The New York Times
American daily newspaper (founded 1851)
Episodes
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#5659: The Ethics of Anonymous Testimony in DocumentaryA new IDF response to a Venice-winning film raises a sharp question: what do documentarians owe when sources stay truly anonymous? -
#5438: Why Linguists Left the AI RoomLarge language models grew out of linguistics — so why aren't linguists in the room where they're built? -
#5238: Robber Barons: Builders or Plunderers?Rockefeller cut kerosene prices by 90% — and the top 1% owned half of America. Both facts are true. So why can't we agree? -
#5837: Atlas Obscura: 33,000 Hidden Places and a Boardroom CoupA rotating circle of plants in Argentina, a boiling river 400 miles from any volcano, and the founders who got voted off the board. -
#5835: What Do You Call the Urge to Know Obscure Things?There's no single name for the pull toward transporter bridges, strange borders, and overlooked infrastructure. The vocabulary exists — it's just s... -
#5786: Colgate, Harley, and Bic: Famous Brands' Forgotten FlopsColgate never sold beef lasagna — but it did sell gassy soybeans. Harley made cologne. Bic made "For Her" pens. The stories are stranger than the l... -
#5785: The Worst Mascots Ever MadeFrom a clown selling sugar cereal to a blue blob Atlanta couldn't name, we count down the mascots that should never have left the sketch. -
#5687: The Speech Scientist Behind TeletubbiesAndrew Davenport studied speech sciences and performance art — then built Teletubbies on developmental theory, not gibberish. -
#5650: Electricians, Rentals, and the Skill That WaitsA day of wiring a rental sparks three threads: skills that return, a guild older than its technology, and spaces you can't touch. -
#5645: Who Teaches You to Fix Your Own Home?Wiring a plug but never welding metal — why hands-on skills have holes, and what a real DIY curriculum would cover. -
#5630: Josephus: The Priest Who Wrote From Rome's SidePriest, general, defector, Roman pensioner — how one first-century author became the lens through which we see ancient Judaism. -
#5600: Alien Abductions: 4 Million Claims, Zero EvidenceNearly four million Americans say they've been abducted. Not one has produced a lab-verifiable artifact. What's going on? -
#5557: Ten Disastrous Casting Decisions, RankedExcellent actors, spectacularly wrong roles — from Dick Van Dyke's cockney to Tom Hanks as a Wall Street snob. Ten mismatches, ranked. -
#5554: Five Movies That Defeat First ViewingsPrimer, Mulholland Drive, Synecdoche, Inland Empire — five acclaimed films where confusion is the craft, ranked by how hard they are to follow. -
#5515: Who Owns What in Intelligence?Armies built spy agencies first — half a century before Mossad. How military and civilian intelligence divide the work, and who enforces the line. -
#5414: Inventing Anna: The Real Tradecraft Behind the ConHow Anna Delvey ran a four-year con on Word docs, AOL addresses, and a supermarket burner phone — and what Netflix got right. -
#5338: Iran Is Rebuilding Parchin. Again.Satellite imagery shows Iran rebuilding the Taleghan Two site at Parchin for the second time in 18 months — this time under a tarp. -
#5337: The World's Weirdest Museums: Poop, Parasites, and Broken HeartsFrom a Poozeum in Arizona to Tokyo's parasite museum, we explore the world's most oddly specific collections and the obsession behind them. -
#5168: Ten Inventors You've Never Heard OfFrom the yellow traffic light to the geoid model behind GPS — ten inventors whose quiet work reshaped daily life, and why we forgot them. -
#5134: Why Japanese TV Commits So Hard to AbsurdityTen comedians who can't laugh, exploding rings, and a man who won a contest for 15 months — why Japan goes all in.