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PODCAST

My Weird Prompts

Daniel Rosehill

The human-AI collaboration podcast. A man, a sloth, and a donkey collaborate to create a podcast (with a little help from AI). No question is too obscure, no rabbit hole too deep. My Weird Prompts celebrates curiosity in all its forms. Daniel, the human, asks the questions that pop into his head at inconvenient moments. Corn the Sloth offers laid-back, thoughtful takes. Herman the Donkey brings boundless enthusiasm and energy. Together, they explore topics ranging from the mundane to the

technology

All Episodes

18:33

Why Learning Makes Us Happier at Any Age

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

Most advice about learning starts with the résumé: get the degree, get the certificate, and happiness will follow. The research says that's backwards. This episode digs into what actually predicts wellbeing — self-directed learning you chose, not coursework someone assigned — and why the same material can be drudgery in a classroom and a treat in your ears. We cover self-determination theory's three needs, flow, the Bronx Aging Study and cognitive reserve, why audio learning lowers the barrier to

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25:58

Why People Move: Ideology vs. Economics

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

What actually drives people to leave one country for another? A listener named Daniel — whose grandfather left Cork, Ireland for Israel at twenty-five — argues he moved for ideology, not opportunity, and that as a rational actor he'd rather have avoided it. That claim opens up the whole field of migration economics: push-pull models, self-selection, the three-way split between voluntary, forced, and workforce migration, and why the same country can pull one person in while pushing another out. The

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21:41

When Pro-Israel Advocacy Alienates the Persuadable

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

Daniel ran a pro-Israel website in Ireland and worked with Israeli embassies — and he's alienated by both sides. His three-part grievance: cherry-picked examples like the Arab Israeli Supreme Court justice used as a shield against structural critique, a ratchet where no Israeli fault can ever be conceded, and an adversarial "fight fire with fire" style that treats intensity of attack as dictating intensity of response. We separate the facts, the rhetoric, and the reaction — and ask whether a

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22:57

Hasbara: Explanation or Policy Problem?

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

Israel's Foreign Minister says convincing governments to move their embassies to Jerusalem is as important as the battlefield. A listener in Jerusalem calls that pursuit anti-intellectual and childish — and argues Israel's image problem isn't a communications failure but a policy one. This episode unpacks what Hasbara actually means (it translates as "explanation," not propaganda), how its institutions work from the Government Press Office to semi-independent NGOs, and why the selective-facts method

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21:21

53 Bird Strikes a Day: What Actually Happens

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

A shattered engine and a river landing is the image most people have of bird strikes. The data tells a different story: roughly 19,400 reported strikes at 713 U.S. airports in 2023 alone — about 53 a day — with global damage costs near $1.2 billion a year. This episode digs into why the risk is wildly uneven across airports, how migratory flyways and local habitat shape the danger, what airports actually do about it, and how jet engines are certified to swallow frozen birds and keep flying. Along

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21:00

How Fast Before an Engine Can Swallow a Person?

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

Daniel wrote in asking a grisly question: how fast does a jet engine have to be spinning before a person on the ramp becomes something it can swallow? The answer turns out to be barely above idle — and the reason why reframes the whole hazard. It isn't engine RPM that kills, it's mass flow, and a large turbofan at ground idle is already pulling hundreds of kilograms of air per second through a ring you could stand in. We unpack the physics behind the little stick-figure diagram on the cowling: the

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22:00

Jet Engines on Bicycles: The Physics of Bad Ideas

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

What happens when you strap a jet engine to a bicycle? It turns out the physics is funnier and stranger than the video. We dig into why that bike almost certainly ran a valveless pulsejet rather than a turbojet, why the V-1 "buzz bomb" sound comes free with the engine class, and why standing behind it would get you both shoved and scalded. Along the way: the pulsejet that burns 55 gallons an hour and has no throttle, the go-kart builder who melted an aluminum mount off his own tailpipe, and why the

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26:25

Open Source Wi-Fi Controllers: Why Mixing AP Vendors...

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

Can any open source controller manage access points from different vendors? Daniel wrote in with a UniFi container, an old TP-Link AP, and six questions. We walk through what controller software actually does — adoption, VLANs, 802.11k/v/r roaming, RADIUS — and why vendors bundle hardware, firmware, and management into one locked stack. Then we survey what open source has actually built: OpenWISP, OpenSOHO, DAWN, TIP OpenWiFi, FreeSDN, and WiMoVE. The punchline: every one of them needs OpenWrt

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17:38

Why Clutter Overwhelms the ADHD Brain

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

Daniel's apartment is mid-move, mid-IKEA-hack, and mid-meltdown — and he wants to know why visual chaos feels like being poked from all directions. This episode digs into the neuroscience of clutter: how multiple objects compete for neural representation in visual cortex, why subjective messiness tracks cortisol better than objective mess, and how the brain uses the environment as external memory. Then it turns to ADHD specifically — reduced sensory gating, working memory loops, and why a sticker on

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21:20

Why Parenting Exhaustion Doesn't Reset Overnight

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

Daniel did an apartment move, weeks of DIY, and childcare with no family nearby — then felt guilty for watching a movie in bed. This episode digs into parental burnout as a distinct, measurable condition, why cognitive labor weighs more than physical tasks, and what the research actually says about resting when you can't get a full day off. From psychological detachment to forty-second micro-breaks, we look at why boundaries matter more than willpower, and why the "village" is load-bearing

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25:58

Re-terminating a Keystone Jack After a Bad Ethernet Run

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

A friend's DIY Ethernet run negotiated at 80 Mbps on a 2.5-gig fiber connection — and the termination was almost certainly to blame. This episode walks through why a link can come up and pass traffic at one-twentieth of its rated speed, what the negotiated speed actually tells you, and whether a punched-down keystone jack can be pulled out and redone. We cover the real failure causes — incomplete IDC seating, split pairs, excessive untwist, nicked conductors — and the bigger question underneath:

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19:59

Why Your Trackpad Clicks Stopped Working

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/25

Daniel's ThinkPad trackpad clicks stopped registering, so he opened it up, checked the battery, blew out some dust, and closed it — and now it's worse. This episode unpacks why "cursor works, clicks don't" is the signature of a swollen battery, not a dead trackpad, and why the visual check almost always fails. We walk through the millimeter of clearance between the click plate and the battery, the Framework and Dell owners who replaced the wrong part first, and why the E15's keyboard, trackpad, and

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22:53

Jerusalem's Russian Compound: 17 Acres, Three Churches

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/23

In the heart of Jerusalem, a 68-dunam walled district flies a flag that isn't Israeli. The Russian Compound — Migrash ha-Rusim in Hebrew, al-Muskubiya in Arabic — holds Holy Trinity Cathedral, a 12-metre monolithic column called the Finger of Og, and layers of history from Ottoman cavalry ground to Israeli city hall. This episode traces how the site was sold to the Russian Empire in 1858, built to house thousands of Orthodox pilgrims (over ten thousand came for Easter in 1911 alone), and then became

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23:49

Who Was a Superpower Before America?

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/23

The word "superpower" was coined in 1944 by William T.R. Fox to describe exactly three countries: the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain. So what happens when you try to apply it to Akkad, Assyria, Persia, and Rome? This episode works through a listener's request for a chronological list of superpowers from the oldest recorded history to today — and runs straight into a definitional problem that no two sources agree on. There is no single canonical list, the criteria shift between the

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21:46

Mandelbaum Gate: Inside Jerusalem's Divided Crossing

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/23

From 1948 to 1967, Jerusalem was split between Israel and Jordan, and the Mandelbaum Gate was the only legal crossing between the two halves. It looked like a monument in photographs, but it was really a procedure — a queue with a war on either side. This episode reconstructs the checkpoint as a working thing: who staffed each side, what UN observers actually did there, who was allowed through and who was refused, and how passports, permits, and inspections were handled between two countries with no

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24:08

Taking Down Jerusalem's 7km Border, Street by Street

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/23

For nineteen years, a border drawn in wax pencil cut through the middle of Jerusalem — through neighbourhoods, streets, and even individual houses. After the Six-Day War, that physical barrier had to come down: fences, concrete walls, fortifications, and minefields. This episode follows the literal dismantling of the 1949 Green Line, from Teddy Kollek's bulldozers at Mandelbaum Gate to the street-by-street reconnection of a divided city. It's a neglected story that sits between the well-known

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23:25

Musrara: Growing Up on Jerusalem's Pencil-Drawn Border

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/23

In 1948, two commanders met in an abandoned Musrara house and drew Jerusalem's ceasefire line by hand — one with a green wax pencil, one with red. What they assumed was temporary became a mined, barbed-wired international border that ran through people's living rooms for nineteen years. This episode walks the City Line street by street: the partitioned Street of the Prophets, the Mandelbaum Gate that only diplomats could use, the abandoned Palestinian mansions refilled with Moroccan and North

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22:08

How Ancient Jerusalem Outgrew Its Own Walls

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/23

The walls surrounding Jerusalem's Old City were built by Suleiman the Magnificent between 1537 and 1541 — yet the original Jerusalem sits outside them, uninhabited since medieval times. This episode traces the city's physical footprint across four millennia: from a twelve-acre Bronze Age ridge with one spring, to a 445-acre peak under Herod Agrippa's Third Wall, to the eleventh-century earthquake that permanently amputated the biblical city from the walled town. Then we follow the nineteenth-century

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26:58

Jerusalem Before Sukkot: Reconstructing the Pilgrim City

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/23

Imagine Jerusalem in the days before Sukkot during the Second Temple period — not as a pilgrim, but as a resident watching your city triple in size. Drawing on archaeology and ancient Jewish and rabbinic sources, this episode reconstructs the physical transformation of Jerusalem: the stepped pilgrimage roads, the Pool of Siloam, the mikva'ot, the Temple Mount bazaar, the dove-raising installations, and the housing question that may explain the sukkah itself. We distinguish carefully between what the

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23:43

21 Shofar Blasts a Day: The Temple's Lost Soundscape

My Weird Prompts ·

2026/09/23

Most Jews today hear the shofar once a year. But in the Second Temple, horns and silver trumpets were part of the daily soundscape of Jerusalem — at least 21 blasts every ordinary day, scaling up to 48 on Sukkot, and possibly 57 when Passover eve fell on Shabbat. This episode digs into Mishnah Sukkah, the Bartenura, and Talmudic sources to reconstruct what the shofar actually did: how it punctuated the Levites' song, cued the people to prostrate, closed the shops on Shabbat eve, and paced the

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2,651 results

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