
Hosted by JC · EN
Interesting Things with JC is a new podcast mini series, with highlight on some of the more interesting historical stories, current events as well as under-told stories.

Interesting Things with JC #1700: "Patriotism" – Americans keep serving the same country while disagreeing over what patriotism requires, and the debate has lasted from the Revolution to the present without producing a single definition.

Interesting Things with JC #1699: "Project Blue Book" – Air Force investigators keep collecting UFO reports as the unexplained cases refuse to disappear. Thousands receive ordinary explanations, but hundreds remain officially unidentified even after radar data, witness interviews, photographs, and scientific analysis are compared across seventeen years of investigation.

Interesting Things with JC #1698: "Operation Mockingbird" – The CIA built relationships with journalists, funded publications, and treated information as a Cold War weapon, but the famous name "Operation Mockingbird" may not have been the official program most people believe it was. The documented history is remarkable, while the legend grew even larger.

Interesting Things with JC #1697: "Operation Popeye" – American aircraft flew directly into monsoon clouds and released silver iodide to increase rainfall over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The goal wasn't to destroy roads with bombs but to keep them buried in mud long enough to slow military supplies, and the secret program continued for years before becoming public.

Interesting Things with JC #1696: "David Clayton-Thomas" – David Clayton-Thomas replaced Blood, Sweat & Tears' original singer just as the band's future was uncertain, and his gritty rhythm-and-blues voice transformed a brass-heavy rock experiment into one of the biggest albums of its era. Long after lineup changes and shifting musical trends, the same voice remained inseparable from songs that continue to define the band's legacy.

Interesting Things with JC #1695: "The Berlin Airlift - Keeping a City Alive" – Cargo planes keep landing in a city sealed off by every road, rail line, and canal as thousands of tons of coal, food, and medicine arrive through three air corridors, with flights continuing every few minutes despite weather, accidents, and an expanding blockade.

Interesting Things with JC #1694: "27 Distinct Emotional Categories" – Researchers analyzed 27,000 emotional responses and found that human emotions did not fit a few basic categories; instead, 27 distinct emotional states blended into one another across a continuous emotional landscape. This story was suggested by Dr. Igo

Interesting Things with JC #1693: "HAL5 and the Space Settlement Movement" – Engineers and space enthusiasts in Huntsville kept meeting to discuss permanent human settlements in space after the Space Age had largely faded from public attention, and decades later many of the same ideas are returning through commercial stations, lunar development, and reusable rockets.

Interesting Things with JC #1692: "Frank Gardiner Wisner" – Frank Wisner watched Soviet influence replace German influence in Romania while World War II was still being fought, and the institutions he later helped build were designed to compete in the same kind of political struggle through covert influence, organizations, media, and intelligence networks long after armies stopped moving.

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.