Category: DailyShorts

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NPR's Book of the Day - What A Detective Novel And A Memoir Both Have To Say About Black American Life

At first glance, journalist Dawn Turner's book Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood and detective novelist Walter Mosley's Down The River Unto The Sea don't have a ton in common. The former takes place in Chicago and focuses on the tough childhoods of Turner, her sister and her best friend; the latter takes readers to the streets of New York, where a cop-turned-private eye investigates police corruption. But in today's episode, each author talks to Michel Martin about how both their stories illustrate systems that treat Black Americans unfairly, and what that says about justice in the U.S.
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Bay Curious - Can Redwood City Really Boast “Climate Best By Government Test”?

Drive around downtown Redwood City and you're sure to see the city slogan on a big arching signs: "Climate Best by Government Test." The slogan caught the attention of Lauren Tankeh of San Carlos, who wanted to know if it's true. “Does Redwood City actually have the best weather?” Today on the show we look at the history of the town slogan. Plus: We answer a question from another listener about the origins of Los Gatos. It's a Peninsula special!

Additional Reading:


Reported by Rachael Myrow. 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, Isabeth Mendoza, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Carly Severn, Lina Blanco, Christopher Cox, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Jenny Pritchett.

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Everything Everywhere Daily - Year One

I am speaking these words in the year 2021. You might be listening to them in a different year, but whatever year you happen to be in right now, it will be a year using the same number convention for years that we do now. But why did we start counting years at year 1? What did they do before that? Who picked year 1 and why? Why isn’t there a year zero? And what is the deal with AD and CE? Learn more about why we count years the way we do on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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NPR's Book of the Day - To Understand Humanity, You Have To Understand Water

For decades, the author and scientist Giulio Boc­caletti has studied the substance that's come to define life as we know it: water. And in his book Water: A Biography, he traces the history of how humanity, regardless of continent or creed, has shaped entire civilizations around a resource that's both fickle and essential for life on earth. In this episode, All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro talks to Boccaletti about our long, complicated history with water, and why understanding the past is crucial to the fight with climate change.
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Everything Everywhere Daily - How Close Were the Nazis to Making an Atomic Bomb?

During the second world war, one of the biggest efforts of the war was the Manhattan Project: the secret American program to create an atomic bomb. The scientists and staff of the Manhattan Project were in a race to beat Nazi Germany to be the first country to build the A-bomb. When Germany surrendered in May 1945, and Americans detonated the first device in July, they had seemingly won the race. But was it in fact a race at all? How close were the Nazis to actually building an atom bomb?

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NPR's Book of the Day - Colson Whitehead Finally Gets To Flex His Comedy Muscle

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.
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Everything Everywhere Daily - Alexandria

In the year 331 BC, fresh from his conquest of Egypt, Alexander the Great established a new city in Egypt named after himself. This new city, situated on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, at the end of the Nile Delta, would go on to become one of the most important cities in the world, and Alexander’s city is still alive and vibrant today. Learn more about Alexandria, the "Bride of the Mediterranean" on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Everything Everywhere Daily - Survivorship Bias

During World War II, the US Army assigned statistician Abraham Wald the task of statistically figuring out where extra armor should be added to American bombers. After analyzing the evidence and sharing it with the Army, he recommended the exact opposite of what the Army assumed. The reason was that the Army had engaged in a logical fallacy. Learn more about survivorship bias and how it manifests itself into everyday thinking, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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