Interesting Things with JC

00:02:17

1735: "The SpaceX Rocket That Crashed on the Moon"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/08/05

Interesting Things with JC #1735: "The SpaceX Rocket That Crashed on the Moon" – A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage drifted through space for more than a year after completing its mission before gravity pulled it into the moon, where its impact created a new crater that spacecraft can study.

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00:02:38

1734: "Tattoo Ink and Your Lymph Nodes"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/08/04

Interesting Things with JC #1734: "Tattoo Ink and Your Lymph Nodes" – Tattoo ink doesn't always stay in your skin. Your immune system carries some of it into nearby lymph nodes, where the pigment can remain for decades as immune cells continually pass it from one cell to the next.

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00:02:37

1733: "Can Rams Get Brain Damage?"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/08/03

Interesting Things with JC #1733: "Can Rams Get Brain Damage?" – Bighorn rams survive violent head-on crashes that would devastate most animals, yet their brains may still carry evidence of those impacts. Scientists are still trying to understand what they're seeing.

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00:02:57

1732: "Sir Bryan Thwaites - The Man Who Changed How...

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/08/02

Interesting Things with JC #1732: "The Man Who Changed How Britain Learned Mathematics" – A Cambridge mathematician leaves a prestigious research career to redesign how mathematics is taught, replacing outdated classroom methods with ideas like vectors, matrices, and graph theory that spread through schools across Britain and shaped how millions of students would learn for generations.

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00:02:42

1731: "Mac's Drive-In”

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/08/01

Interesting Things with JC #1731: "Mac's Drive-In" – A drive-in restaurant has kept the same carhop service, horseshoe counter, and frosted root beer tradition alive since 1961, even after moving the entire building to a new location in 1967. While thousands of independent drive-ins disappeared, Mac's kept serving customers much the same way it always had.

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00:04:20

1690: "The Legendary Saab Convertible"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/21

Interesting Things with JC #1690: "The Legendary Saab Convertible" – Saab engineers were reinforcing a convertible for winter driving while much of the company doubted anyone wanted one. Dealers and customers kept demanding the car, and what began as an unlikely experiment grew into nearly 300,000 convertibles built over twenty-five years. This episode was inspired by our friends at Superior Auto Sales.

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00:03:38

1689: "Mt. Elbrus"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/20

Interesting Things with JC #1689: "Mt. Elbrus" – A mountain once imagined as the center of the cosmos later became a wartime propaganda symbol and is now monitored as its glaciers shrink, while people continue attaching new meanings to the same peak.

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00:05:38

1687: "Can Quantum Tunneling be Observed?"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/18

Interesting Things with JC #1687: "Can Quantum Tunneling be Observed?" – Electrons pass through barriers they do not have enough energy to cross, and instruments built around that effect can map individual atoms. The same process continues inside radioactive atoms, semiconductor devices, and the Sun, where particles keep appearing beyond barriers that classical physics says should stop them.

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00:04:46

1686: "M.C. Escher"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/17

Interesting Things with JC #1686: "M.C. Escher" – An artist fills a page with shapes that fit perfectly together, then turns them into staircases, waterfalls, and worlds that appear correct while mathematically breaking the rules of reality.

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00:05:30

1685: "Lisa del Giocondo"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/16

Interesting Things with JC #1685: "Lisa del Giocondo" – Leonardo da Vinci is painting a merchant’s wife when the commission stops behaving like a commission. He keeps the portrait, carries it for years, and Lisa del Giocondo becomes famous while her own life fades.

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00:06:14

1684: "Gene Shalit"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/15

Interesting Things with JC #1684: "Gene Shalit" – Gene Shalit spent more than seven decades writing for American audiences, from newspapers and magazines to radio and television. Best known for nearly forty years on NBC's Today, he built a career on curiosity, humor, and a belief that culture should be accessible to everyone.

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00:02:09

1683: "Is Jell-O Made from Horses?"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/14

Interesting Things with JC #1683: "Is Jell-O Made from Horses?" – People still say Jell-O is made from horses. The rumor has survived for decades, even though the story behind it is something else entirely.

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00:01:42

1682: "Sea Otters Hold Hands when they Sleep"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/13

Interesting Things with JC #1682: "Sea Otters Hold Hands when they Sleep" – A sea otter falls asleep while floating on the Pacific Ocean, but the water beneath it never stops moving; by morning, staying in the same place is a problem it somehow solves.

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00:03:33

1681: "The Day After Disclosure: Humanity Already Has...

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/12

Interesting Things with JC #1681: "The Day After Disclosure: Humanity Already Has a Plan" – Scientists verify a possible alien signal before anyone announces it, while updated global protocols now account for social media, AI hoaxes, deepfakes, and the unresolved question of who is allowed to answer.

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00:03:50

1678: "The Formal Study of ESP"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/09

Interesting Things with JC #1678: "The Formal Study of ESP" – A Duke University student is identifying symbols on hidden cards without seeing them, his scores repeatedly exceed what chance predicts, and the results trigger years of scrutiny as researchers try to determine whether the effect survives stricter testing.

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00:02:37

1677: "The Benben Stone"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/08

Interesting Things with JC #1677: "The Benben Stone" – A sacred stone once stood at the center of Egypt’s solar temple, marking the place where creation was believed to begin. The stone disappeared, but its shape continued to appear atop pyramids and obelisks for thousands of years.

en

00:05:57

1674: "Subproject 68 and the Acoustic Masking Trials"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/05

Interesting Things with JC #1674: "Subproject 68 and the Acoustic Masking Trials" – A recorded message keeps playing for up to 20 hours a day while psychiatric patients are isolated from competing stimuli, and the same phrase continues repeating thousands of times as researchers attempt to reshape thought itself.

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00:03:54

1672: "Magnetism is a Relativistic Force"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/03

Interesting Things with JC #1672: "Magnetism is a Relativistic Force" – A current-carrying wire stays electrically neutral on a table while a moving charge beside it feels a magnetic force, but in the charge’s own frame the spacing of charges changes and the same force appears electric.

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00:02:54

1671: "What Is the L2 Point?"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/02

Interesting Things with JC #1671: "What Is the L2 Point?" – A mathematician identified a location in space in 1772 where gravity keeps spacecraft moving with Earth around the Sun, and nearly 250 years later observatories began traveling there to do some of humanity's most advanced science.

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00:05:57

1670: "Napster"

Interesting Things with JC ·

2026/06/01

Interesting Things with JC #1670: "Napster" – On June 1, 1999, Shawn Fanning releases Napster, and within months college students are searching each other’s hard drives for MP3 files while campus networks slow under traffic and the music industry moves toward court.

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