demos refractions Vol. I · 2026-05
Mentioned.fm · a serial editorial

Refractions

One news event per issue, refracted through every podcast lens that touched it. Built from the cross-show segment index — the kind of story no individual show could tell.

Vol. I · published

Iran,
five ways.

"Seven podcasts mentioned Iran this week. None of them were talking about the same Iran."

Read the issue
7
shows
26
mentions
5
lenses

The five lenses

Historian
A 2,500-year-old plateau.
Journalist
A node in an autocracy axis.
Market
A variable in the trade summit.
Hawk
A nuclear timeline.
Comedy
A yardstick for absurdity.

In the queue.

candidates pulled from this week's entity_mentions
Vol.
Topic
Shows
Mentions
Why it refracts
II
Vladimir Putin person
3
15
Diary of a CEO frames him as autocracy's archetype; Tucker frames him as a misread negotiator; comedy shows frame him as a meme.
III
TikTok thing
5
6
Algorithm critique on Huberman, addiction tropes on Modern Wisdom, distribution math on My First Million.
IV
Israel place
4
18
Surfaces alongside Iran in JRE and Applebaum, but the framing tradeoffs are entirely different. Probably a companion issue.
V
Michael Jackson person
3
19
19 mentions across 3 shows, all in the same week the biopic broke records. A pure cultural-moment refraction.
VI
The New York Times organization
5
8
Five podcasts referenced the NYT this week — each one with a different relationship to it (authority, foil, vector, prop).

What this is.

Most podcast aggregators show you what each show said. Refractions shows you what happens when you stack them — the moment where the same proper noun starts meaning five different things depending on the feed it landed in.

Each issue takes one entity from the catalog's entity_mentions table, finds the shows that talked about it, and isolates how each show framed it. The aggregation is the story.

How it's built.

Source podcast4 catalog · Neon
Cadence Weekly · one topic
Clip timing Deepgram-aligned
Format Static HTML · no JS framework