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The Thread That Outlived Its Authors
Episode 5826
In April 1997, Martin Schulze filed a wishlist bug against dpkg. In October 2021, Glenn Washburn quoted the entire original message and seconded it. …
1 week, 6 days ago
Why Voices Sound Good in Some Rooms and Not Others
Episode 5825
Some voices make you settle in for an hour; others make your thumb twitch toward skip before the first sentence ends. Voices aren't just being found …
1 week, 6 days ago
Herod's Four Walls: Why Only One Became the Kotel
Episode 5824
Herod's retaining walls went up as one project, fifteen feet thick, and they're still standing. So why did only the Western Wall become the Kotel? We…
1 week, 6 days ago
Why Soap Operas Never End
Episode 5823
Coronation Street debuted in 1960 to reviews predicting it would last three weeks. It has since aired nearly 12,000 episodes. Guiding Light ran for 7…
1 week, 6 days ago
Building Herod's Wall, One Course at a Time
Episode 5822
The Western Wall is usually encountered as a place of prayer. This episode treats it as a construction site. Working from a listener's spec-sheet req…
1 week, 6 days ago
Free Speech's Outer Edge: Hate Speech Law
Episode 5821
In 1969, a unanimous Supreme Court threw out a Ku Klux Klan leader's conviction and replaced fifty years of doctrine with a single sentence: speech c…
2 weeks ago
Hebraizing the Jewish Name: Ivrut's Rise and Cost
Episode 5820
In 1944 the Jewish Agency published a booklet with five methods for Hebraizing a Jewish surname. By 1950, Ben-Gurion had made it a binding order for …
2 weeks ago
What Happens to Retired London Buses?
Episode 5819
What happens to a London bus after London is done with it? Journalist Harry Rosehill wrote a whole field guide to find out. In this episode, we trace…
2 weeks ago
46,434 Mailing Lists That Still Work
Episode 5818
A listener named Daniel asked a simple question: are there public discussion spaces left that anyone can join, fully indexed, and not owned by a plat…
2 weeks ago
When Agents Don't Need Your Pretty Buttons
Episode 5817
AI agents are now real software users, and the tools winning with them are the ones with almost no interface at all. FFmpeg, the volunteer-maintained…
2 weeks ago