Artificial Intelligence
Episodes whose main subject is AI itself: building with, training, evaluating, or debating AI systems. AI used only as a tool for another topic goes to that topic.
#3684: Your Home Inventory Can’t Order Groceries (Yet)
Supermarkets have APIs, but they’re not for you. Here’s how AI agents are changing the game.
#3683: What Historians Actually Do All Day
Only 1 in 8 history PhDs lands a tenure-track job. Here's where the rest go.
#3674: Why Is Trump's Skin Orange? The Evidence
A deep dive into the chemistry of spray tans, periorbital sparing, and the most likely explanation for the signature hue.
#3673: Knowledge Graphs vs SQL: How Custom Relationships Change Retrieval
Why naming relationships (not just connecting data) transforms how you retrieve information.
#3667: When Your Podcast Outgrows Its Feed
3,700 episodes. 68 days of audio. One RSS feed designed for 10 blog posts. Can podcast infrastructure handle this?
#3663: Warm Absurdism: The Genre Daniel Actually Loves
What connects Nathan for You, Waiting for Godot, and The Matrix? It's not sci-fi — it's absurdist humanism.
#3661: What 1000 AI Podcast Episodes Actually Prove
Scaling an AI podcast to 1000 episodes reveals what no 10-episode pilot can teach you about sustainability, cost, and habit formation.
#3658: How Reddit Built Guardrails for Anonymity
Reddit didn't solve harassment by killing anonymity. It built friction, reputation systems, and distributed governance.
#3649: When Wikipedia Feels Less Reliable Than AI
One reader explains why he now trusts AI more than Wikipedia on contested topics like Israel and Zionism.
#3629: The Real Karl Pilkington: Genuine or Act?
Was Karl Pilkington faking it on *An Idiot Abroad*? And what else captures that same reluctant-host magic?
#3627: What Your Comedy Taste Says About You
Do you love *Nathan for You* and *Trigger Happy TV*? We diagnose your sense of humor.
#3605: Can You Retain Audio While Doing Dishes?
Does folding laundry while listening to a podcast help or hurt retention? The science is surprisingly clear.
#3596: Why an AI Model Kept Calling Itself Sonnet 4.6
When a Chinese model insists it's "Sonnet 4.6," is it theft, sloppy training, or something stranger?
#3595: How DeepSeek Feels More Open Than Western AI
Why Chinese AI models sometimes feel less censored on American political topics than American models do.
#3593: Is the Far-Right a Movement or a Media Effect?
How a Belfast attack reveals the machinery stitching isolated crimes into a narrative of imported violence.
#3586: The Barney Giggle: How Childhood TV Shapes Adult Behavior
Did Barney the Dinosaur program your adult social responses? The surprising neuroscience of childhood media conditioning.
#3583: Why Flat Characters Work: Lessons from The Simpsons
How a show with unevolving characters and a reset button became a masterclass in scriptwriting and emotional clarity.
#3577: How Do Knockoff Brands Get Away With It?
The surprising legal strategy behind those supermarket products that look almost exactly like the real thing.
#3568: Inside the Live News Punditry Machine
How booking producers, color-coded pundit databases, and real-time ratings data drive marathon news coverage.
#3564: Fixing Your Phone's Variable Frame Rate Video
Why your phone's video drifts out of sync, how to fix it, and whether RAW video is actually worth it.