Silver Shorts

The two mothers hit it off beautifully. They sat at a café called Heaven, chatting for hours over tea and biscuits. While waiting for the check, they started bragging about their sons.

Finally, one mother asked, “Who was your son?”

“Jesus,” Mary replied.

“And who was yours?” Mary asked.

“My son was Judas,” the other mother replied.

“Well, mother of Judas, what a joy it’s been meeting you. Shall we do this again tomorrow?”

“It’s a date,” Judas’ mother smiled.

Hosted by James Brown-Orleans

Featuring Waliek Crandall

Produced by Cory Choy and Christian Cuciniello

Music by Christian Cuciniello and Santiago Aramburu

Sound by Silver Sound

What if one of the most remarkable fantasy maps ever created wasn’t designed for a novel or a game, but for the CIA? In this episode of CartoCuriosity, Kevin Brown of Geographicus Rare Antique Maps uncovers the extraordinary story of The Zendian Problem, a top-secret Cold War cryptography training exercise created by eccentric American cryptologist Lambros D. Callimahos. Blending fantasy cartography, military intelligence, codebreaking, espionage, and geopolitical strategy, the fictional Kingdom of Zendia became an immersive world where intelligence officers learned to analyze maps, decipher encrypted communications, and anticipate military operations. Through a rare surviving set of Zendian maps, this episode explores the surprising intersection of cartographic history, cryptology, Cold War history, and one of the most unusual intelligence training programs ever devised.

Politics, duels, and frontier justice are all a part of this Florida man's story. Listen as Spencer Hunt from Geographicus Rare Antique Maps explains this American drama.

Check out the Geographicus website here: geographicus.com

Hosted by James Brown-Orleans

Featuring Spencer Hunt from Geographicus Rare Antique Maps

Produced by Cory Choy and Christian Cuciniello

Music by Luke Allen and El Buru

Sound by Silver Sound

History's most successful cartographic hoax, this tale of Nicoló Zeno’s 1557 map is one of ambition, nationalism, and invention. Seeking to wrest the discovery of America from the hated Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus, Zeno fabricated a grand alternative history - one that credited his own illustrious Venetian family with crossing the Atlantic more than a century earlier. Though entirely fictitious, the Zeno Map was accepted as genuine by scholars and mapmakers for over three centuries.

Ah life... Sometimes you just need a funny perspective on things to get through these negative times. If you're feeling as bad as we are about current events, then maybe this can offer you a new way to voice your frustrations, or just make you smile a little.

Hosted by James Brown-Orleans

Featuring Cameron Bossert

Produced by Cory Choy and Christian Cuciniello

Sound by Silver Sound

Diego Dionisio de Peñalosa - count, conquistador, would-be king, and confidence man - is one of history’s great forgotten maverick adventurers. Born in Peru in the shadow of Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca Empire, Peñalosa imagined himself a latter-day Cortés, destined to carve out a new empire in the uncharted north. Through charm, cunning, and deception, he rose through the Spanish colonial bureaucracy to become provincial governor of New Mexico. There, he conceived an audacious plan: to discover and conquer Quivira and Gran Teguayo, mythical kingdoms of gold and silver hidden in the mountains of North America. Peñalosa’s life was a blend of ambition and illusion - a tale of imperial dreams, deception, and the thin line between conquest and con.

Centuries before Young John Gore, Captain James Cook’s cabin boy on his second voyage, supposedly climbed the mast and became the first to glimpse Antarctica, mapmakers in Europe were already charting a vast southern continent. But how did they imagine a land no one had seen — and what exactly were they mapping? This episode explores how early European cartographers, drawing on the writings of classical antiquity, constructed and populated the mythic realm of Terra Australis Incognita - a continent born not from discovery, but from belief, speculation, and imagination.

It's the quiet ones you really have to look out for. They don't have a cape around their neck, an "S" on their chest, and they don't come crashing in to save the day with catchy phrases like "I'm Batman."

No, they just go about their day quietly, using their superpower to keep us safe.

Hosted by James Brown-Orleans

Featuring Sam Anderson

Produced by Cory Choy, Christian Cuciniello, and Buru 

Sound by Silver Sound

Time feels frozen as he drives the same streets, over and over, watching life pass by. The city moves, but he remains still, just observing from behind the wheel.

Written by Santiago Aramburu and Bruno Aramburu 

Featuring James Brown-Orleans, Bruno Aramburu, Daniela Ravelo, and Valeriia Vovk

Produced by Cory Choy, Christian Cuciniello, and Santiago Aramburu 

Music by Santiago Aramburu

Sound by Silver Sound

The kind of drinks we like are the kind that bring all folks together, with a side of stories, laughter, tears, and most definitely a side of gratitude for each other.

Yuan Ji's Erstwhile Mezcal brings all of this to the table.

Check out her website here: erstwhilemezcal.com

Hosted by James Brown-Orleans

Featuring Yuan Ji from Erstwhile Mezcal

Produced by Cory Choy, Christian Cuciniello, and Buru

Music by Santiago Aramburu

Sound by Silver Sound