Category: DailyShorts

History is full of battles and conflicts. Most of them are forgotten over time as they don’t really impact history. Whether one king or another wins a battle usually doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things. However, there are moments that truly change world history. When civilizations clash and the outcome can affect the world for centuries. Such a moment occurred on May 29, 1453.

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In today's double episode, both books center people who have died. And they aren't just tributes to those who've passed, but to the people who remember them. First, Steven Roberts remembers his late wife, journalist Cokie Roberts, with NPR's Steve Inskeep. His book Cokie is full of interviews with her friends, family, and colleagues. Then, poet Victoria Chang talks about past and future generations of her family and what she wants to pass on to her own daughters in her book Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief with NPR's Rachel Martin.

On November 11th, 1918, the first world war came to an end. Or to be more precise, the fighting stopped. For the next eight months, a final peace treaty was hammered out, and hanging over the negotiations was the very real threat that fighting could break out again. In the end, the treaty ended the world’s greatest war and might have been the starting point for an even worse one. Learn more about the Treaty of Versailles on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Trying to decrease your carbon footprint can be complicated. You use metal straws, recycle your paper, and bring your own grocery bags to the store, but everything you buy is part of a supply chain that's simply way out of your control. That lack of control is central to Amitav Ghosh's retelling of an ancient Bengali myth of a nature goddess setting calamity after calamity on a merchant who's only concerned with money. In today's interview, Ghosh tells NPR's Ari Shapiro that writing his 2019 novel Gun Island based on old legends allowed for a full response to the scope of climate change.

Have you ever met someone who couldn’t pronounce the name nearby town, or they just spoke different enough that you could tell that they were from somewhere else? If so, you have probably learned about shibboleths without even knowing it. These differences in speech have been used to identify people for centuries. Learn more about shibboleths, what they are and how they have been used throughout history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Grady Hendrix LOVES horror movies, especially those old 80's slashers. And his new book is a tribute to that "final girl" at the end of so many of them. The one who doesn't necessarily survive by being smarter or stronger, but simply makes it to the end alive by not giving up. NPR's Audie Cornish interviewed him about his novel Final Girl Support Group, which is about exactly what it sounds like, a support group for women who survived psycho murderers — except it seems like someone's starting to hunt them down... again. As Hendrix says, what's the scariest thing for a "Final Girl?" A sequel.

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

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.

Music

• Feminist from Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurrian’s score to Christine.

• Under Siege from the great Warren Ellis’ score to Mustang

• Warm Canto from Mal Waldren

• M is for Man, Music, Mozart: the Eisenstein Song from Louis Andriessen’s De Stijl album.

• The them to Le Doulo from Paul Misraki

• Manny Returns Home from Bernard Hermann’s score to the Wrong Man

Africa is big. Really big. And for thousands of years, people have dreamed of a way to cut through the narrowest part of the Siani Peninsula to connect the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. In the 19th century, that dream was actualized. Since then, the canal has had its own history and has played a major role in the global economy. Learn more about the Suez Canal, its shockingly ancient history, and its current role in global shipping, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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