History and Culture
The human past, language, religion, philosophy, arts, media, and food.
#982: Jerusalem’s Street Cats: A History of Urban Evolution
Explore how Jerusalem became one of the world's most cat-dense cities, from British Mandate rat catchers to modern urban survivors.
#978: The Donkey's Alma Mater: Storrs and the Land-Grant Legacy
Explore the agricultural roots and mysterious past of the world's most educated donkey in the quiet village of Storrs, Connecticut.
#977: The High-Wire Act of Slowness
Discover why the sloth’s slow pace isn’t laziness, but a high-stakes survival strategy in a world that treats them like a digital mascot.
#975: The Architecture of Deception: Inside Intelligence Fronts
Explore how intelligence agencies build real businesses, from luxury resorts to shipping firms, to hide high-stakes operations in plain sight.
#971: Stress-Testing the Soul: Philosophy in the Age of AI
Is human meaning fully mapped out? Discover why AI isn’t killing philosophy, but stress-testing it for a new era of hybrid agency.
#961: When Colonial Maps Create Living Borders
Discover the strange reality of the northern border, where a single village was split in two and a mountain strip became a legal ghost.
#951: The Kurdish Wild Card: A Nation Between Empires
With 40 million people and no state, the Kurds remain the Middle East's ultimate wild card. Will 2026 be the year their borders finally change?
#932: What If Iran's Regime Fell Tomorrow?
Exploring the historic potential of a post-regime Iran and the return of a strategic alliance between Jerusalem and Tehran.
#930: The World’s Policeman: American Power and the New Restraint
Is America still the world's policeman? We explore the shift from the Monroe Doctrine to the aggressive "interventionist isolationism" of 2026.
#924: When a Donkey and a Sloth Explain Purim
Explore the deep themes of Purim in Jerusalem during wartime, from the power of masks to the defiance of finding joy in the face of modern threats.
#904: The Empire of Bases: How US Footprint Became a Target
As 27 US bases face unprecedented strikes, Herman and Corn trace the 80-year history of the American military footprint in the Middle East.
#845: Why Your Words Feel Different to Me
Why do some words feel like an insult while others make our skin crawl? Explore the hidden psychology and history behind our daily vocabulary.
#836: Two Miles to Tomorrow: Life on the Bering Strait
Discover the tiny islands where the US and Russia are just two miles apart—and separated by an incredible 21-hour time difference.
#818: From Ice Picks to Ultrasound: The New Psychosurgery
Explore the dark history of the lobotomy and the high-tech, precision neurosurgery used today to treat severe mental health conditions.
#817: The Social Model Behind Neurodiversity
Is neurodivergence just a buzzword? Explore how shifting from a medical to a social model is reshaping our workplaces and identities.
#816: From Scrolls to SQL: The Evolution of Human Order
Explore the history of how we organize the world, from ancient library catalogs to the future of AI-driven vector databases.
#750: The Ancient Roots of Us vs. Them
Explore the ancient roots of human prejudice, from Sumerian steles to the digital echo chambers of the modern "global village."
#748: Evolution of the Machine: The Future of Our Show
Corn and Herman explore the next frontier of their show, from lifelike video avatars to the fragile systems that keep our modern world running.
#747: Expanding the Menagerie: New Voices for Weird Prompts
Corn and Herman celebrate 700 episodes by designing a new "cognitive ecosystem" of characters to tackle the world's strangest prompts.
#741: The Fragile Web: Who Decides What We Remember?
Explore how the Internet Archive saves the web, the legal battles threatening its future, and the rise of decentralized storage like Arweave.