Clown Cast

Joey Musselman

Podcasts about whatever I find interesting — history, tech, weird rabbit holes. I was making these for myself anyway, so I figured I'd share. Research by Claude, produced with NotebookLM, deployed by tools built using Claude Code. Orchestrated by a clown. Enjoy.

  1. 4h ago

    Load-Bearing Culture: When Extraction Breaks the System

    When Western fitness culture extracted yoga from its spiritual traditions, it took the postures but left behind 5,000 years of ethics, philosophy, and reciprocal practice. Today we're exploring what happens when practices get pulled out of their cultural architecture—and why the extracted piece rarely survives intact. From Hindu traditions to modern gyms, a look at how context isn't decoration, it's structural. 0:00 - The Cathedral Analogy: What happens when you pull load-bearing elements from their system 2:45 - Defining the Problem: Cultural appropriation as architectural extraction 5:15 - Case Study: Yoga's eight limbs, and the $37 billion one 14:30 - Reflection: Why extracted practices become hollow --- Sources & further reading: • Ronald Purser — McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality (2019) — (book) • Robin Wall Kimmerer — Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (2013) — (book) • The Conversation — "Biopiracy: when indigenous knowledge is patented for profit": https://theconversation.com/biopiracy-when-indigenous-knowledge-is-patented-for-profit-55589 • Mondaq — "Traditional Knowledge And Patent Issues: An Overview Of Turmeric, Basmati, Neem Cases": https://www.mondaq.com/india/patent/586384/traditional-knowledge-and-patent-issues-an-overview-of-turmeric-basmati-neem-cases • Religion News Service — "As smudging goes mainstream, concerns rise over appropriation, overharvesting": https://religionnews.com/2023/01/12/witches-urge-alternatives-to-sage-amid-concern-about-appropriation-overharvesting/ • CSULB Legal Resource Center — "Ecological Damage on White Sage": https://www.csulb.edu/college-of-business/legal-resource-center/article/ecological-damage-white-sage • The Conversation — "'Authentic' ayahuasca rituals sought by tourists often ignore Indigenous practices and spiritual grounding": https://theconversation.com/authentic-ayahuasca-rituals-sought-by-tourists-often-ignore-indigenous-practices-and-spiritual-grounding-231907 • JSTOR Daily — "The Colonization of the Ayahuasca Experience": https://daily.jstor.org/the-colonization-of-the-ayahuasca-experience/ • Vice — "Ayahuasca Tourism Is Ripping Off Indigenous Amazonians": https://www.vice.com/en/article/ayahuasca-tourism-is-ripping-off-indigenous-amazonians/ • Kirby (2025) — "Intergroup Cultural Adoption: When Is It Appropriation?" — Social and Personality Psychology Compass: https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/spc3.70081 • Mosley (2025) — "A Model Investigating How Cultural Appropriation Increases Group-Based Stigma Through Racialized Objectification" — Social and Personality Psychology Compass: https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/spc3.70083 • CBC Radio — "McMindfulness: how capitalism hijacked the Buddhist teaching of mindfulness": https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/mcmindfulness-and-the-case-for-small-talk-1.5369984/mcmindfulness-how-capitalism-hijacked-the-buddhist-teaching-of-mindfulness-1.5369991 • University of Colorado Boulder — "Balancing yoga traditions with modern wellness requires flexibility": https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2024/09/20/balancing-yoga-traditions-modern-wellness-requires-flexibility • Prosocial World — "Decolonizing Science Means Taking Indigenous Knowledge Seriously": https://www.prosocial.world/posts/decolonizing-science-means-taking-indigenous-knowledge-seriously • Emergence Magazine — "Practical Reverence — with Robin Wall Kimmerer": https://emergencemagazine.org/interview/practical-reverence/ • OSCM Forum — "Factors of Kaizen Transferability in Non-Japanese Environments": https://journal.oscm-forum.org/journal/proceeding/download_paper/20191207185634_OSCM_2019_paper_49.pdf This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.

  2. 1d ago

    Incompatible Systems: Why Mergers Fail When Cultures Clash

    Most mergers fail—not because of bad numbers, but because nobody checks the one thing that actually kills them: culture. Clown Cast explores why culture gets ignored in due diligence, why it's as invisible as air, and how researchers like Hofstad and House built frameworks to measure the unmeasurable. Featuring 83% failure rates, the house-without-plumbing analogy, and why 'good management' means something completely different depending on where you are. 00:00 - The M&A failure epidemic: McKinsey, KPMG, and why nobody sees it coming 03:00 - The water situation problem: Why culture isn't part of due diligence 05:30 - Culture as air: Why it's invisible to those breathing it 08:15 - Quantifying the invisible: Hofstad's cultural dimensions framework 11:45 - The Globe Study: When leadership means something different everywhere 14:00 - The merger paradox: Why both sides are right by their own standards 16:30 - Closing: What companies should actually check before signing --- Sources & further reading: • Geert Hofstede — Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory: https://www.simplypsychology.org/hofstedes-cultural-dimensions-theory.html • Erin Meyer — The Culture Map (2014): https://erinmeyer.com/corporate-mapping-tool-report/ • Robert House et al. — GLOBE 2004 Study: https://globeproject.com/study_2004_2007.html • WSPA Case Study — Culture Clash at Pharmacia and Upjohn: https://support.wspa.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/05a_Case-Study_Topic-4.1_face-to-face-part.pdf • Forbes — How eBay Failed in China: https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/09/12/how-ebay-failed-in-china/ • Lean Enterprise Institute — Why the Toyota Production System Remains Elusive: https://www.lean.org/the-lean-post/articles/the-management-brief-why-the-toyota-production-system-remains-elusive-for-most-companies/ • INSEAD — Designing Durable Alliances: Renault-Nissan: https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/designing-durable-alliances-lessons-renault-nissan • Kennesaw State University — Culture Determines Business Models: Home Depot's Failure in China: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260354187 • CNBC — Starbucks Failed Expansion in Australia: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/20/starbucks-australia-coffee-failure.html • Medium — Walmart in Germany: The Smile That Cost a Billion: https://medium.com/@raushanovakamila/walmart-in-germany-17ecb95b45e7 • ResearchGate — The DaimlerChrysler Merger: A Cultural Mismatch?: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51018560 • ResearchGate — Corporate Culture in Sony Ericsson JV: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277204921 • Carnegie Endowment — Europe: The Psychological Gap Between East and West: https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-europe/2018/11/europe-the-psychological-gap-between-east-and-west • Noema Magazine — The Surprising Durability of Africa's Colonial Borders: https://www.noemamag.com/the-surprising-durability-of-africas-colonial-borders/ • Tandfonline — National Cultural Distance and Cross-Border M&A: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16081625.2021.1947858 • McKinsey / KPMG / PwC / Gallup — M&A failure rate statistics — various, aggregated via: https://acquisitionstars.com/ma-failure-rate • Katie Anderson — TPS as Cultural Countermeasure: https://kbjanderson.com/the-toyota-production-system-lean-is-a-countermeasure-to-limiting-cultural-and-organizational-traits/ This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.

  3. 1d ago

    Sound Unboxed: From Pressure Waves to Machine Intelligence

    After two episodes of using audio as a black box, we finally explain what sound actually is. Starting with pressure waves and moving through frequency, amplitude, wavelength, and real-world decibel levels that show why a whistle cuts through a roaring crowd. We then explore the computational tools that turn sound into data—spectrograms, Mel spectrograms, and how NumPy lets us manipulate audio like any other matrix. 00:00 - Intro: Callback to Somalia method and Skeleton Crew 02:15 - What is sound? The pressure wave principle 05:00 - Three properties of sound: Frequency, amplitude, wavelength 07:30 - Hertz explained: Why the whistle is so effective 10:00 - Decibels and the logarithmic loudness scale 12:30 - Real-world audio: Whistle physics and arena acoustics 14:45 - Spectrograms: From sound waves to visual data 17:00 - Mel spectrograms and human perceptual frequency 18:30 - NumPy and audio manipulation in Python 19:30 - Outro: Sound science meets volleyball detection --- Sources & further reading: • Hermann von Helmholtz — On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (1863) — (available via Dover reprint) • Brian McFee et al. — "librosa: Audio and Music Signal Analysis in Python" (Proceedings of the 14th Python in Science Conference, 2015): https://librosa.org/doc/latest/index.html • Stanley Smith Stevens, John Volkman, Edwin Newman — "A Scale for the Measurement of the Psychological Magnitude Pitch" (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1937) • James W. Cooley & John W. Tukey — "An Algorithm for the Machine Calculation of Complex Fourier Series" (Mathematics of Computation, 1965) • Dennis Gabor — "Theory of Communication" (Journal of the IEE, 1946) • Colin Cherry — "Some Experiments on the Recognition of Speech, with One and with Two Ears" (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1953) • Claude Shannon — "Communication in the Presence of Noise" (Proceedings of the IRE, 1949) • Georg von Békésy — Nobel Prize lecture on cochlear mechanics (1961): https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1961/bekesy/lecture/ • torchaudio documentation: https://pytorch.org/audio/stable/index.html • Dan Ellis (Columbia) — "An Introduction to Signal Processing for Speech" course notes This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.

  4. 1d ago

    The Sommelier Method: Why Wine Tasting Solves Volleyball's Touch Problem

    How do you prove a ball touched a player when cameras can't feel impact? We're exploring multi-modal sensor fusion for volleyball touch detection—using a methodology borrowed from master sommeliers who analyze wine through independent sensory channels. From homography and skeleton detection to acoustic signatures and ball deflection, we break down how to integrate competing signals into one reliable truth. 00:00 - The impossible problem: detecting contact from pixels alone 03:15 - Enter the sommelier: analyzing through independent sensors 07:45 - Building the sensory grid for volleyball 12:30 - Audio fusion: can we isolate ball-contact sounds from crowd noise? 15:00 - Separating signals: which modality tells the truth when they conflict? --- Sources & further reading: • Camponogara & Cesari — "Volleyball serves impact sound intensity and frequency spectrum affect the predictions of the future ball's landing point according to the level of auditory-motor experience" (2024): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1612197X.2023.2284318 • Connaghan et al. — "Audio-based performance evaluation of squash players" (PLOS ONE, 2018): https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0194394 • Martin, Schütt et al. (Sony AI) — "Sound-Based Spin Estimation in Table Tennis: Dataset and Real-Time Classification Pipeline" (2024): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.11760 • Tamaki, Yoda et al. — "Ball Hit Detection in Table Tennis Games Based on Audio Analysis" (IEEE, 2006): https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1699506/ • Magera et al. — "BroadTrack: Broadcast Camera Tracking for Soccer" (WACV 2025): https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/WACV2025/papers/Magera_BroadTrack_Broadcast_Camera_Tracking_for_Soccer_WACV_2025_paper.pdf • Plankelj — "Volleyball Game Analysis Using Computer Vision Algorithms" (SCORES 2024): https://www.scores.si/assets/papers/2024/SCORES24_paper_21.pdf • Chen & Aggarwal — "Physics-based ball tracking and 3D trajectory reconstruction with applications to shooting location estimation in basketball video": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S104732030800117X • Segments.ai — "Late vs early sensor fusion: a comparison": https://segments.ai/blog/late-vs-early-sensor-fusion-a-comparison/ • Baughman et al. — "Detection of tennis events from acoustic data" (MMSports/ACM 2019): https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3347318.3355520 • Springer Nature — "A comprehensive survey on pose estimation and tracking in sports" (2025): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10462-025-11344-1 • Zhou et al. — "Action Spotting and Precise Event Detection in Sports: Datasets, Methods, and Challenges" (2025): https://arxiv.org/html/2505.03991v1 • Canadian Acoustical Association — "Sound from resonances in sports equipment": https://jcaa.caa-aca.ca/index.php/jcaa/article/download/948/669/1059 This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.

  5. 2d ago

    Modding Life: Four Stages From Copying Nature to Writing DNA

    Craig Venter's death this year marks the end of an era in synthetic biology—a field moving from studying life to completely rewriting it. We break down how humanity went from biomimicry to creating organisms from scratch using an unexpected framework: video game modding. Each stage is a qualitative leap, from texture packs to full world reconstruction. 0:00 - Craig Venter and the swashbuckling geneticist 2:00 - What synthetic biology actually is 3:30 - The video game modding framework explained 5:00 - Stage 1: Biomimicry (Velcro, bullet trains, nature as design reference) 8:15 - Stage 2: Directed mutation and selective breeding 11:45 - Stage 3: Synthetic parts and biological engineering 15:00 - Stage 4: Writing life from scratch and the future --- Sources & further reading: • JCVI — "First Minimal Synthetic Bacterial Cell": https://www.jcvi.org/research/first-minimal-synthetic-bacterial-cell • Quanta Magazine — "For the First Time, a Cell Built From Scratch Grows and Divides" (2026): https://www.quantamagazine.org/for-the-first-time-a-cell-built-from-scratch-grows-and-divides-20260701/ • The Scientist — "J. Craig Venter, Swashbuckling Geneticist, Dies at 79": https://www.the-scientist.com/j-craig-venter-swashbuckling-geneticist-and-human-genome-pioneer-dies-at-79-74425 • ACS Synthetic Biology — "4th Minimal Cell Workshop Proceedings" (2025): https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssynbio.5c00159 • ACS Central Science — "Mysteries in a Minimal Genome": https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.6b00110 • Nucleic Acids Research — "XNA Alphabet Comprehensive Mapping" (July 2025): https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/53/13/gkaf635/8198047 • Nature Communications — "BioBricks Burden Study" (2024): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50639-9 • Grand View Research — "Synthetic Biology Market Report": https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/synthetic-biology-market • Brave New World — "Synthetic Biology Breakthroughs 2025": https://www.bravenewsworld.com/p/synthetic-biology-in-review-new-breakthroughs • Forbes — "Colossal Biosciences Mammoth Progress": https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/04/09/the-10b-company-behind-the-dire-wolf-is-now-bringing-back-mammoths/ • C&EN — "Colossal Biosciences Engineers Mice with Woolly Mammoth Fur" (March 2025): https://cen.acs.org/biological-chemistry/gene-editing/Colossal-Biosciences-engineers-mice-woolly/103/web/2025/03 • Phys.org — "Synthetic Biology After Venter's Death" (2026): https://phys.org/news/2026-05-synthetic-biology-rewrite-life-death.html • Stanford — Drew Endy faculty profile: https://profiles.stanford.edu/drew-endy • Science/AAAS — "Synthetic Biology Meets Tough Times": https://www.science.org/content/article/synthetic-biology-once-hailed-moneymaker-meets-tough-times • Springer Nature — "AI + Synthetic Biology Biosecurity Risks" (2025): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43681-025-00872-9 • Foreign Affairs Forum — "Biosecurity Governance Gaps in Dual-Use Biotechnology" (2026): https://www.faf.ae/home/2026/5/6/biosecurity-and-oversight-gaps-in-dual-use-biotechnology-a-crisis-of-governance-in-the-age-of-synthetic-biology-part-v • American Scientist — "Making Life from Scratch": https://www.americanscientist.org/article/making-life-from-scratch • JCVI — "J. Craig Venter Legacy": https://www.jcvi.org/media-center/j-craig-venter-genomics-pioneer-and-founder-jcvi-and-diploid-genomics-inc-dies-79 • synthesis.cc — "DNA Synthesis and Sequencing Costs 2025": http://www.synthesis.cc/synthesis/2025/5/dna-synthesis-and-sequencing-costs-and-productivity-for-2025 • NCBI/PMC — "Version Control for Cell Engineering": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8828774/ This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.

  6. 2d ago

    The Whistle in the Chaos: Finding Signal in Noise

    How does your brain isolate a referee's whistle from thousands of screaming fans? This episode explores Colin Cherry's groundbreaking "Cocktail Party Problem" from cognitive science and asks why machines struggle with the same challenge—especially when building computer vision systems for volleyball. Hosts discuss the neuroscience of selective hearing and what it means for audio isolation in sports technology. 00:00 - Opening: The paradox of the volleyball whistle 02:30 - Colin Cherry's Cocktail Party Problem (1953) 05:00 - The dichotic listening experiment and human perception 08:00 - Why machines fail at noise isolation 11:00 - Connection to the volleyball CV project 14:30 - Practical audio tech and machine learning solutions --- Sources & further reading: • Colin Cherry — "Some Experiments on the Recognition of Speech, with One and with Two Ears" (1953) — (published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 25, No. 5) • Alexandre Défossez, Nicolas Usunier, Léon Bottou, Francis Bach (Meta AI) — "Hybrid Spectrogram and Waveform Source Separation": https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.03600 • Hasan et al. — "Detecting Referee Whistle Sounds in Soccer Videos Using Machine Learning Models": https://publications.isods.org/index.php/jdsai/article/view/33 • Norbert Wiener — Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series (1949) — (MIT Press) • Nemisindo / Sound & Design — "The Final Whistle Blows" (referee whistle acoustics): https://soundand.design/the-final-whistle-blows-615299703aaa • Number Analytics — "Ultimate Guide: Wiener Filtering Audio Signal Processing": https://www.numberanalytics.com/blog/ultimate-guide-wiener-filtering-audio-signal-processing • Stöter, Liutkus, Ito (sigsep) — "Open-Unmix: A Reference Implementation for Music Source Separation": https://github.com/sigsep/open-unmix-pytorch • TensorFlow — "Sound Classification with YAMNet": https://www.tensorflow.org/hub/tutorials/yamnet • TensorFlow — "Transfer Learning with YAMNet for Environmental Sound Classification": https://www.tensorflow.org/tutorials/audio/transfer_learning_audio • UCSD Music — "Harmonic Product Spectrum": http://musicweb.ucsd.edu/~trsmyth/analysis/Harmonic_Product_Spectrum.html • Mix Online — "1966: Ray Dolby, Dolby A-Type Noise Reduction": https://www.mixonline.com/technology/1966-ray-dolby-dolby-type-noise-reduction-383598 • National Museum of American History — "Dolby's Noise Reduction System": https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/americas-listening/online/dolby-noise-reduction • Thuresson — "Human Whistle Detection and Frequency Estimation" (thesis): https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:836227/FULLTEXT01.pdf • Phys.org — "How loud is too loud when it comes to sports whistles?" (2019): https://phys.org/news/2019-05-loud-sports.html • Zambon & Faccinetto — "Automated Detection of Sport Highlights from Audio and Video Sources" (Jan 2025): https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.16100 • Facebook Research — Demucs GitHub repository: https://github.com/facebookresearch/demucs • J. Stephen Lansing — Perfect Order: Recognizing Complexity in Bali (2006) — (Princeton University Press) • Universal lens check: "Every map is an argument" applies loosely — a spectrogram is literally a map of audio, and choosing which frequencies to keep is an argument about what matters — but it doesn't do enough work here to be worth calling out as a lens. None of the three lenses fit tightly enough to justify invoking. Skip them. This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.

  7. 3d ago

    Knockers at the Door: When Outsiders Solve What Experts Can't

    30% of unsolved R&D problems solved by outsiders in six months? The paradox: the same credentialing system that blocks cranks also blocks geniuses. We explore why brilliant amateurs outpace institutional teams, and why the system genuinely cannot tell the difference between a real breakthrough and a false claim. 00:00:00 - The 30% phenomenon: Outsiders solving pharmaceutical industry dead-ends 00:01:30 - Why this seems backwards 00:03:30 - The same door paradox: Credentials block both genius and nonsense 00:05:30 - Episode 144 callback: Institutional science attacking its own breakthroughs 00:06:30 - The real argument: Why quality filters and breakthrough filters are identical 00:08:00 - Enter the cranks: The history of mathematical impossibility claims 00:10:00 - Underwood Dudley's Mathematical Cranks and angle trisection --- Sources & further reading: • Karim Lakhani & Lars Bo Jeppesen — "Getting Unusual Suspects to Solve R&D Puzzles" — Harvard Business Review, 2007 • Dava Sobel — Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time • Underwood Dudley — Mathematical Cranks (1992) • Quanta Magazine (Erica Klarreich) — "Marjorie Rice's Secret Pentagons": https://www.quantamagazine.org/marjorie-rices-secret-pentagons-20170711/ • Quanta Magazine (Erica Klarreich) — "Yitang Zhang Proves 'Landmark' Theorem in Distribution of Prime Numbers": https://www.quantamagazine.org/yitang-zhang-proves-landmark-theorem-in-distribution-of-prime-numbers-20130519/ • Pierre Azoulay, Christian Fons-Rosen, Joshua S. Graff Zivin — "Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?" — NBER Working Paper 21788: https://www.nber.org/digest/mar16/does-science-advance-one-funeral-time • NOAA Climate.gov — "Happy 200th Birthday, Eunice Foote, Hidden Climate Science Pioneer": https://www.climate.gov/news-features/features/happy-200th-birthday-eunice-foote-hidden-climate-science-pioneer • PBS NOVA — "Amateur Archaeologist Decodes Ice Age Calendar in Cave Paintings": https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cave-painting-calendar-earliest-writing/ • NIST — "A Nobel Moment: Dan Shechtman": https://www.nist.gov/nist-and-nobel/dan-shechtman/nobel-moment-dan-shechtman • National WWII Museum — "Hedy Lamarr's WWII Invention Helped Shape Modern Tech": https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/hedy-lamarrs-wwii-invention-helped-shape-modern-tech • Scientific American — "Foldit Gamers Solve Riddle": https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/foldit-gamers-solve-riddle/ • Cornell Chronicle — "Thomas Gold, Cornell astronomer and brilliant scientific gadfly, dies at 84": https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2004/06/thomas-gold-cornell-astronomer-and-brilliant-scientific-gadfly-dies-84 • Thomas Kuhn — The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) • MacTutor History of Mathematics — "Oliver Heaviside": https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Heaviside/ • Palaeontologia Electronica — "Amateur Paleontology Contributions": https://palaeo-electronica.org/content/blog/3607-amateur-collection-blog • Royal Museums Greenwich — "Harrison's Clocks and the Longitude Problem": https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/time/harrisons-clocks-longitude-problem • Works in Progress — "Why Science Needs Outsiders": https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-science-needs-outsiders/ This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.

  8. 3d ago

    The Danger Room: How Baseball Built the Perfect Practice Pitcher

    Picture a 1400-pound machine with 14 motors that can become any pitcher—down to their exact spin rate, release point, and wind-up video projection. The Tragic Dark pitching machine has revolutionized baseball training, but it's sparked an asymmetric arms race: batters get unlimited reps against specific pitchers, while those pitchers have no equivalent tool. So what would it take to build the same technology for volleyball serve training? 00:00 - The Machine That Became Shohei: Introducing the Tragic Dark 05:15 - How 14 Motors and 3 Cameras Clone a Perfect Pitcher 10:45 - The Arms Race: Why Batters Won and Pitchers Got Mad 15:30 - Volleyball Serves vs Baseball Pitches: Why the Sport Matters --- Sources & further reading: • ESPN — "Face any pitcher, any time: Inside MLB's new Trajekt tech": https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/40401564/trajekt-arc-new-technology-controversy-mlb-hitters-pitchers-advantage • Digital Trends — "Meet the game-changing pitching robot that can perfectly mimic any human throw": https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/trajekt-arc-pitching-machine/ • Engineering.com — "What Does It Take to Make a Pitching Machine That Replicates a Major League Pitcher?": https://www.engineering.com/what-does-it-take-to-make-a-pitching-machine-that-replicates-a-major-league-pitcher/ • Robotics 24/7 — "Trajekt Sports Goes After the Major Leagues With Its Robotic Baseball Pitching Machine": https://www.robotics247.com/article/trajekt_sports_goes_after_the_major_leagues_with_its_robotic_baseball_pitching_machine • MLB.com — "Miami Marlins use revolutionary Trajekt Arc hitting machine": https://www.mlb.com/news/miami-marlins-use-revolutionary-trajekt-arc-hitting-machine • Athletic Business — "Trajekt Pitching Machine Replicates Any Pitch, Pitcher Delivery": https://www.athleticbusiness.com/operations/media-technology/article/15295740/trajekt-pitching-machine-replicates-any-pitch-pitcher-delivery • TechCrunch — "Analytics, AI and robotics help MLB teams find a perfect pitching machine": https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/27/analytics-ai-and-robotics-help-mlb-teams-get-a-step-closer-to-a-perfect-pitching-machine/ • Globe and Mail — "Trajekt Sports' pitching machine a big hit with Major League Baseball teams": https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-trajekt-sports-pitching-machine-a-big-hit-with-major-league-baseball/ • Rapsodo — "MLB Teams Using PRO 3.0 and Trajekt to Replicate Any MLB Pitcher and Pitch": https://rapsodo.com/blogs/baseball/mlb-teams-using-pro-3-0-and-trajekt-to-replicate-mlb-pitchers • University of Waterloo — "Alumni pitching robot hits the big leagues": https://uwaterloo.ca/systems-design-engineering/news/alumni-pitching-robot-hits-big-leagues • EssentiallySports — "What Is Trajekt Arc? Newest Pitching Technology Triggers a Rift Between MLB Players": https://www.essentiallysports.com/mlb-baseball-news-what-is-trajekt-arc-newest-pitching-technology-triggers-a-rift-between-mlb-players-who-claim-thats-not-fair/ • Anytime Baseball Supply — "The Evolution of Pitching Machines": https://www.anytimebaseballsupply.com/blogs/news/the-evolution-of-pitching-machines • Frontiers in Sports — "An Approach to Quantify the Float Effect of Float Serves": https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sports-and-active-living/articles/10.3389/fspor.2020.559277/full • April Chapple (Substack) — "The Physics of Float Serves (And Why They Make Even Elite Passers Look Foolish)": https://aprilchapple.substack.com/p/the-physics-of-float-serves-and-why • FYFD — "Tokyo 2020: Volleyball Aerodynamics": https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2021/07/tokyo-2020-volleyball-aerodynamics/ • The Sport Journal — "Normative profiles for serve speed for the training of the serve and reception in volleyball": https://thesportjournal.org/article/normative-profiles-for-serve-speed-for-the-training-of-the-serve-and-reception-in-volleyball/ • …and 5 more in the episode research notes This podcast episode was fully generated by AI — research, script, voices, and production. Built with Claude, Piper TTS, and automated pipeline tooling.

See All (210)

About

Podcasts about whatever I find interesting — history, tech, weird rabbit holes. I was making these for myself anyway, so I figured I'd share. Research by Claude, produced with NotebookLM, deployed by tools built using Claude Code. Orchestrated by a clown. Enjoy.

Information

  • Creator
    Joey Musselman
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    210
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Clown Cast