But then in 2017 he suffered a rare type of stroke that left him unable to see correctly. His new memoir, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found, focuses on many people who, like Bruni, have had challenges or setbacks in their lives that they have had to adjust to. Bruni told NPR's Ari Shapiro that asking people about their pain "ends up being rewarding and enriching for everybody involved."
Comic Phoebe Robinson told NPR's Rachel Martin that she doesn't wake up every day thinking "time to dismantle systemic racism!" But since she has a platform, she might as well use it to bring about some positive change. She also told Martin that her dream life involves buying sensible cardigans, getting day drunk with Kathy Lee and Hoda, and a loving marriage with Robert DeNiro. Robinson's book You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain goes into the racism she experiences and why she would like to date either Michael Fassbender or Michael B. Jordan (sorry Mr. DeNiro).
Here’s a special preview of the new season of Cautionary Tales from Pushkin Industries. On Cautionary Tales, bestselling author Tim Harford shares stories of human error, natural disasters, and tragic catastrophes from history that teach us important lessons for today. In this preview, you’ll hear about the 1981 Hyatt Regency Hotel collapse, a shocking design failure that resulted in 114 deaths and many more injuries. Hear the full story, and more from Cautionary Tales, at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/cteverything.
The 94th Academy Awards were last night. To celebrate we're taking a trip down memory lane with one of Hollywood's greatest icons, Rita Moreno. Back in 2013 she sat down with NPR's Rachel Martin to discuss her life and career, including her win for best supporting actress in 1962. She told Martin that her acceptance speech was so short because she wanted to get off stage so she could cry.
Ancient Rome had an enormous number of customs and traditions. Some of them have been passed down to us in the names of our months, or the letters in the Latin alphabet.
However, they also had a lot of very customs which to us seem very strange.
One of the strangest, and most powerful to the Romans, were the traditions surrounding the Roman city limits, aka the pomerium.
Learn more about the Roman pomerium, and how seriously the Romans took it, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
