Interesting Things with JC

Interesting Things with JC #1691: "The Silence Beyond Redshift" – A spacecraft continues receiving messages from Earth while the signals arrive slower, weaker, and increasingly redshifted. Earth never stops transmitting, but the shared conversation keeps stretching across time until the messages can no longer preserve a common present.

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.

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.

Interesting Things with JC #1688: "A Simple Riddle 15" – A simple riddle has a simple answer, but most people still miss it. Can you solve today's riddle?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.