Cities and Transport
The built environment and movement: urban planning, housing, buildings, infrastructure, aviation, and travel.
The built environment and movement: urban planning, housing, buildings, infrastructure, aviation, and travel.
#6150: Under the Other Sticky Notes
A bird, a fridge, a fan, and one red light that nobody remembers turning on. The least professional episode we've ever made.
#6124: One Vault, Two Readers: Secrets for a Home AI Gateway
One source, two readers — not two copies kept in sync. How a home AI gateway should actually get its API keys.
#6121: Hearing Speech in Noise: What Actually Works
Over-the-counter hearing aids, AirPods Conversation Boost, and neural speech separation — what works when your audiogram is normal but the café isn't.
#6089: Cheap Ads for Two-Person Shops
Billboard remnant space, $20/day digital slots, and reverse graffiti: how small operators buy attention at a fraction of list price.
#6082: Brazen, Not Fraudulent: Hunting Staycation Deals in Israel
Last-minute staycation hacks for Israel: empty-hotel leverage, the zimmer sites, card and reservist discounts, and Hilbert's laminated rules for asking a hotel for a deal.
#6081: What If You Stripped Israel Down to Its Original Architecture?
The four-room house, the volute capital, and the question of whether an indigenous Judean architecture can be recovered — or only reinvented.
#6077: Jerusalem's Shuk Is Getting 10 New Towers
The stalls stay put. Everything around them is going up — and a lot of it is going down seven floors first.
#6072: China Beyond Beijing and Shanghai: A Regional Guide
Most Westerners know two Chinese cities. Here's the rest of the map — regions, megacities you've never heard of, and which ones you can actually re...
#6054: Seven Percent for a Decade: What Open Data Portals Actually Delivered
A decade of open data portals moved the share of fully open datasets from 7% to... 7%. What would a real publishing pipeline look like?
#6019: Who Should Decide What Gets Built?
A listener asks what developers' role in a city should really be — and two very different cities show what happens when you get the answer right or...
#6018: The Plan Nobody Has Ever Read
Jerusalem's Taba is a legal document no single person has ever read cover to cover — and it governs where millions of people can build.
#6017: Israel's 319-Day Permit: Why Building Takes a Year
Israel averages 319 days to a building permit — nearly 3x the Western average. Where does the year actually go?
#5998: America's Deadliest Rental Cars by the Numbers
The Kia Rio tops federal fatality tables at 170 driver deaths per million. Here's what the data says about the cars waiting in the rental lot.
#5993: Why Every Renovation Show Looks the Same
Shiplap, white quartz, open plan — why does every renovation show produce the identical room, and who's really choosing it?
#5955: Work Lights: Lumens, Lux, and the Specs That Matter
Lumens is the easiest spec to print and the least useful on its own. Here's what to read instead when buying a work light.
#5934: Why Modiin Is Ugly Despite Its Form-Based Code
Modiin had a form-based code and still came out ugly. The reason sits in what the code refused to regulate: facades, windows, materials.
#5933: Form-Based Codes and the City That Feels Dead
Can a zoning document create a walkable Levantine city with real character — or does over-planning kill the spontaneity that makes cities alive?
#5932: What the 1964 White Paper on the Twin Towers Actually Said
Three pages from 1964 concluded a 707 impact would cause only local damage. Fire was never in the analysis.
#5931: What the Council on Vertical Urbanism Actually Decides
The body that rules on the world's tallest buildings just dropped "tall buildings" from its name. What does that mean for Jerusalem's Marom Tower?
#5923: Plus Codes: Free Addressing Nobody Uses
A free, offline, 14-metre addressing system exists — so why do ambulances still can't find the house?