Category: DailyShorts

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NPR's Book of the Day - With new novel, Ocean Vuong says he wants to reframe America as a place of salvage

Ocean Vuong's debut novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous placed him in an elite club of American writers. He teaches at NYU and is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other honors. But before all this, the author was raised by working-class Vietnamese immigrant parents in Hartford, Connecticut. Vuong's new novel The Emperor of Gladness takes place in a similar environment and centers on an unlikely friendship between a 19 year-old college dropout named Hai and an 82-year-old with dementia named Grazina. In today's episode, Vuong joins NPR's Ari Shapiro for a conversation about reframing our view of the United States and the American dream, describing ugly things in a beautiful way, and Vuong's experience working in close quarters at a fast food restaurant.

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Curious City - Car towed? Listen to this on your way down to Chicago’s Central Auto Pound

If you’ve had your car towed in Chicago, there’s a decent chance you had to journey down to Lower Lower Wacker Drive — likely not in the best of moods — to open your wallet and recollect your vehicle. “It's supposed to be a happy process,” said Michael Lacoco, the deputy commissioner of the city’s bureau of traffic services. In our last episode, we answered some of your many questions about Lower Wacker Drive, a.k.a. Chicago’s basement. Today, we try to demystify a notorious Chicago landmark within: the Central Auto Pound. Lacoco is a 33-year veteran of this department, the perfect person to help us on this journey. He explains why you shouldn’t try to steal your own car from the lot, why that white inventory number they draw on your window is so hard to wash off, and what you can do if you think you were wrongfully towed.
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Bay Curious - How Bacon Wrapped Hot Dogs Became Iconic Bay Area Street Food

If you've ever walked around Pier 39 in San Francisco or made a late-night exit from a concert at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, you're probably familiar with the bacon wrapped hot dog. But who are the vendors behind these savory snacks? And what's with the bacon and onions? Bay Curious listener Olivia Godfrey wanted to find out more.


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This story was reported by Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, Holly Kernan and everyone on Team KQED.

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Everything Everywhere Daily - The Channel Tunnel

For centuries, the English Channel served as a moat that kept the conflicts of Continental Europe away from the island of Great Britain.

While it served as a barrier for armies, it also served as a hindrance to commerce. The movement of goods and people across the English Channel was much more difficult than he small distance that had to be crossed. 

Some dreamed of one day taming that barrier, and in the 1990s, that dream came true.

Learn more about the Channel Tunnel, aka the Chunnel, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.


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The Indicator from Planet Money - How Trump is making coin from $TRUMP coin

Just before Trump began his second administration in January, he and his business partners launched the $TRUMP coin. It's a meme coin that quickly raked in hundreds of millions of dollars. And there's a lot of earning potential still left on the table. Is any of this legal?

Today on the show, we examine how the $TRUMP coin works and talk to an expert about how the president's meme coin gambit interacts with the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

Related episodes:
How the memecoin game is played
Did Trump enable insider trading?

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Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

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NPR's Book of the Day - ‘Little Bosses Everywhere’ looks into the Wild West of multilevel marketing

Multilevel marketing – or MLM – first became popular in the period that followed World War II. Since then, millions have tried their luck as salespeople for companies like Amway, Mary Kay, Cutco and Herbalife. MLMs offer themselves as low-cost paths to entrepreneurship, but very few of their participants are able to earn a living wage. A new book Little Bosses Everywhere by Bridget Read traces the history and culture of the MLM industry. In today's episode, Read speaks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about why this business model flourishes in economic uncertainty, the unregulated nature of the industry, and the blurred lines between MLMs and pyramid schemes.

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