Episode
E6: Oops!; S7: When the Fat Lady Sings
- Podcast
- Danger, Vicious Dog
- Published
- Jun 13, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 552
- Processing state
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Summary
Oops! I did is again! I spent a good portion of this episode attempting to answer a question. Or perhaps attempting to construct a question. Or perhaps attempting to demonstrate how questions are constructed. It’s difficult to say. Fortunately, saying things has never been a major focus of this podcast. People often imagine that understanding arrives through explanation. Someone learns a fact. Someone receives new information. Someone acquires a framework. A diagram appears. An arrow points to another arrow. A podcast host clears his throat and begins a sentence with: “Actually…” And then everything changes. Or so we’re told. I am increasingly suspicious of this arrangement. Not because explanations are useless. Because they are often excellent. Beautiful, even. I love explanations. I collect them. I stack them in little piles around my apartment (with twenty foot ceilings). Sometimes I pet them. But every once in a while I notice that explanations and transformations seem to be only distant relatives. You can explain something for years. You can explain it correctly. You can explain it with charts. You can explain it with studies. You can explain it with citations. You can explain it with a laser pointer and a PowerPoint presentation and matching polo shirts. And somehow the thing remains exactly where it was. Waiting. Unimpressed. There is a moment in childhood when you begin discovering that adults are making a lot of this up as they go. Not necessarily the important parts. Just… most of it. The explanations. The narratives. The confidence. The certainty. The polished way they deliver conclusions they accidentally assembled from scraps and weather and luck and whatever happened to be lying around at the time. This realization can be disappointing. It can also be ext…