As I come up on the first anniversary of my podcast, I look back in conflict. Sure, I made a podcast almost every two weeks, I learned a lot and other people seemed to enjoy them. But so few other people. Despite what some gurus advise, that you should make stuff purely for your own satisfaction, it is also rewarding to have some external validation. I feel I'm not getting enough of that. So in addition to making the podcast, I have to make more people aware of it, and that's tied up in a discussion I've been having with a crowd of clever people over on ADN.

What do podcasters need?

The US Congress is apparently trying again to allow low-income pregnant women and mothers to use their food aid to buy "white potatoes," which they are not currently allowed to do. And various people with mashed potatoes between their ears are against this. ¹ The argument seems at least partly to...

Just back from walking to dog and listening to Planet Money's latest podcast A Bet On The Future Of Humanity. In 1980 economist Julian Simon bet biologist Paul Ehrlich that the price of a basket of metals would go down over the next decade. Ehrlich lost, with repercussions still being felt in today's highly polarised discussions about what, if anything, we need to do to ensure a decent future. As it happens, I remember the bet clearly.

The Dallas Morning News is warning all good Texans that prices for their beloved pecans -- to make the official state pie, of course -- are likely to be very high this year. This would not normally have caught my eye, had I not earlier talked to James McWilliams about pecans and history. That wa...

“Thinking about the squirm” was just one memorable phrase in Laurie Taylor’s fascinating interview with Alex Rhys-Taylor, who had just published a paper on Disgust and distinction: the case of the jellied eel. ¹ Much was made of the jellied eel as a signifier of the working classes, with an un...