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PODCAST

pplpod

pplpod is a podcast about people, places and lots of other stuff. Each episode takes a deep dive into the lives, choices, and legacies of fascinating figures from history, culture, music, and beyond. From icons who shaped entire generations to hidden stories that deserve the spotlight, pplpod brings you closer to the people behind the headlines and the legends.Thoughtful, engaging, and story-driven, pplpod explores what makes these lives extraordinary—and what we can learn from them today.

history music history

All Episodes

20:31

The statistical engine of generative AI

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

The statistical engine of generative AI

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22:53

The spectacular ruin of Oscar Wilde

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

The spectacular ruin of Oscar Wilde

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24:48

The three data sets behind AI

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

The three data sets behind AI

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25:04

The toxic cycle of AI winters

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

The toxic cycle of AI winters

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19:21

The typo on 46 million banknotes

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

The typo on 46 million banknotes

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20:21

The woman who mapped penicillin and insulin

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

The woman who mapped penicillin and insulin

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21:26

The zero percent William Shatner sitcom

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

The zero percent William Shatner sitcom

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15:39

Thirty Global Realities of Fifty Dollars

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Thirty Global Realities of Fifty Dollars

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22:09

Toni Morrison and the white gaze

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Toni Morrison and the white gaze

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20:00

Tricking AI with turtles and tape

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Tricking AI with turtles and tape

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16:56

Ty Dolla Sign The Industry Secret Weapon

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Ty Dolla Sign The Industry Secret Weapon

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22:44

Tulip Bulbs and Givenchy Gowns

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Tulip Bulbs and Givenchy Gowns

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17:46

Ty Dolla Sign s 2016 Campaign Mixtape

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Ty Dolla Sign's 2016 Campaign Mixtape: Free TC and the Road to CampaignBefore the album Campaign, there was Free TC. Released in November 2015, Ty Dolla Sign's debut mixtape-turned-commercial-project served as both a personal statement and a springboard into 2016 — the year that would define his mainstream arrival. Understanding Free TC is essential to understanding why Campaign landed the way it did, and what the arc between the two projects reveals about how artists build momentum, manage

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21:23

Ty Dolla Sign s 2016 Election Time Capsule

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Ty Dolla Sign's 2016 Election Time Capsule: The Album AngleWhen Ty Dolla Sign titled his debut studio album Campaign and dropped it in October 2016, weeks before the presidential election, he was making a claim. Not a political claim exactly — there are no policy positions on Campaign, no campaign promises in the traditional sense — but a claim about presence, about visibility, about the right to take up space in a cultural moment that was sorting people into very clear camps.This episode goes

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16:35

Ty Dolla Sign's 2016 Election Time Capsule

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Ty Dolla Sign's 2016 Election Time CapsuleThere's a version of 2016 that gets told through polling numbers, cable news chyrons, and electoral college maps. This episode tells a different version — through the music Ty Dolla Sign was releasing that year, and what it reveals about the cultural frequency of a moment that felt, even while it was happening, like it was being watched from two different planets at once.Ty Dolla Sign spent 2016 everywhere. He appeared on more than two dozen songs that year

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18:49

Tyga s Stimulated Was A Calculated Lie

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Tyga's "Stimulated" Was a Calculated LieIn the summer of 2015, Tyga released a song called "Stimulated" that contained a lyric directly addressing his relationship with Kylie Jenner, who was seventeen years old at the time. The song's title was a deliberate double entendre. The lyric made the implication explicit. And the whole thing was engineered — not as an accident, not as an overshare, but as a provocation designed to generate exactly the controversy it generated.This episode isn't about the

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19:52

Umberto Eco and the Architecture of Meaning

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Umberto Eco and the Architecture of MeaningUmberto Eco was one of the rare thinkers who could move between rigorous academic theory and wildly entertaining popular fiction without losing anything in translation. He was a medievalist, a semiotician, a novelist, and a cultural critic — and he treated all of those roles as expressions of the same obsession: how meaning gets made, how signs work, and how human beings build elaborate structures of interpretation that sometimes illuminate and sometimes

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22:37

Vera Rubin and the Invisible Universe

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Vera Rubin and the Invisible UniverseIn the 1970s, astronomer Vera Rubin did something that quietly broke physics: she measured how fast stars orbit the center of galaxies, and the numbers didn't add up. Stars at the outer edges of spiral galaxies were moving far too fast — faster than they should if the only gravitational force acting on them came from visible matter. Something else had to be there. Something massive, spread throughout the galaxy, and completely invisible. That something is now

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18:43

Viola Davis and the fight for authenticity

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Viola Davis and the Fight for AuthenticityViola Davis is one of the most decorated actors of her generation — the first Black woman to win an Emmy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award. But the arc of her career is not simply a story of talent rewarded. It's a story of someone who spent decades fighting to be seen on her own terms, refusing to shrink into the roles that the industry kept offering her, and ultimately reshaping what leading-woman status looks like in Hollywood.Davis grew up in poverty in

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21:09

Walt Whitman was a shameless hustler

pplpod ·

2026/04/07

Walt Whitman Was a Shameless Hustler — And That's Exactly the PointWhen most people picture Walt Whitman, they see the gray-bearded sage of American poetry — the tender, visionary voice behind "Song of Myself" and "O Captain! My Captain!" What they don't see is the scrappy self-promoter who gamed the literary world of the 1850s with a boldness that would feel right at home in today's content-creator economy. In this episode, we pull back the curtain on the marketing machine behind one of the most

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