Shows / My Weird Prompts
My Weird Prompts
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…
Episodes
My Weird PromptsRoman Roads Still Running Under Modern Cities
What does it take for infrastructure to survive two thousand years of continuous use? This episode examines ancient Roman systems that never became…
My Weird PromptsProtein Before Pills: ADHD Breakfasts That Actually Work
A listener with ADHD asks why he reaches for fish oil before he'll eat a decent breakfast — and whether an egg cooker is worth joining the bandwagon for. We…
My Weird PromptsFaulty Extrapolation: When One Person Rewires How You See Everyone
Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation showed that twenty minutes of watching a baby greet a returning parent predicts how that child will read a stranger's face…
My Weird PromptsTwo Firewalls, One Relationship: Healing While the Threat Continues
Most trauma recovery models assume the threat has ended: you heal after the harmful relationship is behind you. But what if one relationship has to continue —…
My Weird PromptsChronic PTSD: The Diagnosis That Doesn't Exist
There's a diagnosis that describes something very real and officially does not exist. Chronic PTSD has never been accepted into the DSM, complex PTSD made it…
My Weird PromptsWhat Alaskan Crab Deckhands Actually Do
The Bering Sea crab fleet once had a fatality rate 80 times the American average — and seasons as short as four days. What do deckhands actually do with their…
My Weird PromptsHand-Arm Vibration Syndrome: What Cheap Power Tools Cost
Hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS) is a collection of vascular, sensorineural, and musculoskeletal injuries caused by years of gripping vibrating power tools —…
My Weird PromptsAnchorites: Dead to the World, at the Center of It
What if the purest solitude in the medieval world wasn't a desert cave but a room attached to a church, with three windows — one facing the altar, one for…
My Weird Prompts10 Jobs That Break the Human Body, Ranked
What does it actually cost a human body to do the world's hardest work? This episode ranks the ten most physically gruelling jobs on Earth by the only honest…
My Weird PromptsThe Ancient World Was More Connected Than You Think
Daniel wrote in with a hypothesis: in the ancient world, long-distance travel was elite-only, the earth was thought flat, and an ordinary traveler from a…
My Weird PromptsThe Lighthouse Keeper and the Serbian Cabin
What happens to a mind in true isolation — and why does one Serbian woman with a shortwave radio confound everything we think we know about hermits? This…
My Weird PromptsWhat Happens When Isolation Isn't Chosen
Loneliness in older adults gets filed as a soft mental health story. The literature says something harder: chronic involuntary isolation carries mortality risk…
My Weird PromptsThe Last Lighthouse Keepers: Life at the Edge of the Sea
For over a century, lighthouse keepers lived inside some of the most hostile environments on earth — trimming wicks, running fog signals, and recording the…
My Weird PromptsWho Invented the Internet? Actually, Seven People
Ask who invented the internet and you'll get a clean answer — or you'll get the truth, which is messier and far more interesting. This episode starts with the…
My Weird PromptsThe Jerusalem Post's 1996 Bet and the Global Jewish News Race
The Jerusalem Post is remembered as a polarizing outlet with a broken refresh button, yet it launched JPost.com in December 1996 — at the front of the first…
My Weird PromptsBefore the Word Spy Existed: Venice's Intelligence Machine
Long before anyone used the words "intelligence service," Venice built one. Historian Ioanna Iordanou argues the Republic ran a centrally organised state…
My Weird PromptsCutting Things With a Dremel: What Actually Works
A listener's engraving tool turned out to be forty tools in one, and now he wants to know which cutting attachments are worth owning. This episode sorts the…
My Weird PromptsResilience Isn't a Muscle — What the Research Actually Shows
Resilience is the most common outcome after trauma, yet the self-help advice to "strengthen it like a muscle" doesn't match the evidence. This episode digs…
My Weird PromptsWhen the UN Goes Viral: Pitchers, Shoes, and 6-Second Clips
A man reaches for water at the UN General Assembly and lifts the entire pitcher instead of a glass. The clip is everywhere — but it's from 2024, not this year…
My Weird PromptsLying Flat as a Tactic: The Quiet Opt-Out
In 2021, a Chinese forum post titled "Lying Flat Is Justice" was censored and denounced on state television — for advocating nothing more than doing the…
My Weird PromptsWhy 1930s Riveters Carried Bigger Pouches Than You Do
What did Empire State Building ironworkers actually carry on their belts? A listener's research agenda sends us up the scaffolding: the four-man riveting gang…
My Weird PromptsEphemeral Containers and the ADE Label Nobody Owns
Claude Code's default cloud environment is an ephemeral container — a fresh Anthropic-managed VM cloned from your repo on every session. That design choice…
My Weird PromptsAudio Post-Processing for AI Podcast Pipelines
The front end of an AI podcast pipeline gets all the attention — agents, prompts, retrieval. But the stage nobody films a documentary about is audio…
My Weird PromptsRenting Out Your Spare Room, Car, and Boat
A spare room, a parked car, a boat sitting at the marina — peer-to-peer rental platforms turn idle private assets into income without owning any inventory…
My Weird PromptsHotels That Became Infamous: Hans Brinker to the Cecil
What happens when a hotel becomes famous for being awful? This episode explores the strange spectrum of notorious lodging — from the Hans Brinker in Amsterdam…
My Weird PromptsWhy Phone Trees Break and AI Voice Agents Can Fix Them
Phone trees were never designed to help you — they were designed to keep you out of the human queue, because one support call can cost twenty dollars. Every…
My Weird PromptsMeasuring Democracy Beyond Voter Turnout
Voter turnout is the easiest thing to count, but it isn't the same as the thing we want to measure. This episode starts with the "parliament" — the informal…
My Weird PromptsIsrael's Pragmatic Center: Housing, Groceries, and the 2026 Vote
Israel votes on October 27, 2026 — the first election since October 7, 2023, and the first Knesset in decades to serve a full four-year term. Polls show the…
My Weird PromptsThe Sinai Crossing Where a Stamp Draws the Border
The Taba crossing is the only tourist land border between Israel and Egypt, open around the clock and governed by a 1979 treaty annex that most travelers walk…
My Weird PromptsVenice: The City That Was a Supply Chain
Venice looks like a postcard and works like a naval base. In this episode, we dig into the Republic of Venice as a maritime empire — the Stato da Màr, the…
My Weird PromptsInside the Factory: Why Plant Tours Are Addictive
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory got one thing exactly right: the golden ticket is both a lifetime supply of the product and a walk through the process. This…
My Weird PromptsWhy Egypt Tops the "Never Going Back" List
A long-running Travel subreddit thread asks one simple question: which country would you never visit again? Egypt keeps landing at the top — and some Egyptians…
My Weird PromptsYour Fiber Is Dark: What You Can Actually Test
Fiber-to-the-home doesn't give you a modem to reboot — GPON is passive glass from the central office to your wall, which means when it dies, there's nothing…
My Weird PromptsWhat "Heavy Industry" Actually Means
Heavy industry" sounds like a description of big, heavy things. It isn't. The real definition is economic: higher capital intensity, deeper cyclical swings…
My Weird PromptsFog, Light, and the Limits of Sight
Daniel grew up watching planes emerge from the murk at Cork Airport, and he wrote in with four questions about fog: how it forms so suddenly, what it does to…
My Weird PromptsWhat's Really in That Paint Can?
That "low-VOC" label doesn't mean zero emissions — and your nose is a terrible instrument for detecting what matters. This episode digs into what's actually in…
My Weird PromptsWhy Do People Move Countries? Migration Motives
Daniel grew up in Dublin and Cork, moved to Israel at twenty-five, and insists it was never about opportunity — it was about the belief that Israel is where…
My Weird PromptsLanding on the Edge: Cork Fog to Carrier Decks
Daniel grew up next to Cork Airport's 7,000-foot runway, watching aircraft emerge from fog on a Cat Two ILS. His question: what's it really like to land when…
My Weird PromptsTen Disastrous Casting Decisions, Ranked
What happens when a genuinely talented actor lands in a role they are spectacularly unsuited for? We rank ten of the most disastrous casting decisions in…
My Weird PromptsRanking the World's 5 Worst Bus Rides
Most "worst bus journey" lists just count hours. This one doesn't. Working from a listener's detailed brief, we rank five real long-haul routes by the full…
My Weird PromptsFive Machines That Peaked at the Wrong Moment
In 1954, engineers on two continents began designing the fastest passenger aircraft ever attempted. They forecast a market of 350. They built 20. This episode…
My Weird PromptsFive Movies That Defeat First Viewings
Some films are puzzles with solutions. Others are experiences that resist solution entirely. This episode digs into five critically acclaimed movies that a…
My Weird PromptsWhen 52 Volts Meets a 12-Volt Modem
A wrong AC adapter sent 52 volts into a 12-volt fiber modem, and the sizzle lasted a second and a half. That accident opens a bigger question: how do you…
My Weird PromptsWhy Ireland and Israel Feel Poorer Than Their GDP Says
Ireland sits second in the world by nominal GDP per capita, yet its household disposable income ranks 19th in the OECD. Israel's output sits below the OECD…
My Weird PromptsWhy Learning Makes Us Happier at Any Age
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…
My Weird PromptsWhy People Move: Ideology vs. Economics
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…
My Weird PromptsWhen Pro-Israel Advocacy Alienates the Persuadable
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…
My Weird PromptsHasbara: Explanation or Policy Problem?
Israel's Foreign Minister says convincing governments to move their embassies to Jerusalem is as important as the battlefield. A listener in Jerusalem calls…
My Weird PromptsEu Vivi Preso na Armadilha do Macaco a Maior Parte da Minha Vida, e Nem Sabia o Nome Disso
Baseado no livro "Introdução ao Conhecimento Logosófico", capítulo "Como Alcançar a Imunidade Nos Domínios de Lúcifer". Ronny usa a técnica milenar de captura…
My Weird Prompts53 Bird Strikes a Day: What Actually Happens
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…
My Weird PromptsHow Fast Before an Engine Can Swallow a Person?
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…
My Weird PromptsJet Engines on Bicycles: The Physics of Bad Ideas
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…
My Weird PromptsOpen Source Wi-Fi Controllers: Why Mixing AP Vendors Is So Hard
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…
My Weird PromptsWhy Clutter Overwhelms the ADHD Brain
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…
My Weird PromptsWhy Parenting Exhaustion Doesn't Reset Overnight
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…
My Weird PromptsRe-terminating a Keystone Jack After a Bad Ethernet Run
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…
My Weird PromptsWhy Your Trackpad Clicks Stopped Working
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…
My Weird PromptsGilgul: How Judaism's Soul Recycling Actually Works
Reincarnation is missing from the Hebrew Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud, and Maimonides' thirteen principles of faith. Yet gilgul neshamot — the recycling of…
My Weird PromptsOne Pot, 120 Curries: How BIR Kitchens Work
A busy British curry house sends out 120 dishes a night, and every one of them starts from the same vat of base gravy. This episode breaks down what's actually…
My Weird PromptsHow Do Cover Artists Legally Exist?
Daniel asked a deceptively simple question: how does the entire world of cover artists legally exist? The answer runs through Section 115 of the Copyright Act…