Based on episode titles and the concept, "speakers who talk about subjects that may appear boring to others, but they find very interesting," I thought some episodes of The Boring Talks, a podcast from BBC Sounds might be good for mining trivia or research sources. (Which isn’t wrong. "The Lexicon of Breakups" ep opens a window on the clever but sad array of terms coming out of the current craze for taxonomizing the techniques of exiling or forcibly relocating people from one’s life.)

But it can be better than that, and some episodes turn out to be rather brilliant essays. "Book Pricing Algorithms" is a delightful and rambling ten minutes of low-key self-promotion, name dropping, complaining, and only a little more explanation than bemusement.

I’ve listened to five or six of these and the only stinker of the bunch was the first episode, "The End of the World." Perhaps some more anxiety of influence would have helped this to be more than a meh faux-nerdcore bite on I Found Ice Cubes ‘Good Day’, or perhaps the show was finding its legs and veering toward the actually boring.

Also possible: "The End of the World" is a genius double/triple troll and The Boring Talks is even archer and artier than I give it credit for—than I am even capable of perceiving. But if that’s the case, I’m glad that even within my limited capacity I could follow the amazing "The Argos Catalogue," which collides a textbook deconstruction of the British equivalent of the Sears catalog with fanciful headcanon about how the supposed subversive text-beneath-the-text was masterminded by failed utopians fleeing the wreckage of The Whole Earth Catalog. If you can, listen to that one right now.