Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker

Welcome back dear listener, we hope you enjoyed your time off during the holiday break.  We are extremely excited to bring you the first episode of Nonsense Season Two: The (Slightly) Better Season! We want to start the year out with something fun, so in this episode, we dive into what can happen when you take an (arguably) perfect thing, convince yourself it’s not perfect, and try to make it “bet...

This is it folks, the last episode of 2023; and we have bad news for you listener, you may likely have never had the pleasure of tasting real extra virgin olive oil.  Surely you’re asking yourself “how can this be possible?” Over the past 40ish years, olive oil has become known by another name: liquid gold.  It’s so popular and good for us that everyone from father-and-son grifters to the mafia is...

Welcome to the infirmary episode folks: Jeff is still recovering from his recent triple-threat vaccination and cj is recovering from the ‘rona. But considering we shorted you an episode last month, we knew we couldn’t get away without releasing something . We have got a fantastic segment in this episode about two nerds who successfully recorded every melody of every possible pop song, ever! That’s...

As all our listeners know, technology makes all things better, and as it turns out, diamonds are no exception.  Modern diamond-growing technology has made diamonds SO GOOD, that you need a machine to tell them apart from diamonds dug out of the dirt.  The way said machine detects a classic “dirt diamond” is by looking for the impurities that are not present in lab-grown diamonds.  You may want to...

Well, you made it; you had to suffer through a headlines-only episode last week (yes, we read your hate mail about this terrible tragedy), knowing you would be rewarded this week with another smooth segment to sate your curiosity, even if just for a few minutes. So, for your consideration, dear listener, we present an entire extended-length segment today on “Super Blacks: The Blackest Blacks Known...

It’s a short holiday week, and with a couple of amazing stories in the news, we at Nonsense knew we had to put out a headlines-only episode early before you all slip into your turkey-and-gravy-induced coma. Today’s secret: the easiest way to create a company worth nearly a billion dollars is to first start with an AI juggernaut worth nearly $90 billion and let an inexperienced board of directors u...

We have missed you, dear listener.  After a one-week hiatus to allow cj to serve his civic duty as a juror, we are back with more of the Nonsense that you have come to love! This week we dive into the Epic v. Google lawsuit that is putting the future of the Google app store in the cross-hairs.  The Verge has summed this up well, saying: “Epic sued Google back in 2020 after a fight over in-app purc...

Dear listener, you have been patiently enduring our headline-only episodes this season, so this week we have played our UNO Reverse card and present, for your consideration, only a couple of headlines and a single in-depth segment on capturing and digitizing the entire knowledge-set of our species.  Yup, all of it. Until the mid-20th century, our entire civilization’s knowledge could have been sto...

Well, one of Nonsense’s beloved co-hosts thought California’s High-Speed Rail project was thoroughly unexciting, and one co-host was just plain wrong.  As luck would have it, this was one-in-the-same co-host.  The good news though?  He’s used to being wrong, so the world has maintained equilibrium.  Hooray! This week we are diving deeper into the California High-Speed Rail project, where it is at,...

We would find it easy to understand why you, dear listener, may initially find our aviation stories here on Nonsense worrisome.  And if you listen to only the first couple minutes of those segments, we wouldn’t fault you for postponing upcoming travel by air.  But we promise that when you power through and listen to the entire segment, you will find these stories ultimately tell just how safe and...

Our listeners asked for more headlines, and as providers of weekly happiness,  we had no choice but to give in to their demands.  This week we’ve got a whole bunch of news that we suspect you’ll love, including: Red Dye #N; Stevie Wonder doesn’t know the time; RCS shaming; Jeff’s green bubble; AI Res-Up makes the old look new(ish); more X misinformation; WSJ Cancelarino; weeks in AI’s still not pr...

What are SBF, Yaccarino & NYC? Due to Jeff’s notorious travel schedule, this week we have another headlines-only episode.  But don’t fret dear listener, there is plenty to discuss, including Google’s new Pixel Eight, SBF’s trial kickoff, streamer pricing changes, BlueWalker 3 lighting up the sky, fines for littering in space, and Elon’s massive mammaries (?!).  It’s a lot, but we trust you can...

Over the past 50+ years, technology has continued to provide improvements to every sport under the sun.  While some of those technologies don’t last, many persist and make so much improvement that it becomes hard to imagine going back.  This week, cj & Jeff chat about some of their favorite and most memorable sports/tech advances. Then, after some mild nerdy sportsball talk, the boys thought t...

About 3.5 BILLION spam messages are sent every day, with many of those phishing and other cyberattack-related messages.  Even worse, there were over 500 MILLION ransomware attacks detected last year alone.  These ransomware attacks can cripple businesses and infrastructure, wreaking havoc for days, weeks, and even months.  This week cj & Jeff dig in on last week's attacks on Vegas hotel br...

Good news folks, Jeff is healthy and we are back to our regular scheduled Nonsensical programming!  This week we have two segments that really couldn’t be less similar: Up first we have suicide missions, specifically the ones that have served the greater good of us all.  From World War II to Chernobyl to September 11th, there have been folks willing to take on missions that virtually ensured certa...

Well, Jeff made it over three and a half years without contracting SARS-CoV-2 -- but alas his ticket was finally punched last week.  Fortunately, he’s doing fine and feeling better, even if he is going stir-crazy in isolation while eagerly awaiting clearance to be in contact with humans again. As they say though, the show must go on -- so today we recorded an episode remotely for the first time in...

This week we are discussing an absolutely, positively, 100-percent guaranteed process to beat the lottery *.  We even have proof, albeit from an Australian in the early 90’s that, sadly, is not Paul Hogan. Now some will say air conditioning has grown from a luxury to a necessity, and cj & Jeff couldn’t agree more.  So with the hottest summer on record finally ending (hopefully!), the guys dig...

And…we are back from our summer breaks, which means we’re back to our good ol’ full-length episodes.  This week we are digging into state-of-the-art refractive surgery: in just the past 150 years, we have gone from assessing your visual acuity using mustard seeds to shooting lasers into your eyes to reshape them.  Ain’t science great?! The most common of these procedures, commonly called LASIK, ca...

And we are back to being HOT, again, this week. Our savvy listeners know that this means cj and Jeff are both at risk of melting and as such, are incapable of putting in a solid 45-minute recording.  Instead, they are hosting the second headline-only episode this month. There’s more amazing battery tech this week (this time some super-fast charging batteries shoe-horned into a Lotus Elise!), Apple...

Buckle up, buttercups, we’ve got a long one this week!  After last week’s summer-break-headlines-only-episode, both cj & Jeff were just overflowing with words and insisted on sharing them with all of their listeners. This week we’ve got a double-header segment covering the history of Elon Musk’s X.com, including its improbable (but necessary) merger with Confinity (the creators of PayPal) and...

If you haven’t noticed, it is HOT this week.  And neither cj nor Jeff wants to slave away over microphones for 45 whole minutes, but they don’t want their listeners to have to go without!  As a result, this is the first of two short, headline-only episodes this month.  We hope you are basking in delightful air conditioning while you enjoy this quick episode. This week the guys have a Paris Hilton...

Nope, not astronauts in the ocean.  This week cj & Jeff cover submarine cables - the 850,000+ miles of cable that stretch along the ocean floor between countries and along coastlines.  There are about 500 cables currently in service around the globe, and today July 27th, marks the 157th anniversary of the completion of the first transatlantic telegraph cable. And with your favorite blue-bird b...

CJ Little and Jeff Parker are doing a podcast called nonsense.  Join us at the intersection of technology, creativity and economics.

Who knew that the same man that brought us the telestrator used on every Sunday Night Footbal game also really hated the moon?  Well, that appears to be the case, so this week we thought a quick introduction to Project A119: “A Study of Lunar Research Flights - Volume 1” was in order. Then cj and Jeff explore today’s electric car options as they are considering adding to their respective fleets -...

This week marks the first anniversary of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) delivering on its promise of revealing the universe like never before.  Being super-nerds, cj & Jeff wanted to celebrate this amazing milestone by talking a bit about not only Webb, but some of the space observatories that came before it. And when it comes to Webb, there are few people in the universe that know more...