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+# Show kinds
+
+One ordered list, doing two jobs: what sort of listening a show is, and how soon the server
+should work on it. The number *is* the priority.
+
+| # | kind | shows | notes |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| 1 | News | 5 | Up First, Tangle, 404 Media, Seahawks Rewind, Seahawks Insiders |
+| 2 | Political analysis | 6 | topical, often weekly |
+| 3 | Science & curiosity | 5 | Science Friday, Radiolab, Terrestrials, Rationally Speaking, Hard Fork |
+| 4 | Sailing | 3 | Liveaboard, Offshore Sailing, Wards Way |
+| 5 | True stories | 12 | narrative journalism and documentary |
+| 6 | Fiction | 8 | made up, including the daily horror one |
+| 7 | Deep dives | 3 | both Carlins, Conversations with Tyler |
+
+Bedtime stays the flag it already was. It is not a kind: a bedtime show is absent from the
+ordinary library entirely, which no kind does.
+
+## Why this replaces `tier` rather than joining it
+
+`tier` was topical / ordinary / archive — processing priority and nothing else. Loading "what
+sort of show is this" onto a second field would have meant two things to set per show, and the
+two would have disagreed within a week. This is the same field with a longer, more useful set of
+values, so there is nothing new to keep in sync.
+
+## The compromise, written down because it will look like a mistake later
+
+**The order is not purely "how good in the car".** It is mostly how perishable a show is, which
+is what the server needs. Sports is the clearest case: a game recap is worthless once the next
+game is played, so it belongs at 1 with the news — and it is also perfectly good car listening,
+unlike the rest of that bucket. Daily news and political analysis sit at the top for processing
+and are the *last* things wanted while driving.
+
+So the car does not read this list as a ranking. It groups by it and offers what it offers.
+Anyone who later assumes "lower number = show it first in the car" will be wrong, and this
+paragraph is why.
+
+## Sailing is three shows, and that is fine
+
+Peter's call, and worth defending: these are hobby-sized groups for a 45-show library belonging
+to one person. Idiosyncratic beats principled here — the categories that match how he actually
+chooses will beat a taxonomy that would survive someone else's library. They can be merged if
+they stop earning their place.
+
+## What to watch for, because this is a list of names and lists of names rot
+
+A better abstraction may exist, and this one was chosen knowing that. Signs it has arrived:
+
+- **A show needs two kinds.** Terrestrials is children's science storytelling; it is in Science &
+  curiosity and could as fairly be in Fiction. One more like it and the single-value assumption
+  is the problem, not the categories.
+- **A kind grows past about a dozen.** True stories is at 12 and was 19 before Fiction split off.
+  Past that a kind stops narrowing anything and becomes a second library.
+- **The priority order and the grouping order diverge further.** Sports already breaks it. If a
+  second kind needs to sit somewhere for processing that makes no sense for browsing, the two
+  jobs have genuinely come apart and the field should split — at which point the thing resisted
+  here becomes the right answer.
+- **Length starts doing the work instead.** "Something short" cuts across every kind and is
+  already a car list of its own. If kinds are rarely used and length always is, that is the
+  signal.
+
+Added 2026-11-11, from a classification of all 45 subscribed shows.