# 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.