Rain on the canal, and the wrong kind of paddle
A canoe, two men who have not thought this through, and several hundred miles of Belgian canal. On the particular misery of being rained on in a boat…
0:00
-3:34
Every word, searchable
Six years of conversations, transcribed. Search a phrase and the player starts at the second somebody said it.
The newest one
Montaigne was wrong about almost everything, which is the point
The essay was invented by a man who kept changing his mind in public and refused to tidy it up afterwards. An argument for writing that admits it is still thinking.
0:00
-4:28
Recently
Every episode
Why heat changes everything about a carrot
Cooking is chemistry that people were doing for thousands of years before anyone could say why it worked. On starch, cell walls, and the difference between boiling and…
0:00
-3:07
The road the padres built, and what got built on top of it
A chain of missions a day apart on horseback became a chain of towns a day apart by car, and then a freeway. What a road decides for…
0:00
-4:01
Full speed ahead, and nobody at the wheel
A short one. What actually happens in the engine room when the bridge asks for more, and why the answer used to involve shouting.
0:00
-1:33
Annie Oakley could shoot, but that is not the story
What a person becomes famous for and what they were actually doing are usually two different jobs. On performance, poverty, and being the most photographed woman of your…
0:00
-5:02
The shows
-
Kitchen Table Chemistry
How ordinary things actually work, explained by people who had to find out the hard way.
2 episodes -
Second Thoughts
Ideas and lives, argued about at length. Nobody is trying to win.
2 episodes -
The Long Way Round
Places, and the slow ways of getting to them. Rivers, roads and the people who were already living at the end of…
2 episodes
Who you hear
Where it gets made
No photographs of anybody talking into anything. The episode art on this site is drawn from each episode's own waveform, so these are the only pictures here: the room, and the things in it.
