About this season
Half as Interesting is an entertaining, fact-based, educational series covering diverse topics of general interest presented in a somewhat humorous, quirky style. Topics range from curious to weird and are rarely important to know unless you're looking for some lunch room or coffee break conversation starters.
Episodes (76)
1. Why Don't Artificial Flavors Taste Accurate?
Aired 4 January 2022 • 6 min
2. The Bug That Created "Free Public Wifi" Networks That Didn’t Work
Aired 6 January 2022 • 6 min
3. The Fake Buildings That Hide LA's Massive Oil Industry
Aired 13 January 2022 • 5 min
4. Why The Letter Q Has Only Been Legal In Turkey For 8 Years
Aired 20 January 2022 • 6 min
5. Why Flights Through China Take Such Weird Routes
Aired 22 January 2022 • 6 min
6. The Software Bug That Blacked Out the Entire US Northeast
Aired 31 January 2022 • 6 min
7. Why There is a Giant Floating Prison In New York City
Aired 2 February 2022 • 6 min
8. Why So Many Jails Are Painted This Exact Color
Aired 9 February 2022 • 6 min
9. How Disney Legally Issued its Own Currency for 29 Years
Aired 11 February 2022 • 6 min
10. Why There’s An Empty Skyscraper In The Middle Of Times Square
Aired 16 February 2022 • 7 min
11. How to Start Your Own Town
Aired 19 February 2022 • 6 min
12. The Glitch That Kept Sending The FBI To A Tiny Kansas Farm
Aired 28 February 2022 • 6 min
13. Why Hundreds of Mazdas Tuned to 94.9 Broke Simultaneously
Aired 2 March 2022 • 6 min
14. Why Chicago Secretly Bulldozed Its Own Airport Overnight
Aired 4 March 2022 • 6 min
15. Why April 11, 1954 Is The Statistically Most Boring Day Ever
Aired 10 March 2022 • 6 min
16. Why Do Americans In Old Movies Sound British?
Aired 16 March 2022 • 7 min
17. Why This Sound is Illegal to Play
Aired 18 March 2022 • 7 min
18. You've Sent 124,882 Topic Ideas. Here are the Worst Ones.
Aired 25 March 2022 • 6 min
19. Why You Never Take a 90-Degree Turn in Casinos
Aired 29 March 2022 • 6 min
20. Why Farmers Can’t Legally Replant Their Own Seeds
Aired 31 March 2022 • 6 min
21. Why So Many Airport Runways Cross the US-Canada Border
Aired 8 April 2022 • 6 min
22. The Man Who Broke The Internet By Deleting 11 Lines of Code
Aired 12 April 2022 • 6 min
23. Why You Can’t Be Fired in China If You Have This Stamp
Aired 14 April 2022 • 6 min
24. How Stenographers Type at 300 Words Per Minute
Aired 21 April 2022 • 6 min
25. The 360-Page Proof That 1+1=2
Aired 27 April 2022 • 6 min
26. Why Steel from Before 1945 is Weirdly Expensive
Aired 29 April 2022 • 6 min
27. ⍼ - Why Nobody Knows What This One Unicode Character Means
Aired 6 May 2022 • 6 min
28. How New Cars Trick You With Pre-Recorded Engine Noise
Aired 10 May 2022 • 6 min
29. Why Cancun is the Mathematically Perfect Vacation Destination
Aired 20 May 2022 • 6 min
30. How Sommeliers Can Taste Which Year Wine is From
Aired 24 May 2022 • 6 min
31. Why Thousands of Chinese Tourists Started Coming to a Random British Village
Aired 26 May 2022 • 5 min
32. Why Almost Every Microwave is Made by the Same Company
Aired 31 May 2022 • 6 min
33. How Coca Cola (Actually) Keeps Its Secret Recipe Secret
Aired 2 June 2022 • 6 min
34. Why All U-Hauls are Registered in Arizona
Aired 7 June 2022 • 5 min
35. Minitel: France’s Alternate Internet That Survived Until 2012
Aired 9 June 2022 • 6 min
36. Why The NYPD Has An Office in Singapore
Aired 16 June 2022 • 6 min
37. Why GPS Automatically Shuts Itself Down Above 1,200 mph
Aired 21 June 2022 • 6 min
38. How an Australian Senator Won With 0.51% Of The Vote
Aired 28 June 2022 • 6 min
39. Why the United Nations Runs Its Own Airline
Aired 30 June 2022 • 5 min
40. The High Five Was Invented in 1977 (Yes, Really)
Aired 5 July 2022 • 5 min
41. The CIA’s Manual on How to be Annoying
Aired 8 July 2022 • 6 min
42. The ATM Glitch That Gave Out Infinite Money
Aired 14 July 2022 • 5 min
43. Why the US Keeps Trying To Buy Greenland
Aired 19 July 2022 • 6 min
44. The Single Australian Farm That’s Bigger Than 49 Countries
Aired 22 July 2022 • 6 min
45. Russia’s Terrible New Offbrand McDonald’s
Aired 1 August 2022 • 6 min
46. Why There’s a Massive Runway in the Middle of Florida’s Swamplands
Aired 4 August 2022 • 6 min
47. Why The London Underground Makes Itself Hotter Every Year
Aired 9 August 2022 • 6 min
48. Why The Vatican Has A Giant Research Telescope in Arizona
Aired 12 August 2022 • 5 min
49. Why Chess Strategy Changes Every Year
Aired 16 August 2022 • 6 min
50. The Shoe So Good the Olympics Declared It Cheating
Aired 22 August 2022 • 6 min
51. We Ranked Every Mistake We Made This Year
Aired 25 August 2022 • 6 min
52. The Science Behind Why Friends Smell Like Each Other
Aired 31 August 2022 • 6 min
53. Why You Don’t Want To Live On the US-Canada Border
Aired 6 September 2022 • 7 min
54. The Man Who Owns All The Bread In Israel For Eight Days A Year
Aired 12 September 2022 • 5 min
55. How To Design A Completely Unbreakable Encryption System
Aired 14 September 2022 • 6 min
56. Why National Parks Can’t Figure Out What To Do With Your Poop
Aired 20 September 2022 • 6 min
57. Why The Ringling Bros. Operated A Secret Spy Agency
Aired 28 September 2022 • 6 min
58. Why It Takes Pixar 3 Years To Render A Movie
Aired 30 September 2022 • 7 min
59. Why No One’s Sure If This Is Part Of The US Constitution
Aired 7 October 2022 • 7 min
60. Why It Was Illegal For 47 Days to Slice Bread in the US
Aired 13 October 2022 • 6 min
61. The US Army’s Universal Camouflage: A Terrible Mistake
Aired 15 October 2022 • 6 min
62. Why US Signs Look Different Than The Rest Of The World’s
Aired 22 October 2022
63. Why There Are No Ambulances In Jerusalem
Aired 27 October 2022
64. Somaliland Is Independent. So Why Does No One Recognize It?
Aired 1 November 2022
65. Why DC's Shaped Like That
Aired 8 November 2022
66. Why This is The World’s Most Dangerous Dam
Aired 10 November 2022
67. All The Very Real Passports Not Issued By Countries
Aired 15 November 2022
68. The NFL’s Secret Plan For If All The Players Die
Aired 18 November 2022
69. Why One Company Technically Owns Every Stock in the US
Aired 22 November 2022
70. The McDonald’s McPizza: A Huge Failure
Aired 2 December 2022
71. Roosevelt Island’s Pneumatic Trash System
Aired 6 December 2022 • 6 min
72. Spotify’s Mathematical System For Determining Your Music Taste
Aired 9 December 2022
73. Toki Pona: The Language You Can Learn in a Day
Aired 15 December 2022 • 6 min
74. The Weirdly Massive Problem of Blocked Public Land
Aired 22 December 2022 • 6 min
75. Why Cardboard Cops Work (Even If You Know They’re Fake)
Aired 27 December 2022 • 6 min
76. How the US Sends Top Secret Information Around The World
Aired 30 December 2022 • 6 min