Interactive tools for exploring patterns across shows, speakers, and topics. Most of these are experiments, and their usefulness is to be decided.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know.
Answer "how has coverage of X changed over time?" Select topics, mentions, or speakers and compare their month-by-month activity across shows. Hover for per-show breakdowns. Switch between line, stacked area, bar, and per-show views to highlight trends, relative share, or show-level differences.
Open TimelineAnswer "which shows covered this item, and when?" Pick a topic, mention, or speaker and see a show-by-month grid colored by episode count or duration. Quickly identify which programs drive coverage and whether activity is concentrated in bursts or spread evenly. Sort by total, first appearance, name, or category.
Open HeatmapAnswer "which shows overlap most in their content?" Compares every pair of shows by shared speakers, topics, or mentions using raw overlap or Jaccard similarity. Clustered ordering groups similar shows together. Click any cell to see the exact items two shows share, ranked by strength.
Open SimilarityAnswer "is this show introducing new material or recycling familiar names?" Each month's bar splits activity into first-time and returning items, with an overlay line showing the debut share. Toggle between "new to this show" and "new to the entire corpus" to distinguish show-level novelty from ecosystem-wide novelty.
Open Debut TimelineAnswer "who are the dominant voices or topics, and how is that changing?" Shows month-by-month rank positions for the top 10, 20, or 40 items. Follow individual lines to spot sustained leaders, rapid climbers, and items that drop off and return. Useful for identifying agenda shifts.
Open Rank ChartAnswer "which items have staying power versus which flared and faded?" Plots first appearance against number of active months. Bubble size reflects total activity or show reach, so you can immediately distinguish long-running staples from brief spikes and spot items with wide cross-show spread.
Open LongevityAnswer "how do topics or speakers spread from show to show?" A flow diagram connecting origin shows on the left to later-adopting shows on the right, grouped by how many months the adoption lagged. Reveals which shows seed narratives and which pick them up quickly versus slowly.
Open DiffusionAnswer "between any two shows, which one tends to get there first?" A directed matrix where each cell shows how often show A covered an item before show B. Switch between item count, activity-weighted totals, and average lag in months to quantify the lead-follow relationship for every show pair.
Open Lead/Lag MatrixAnswer "is this narrative confined to a few shows or has it gone mainstream?" Plots each item by how many shows cover it versus how concentrated its activity is. Items in the top-right are high-volume and widely spread; bottom-left items remain niche. Filter by date and show subset to track mainstreaming over time.
Open Concentration TrackerAnswer "what spiked unexpectedly?" Computes a baseline-adjusted shock score for each item over a trailing window, surfacing items whose recent activity far exceeds their norm. Use this to catch sudden narrative surges that raw counts alone would miss, and filter by show, date range, and source type to narrow results.
Open Burst DetectorAnswer "does this show create narratives or amplify existing ones?" Each show is placed on a quadrant by origination rate (how often it covers an item first) versus amplification rate (how much adoption follows elsewhere). Top-right shows both originate and trigger spread; bottom-left shows do neither.
Open QuadrantAnswer "when did these shows converge or diverge in their coverage?" Pick an anchor show and compare its rolling content similarity with other shows over time. Peaks indicate periods where two shows covered similar material; dips reveal divergence. Useful for detecting coordination or shared news cycles.
Open AlignmentAnswer "which topics disappeared and came back?" Surfaces items that went dormant then returned, showing their longest gap, total active months, and number of reactivation cycles. Useful for finding recurring narratives that lie quiet for months before resurfacing.
Open Reactivation MapAnswer "which topics or speakers consistently appear together?" Builds a network from episode-level co-occurrence: nodes are items, edges connect items that shared episodes. Set a minimum shared-episode threshold to filter noise and reveal stable narrative clusters that travel as a package.
Open Bundle NetworkAnswer "what topics, speakers, and keywords appear together within episodes?" A cross-entity network that links different types of items sharing episodes. Filter by pair type (topic-speaker, topic-keyword, etc.), minimum co-occurrences, date range, and shows to map how different narrative elements connect.
Open Co-Occurrence GraphAnswer "how far did this narrative get?" Categorizes each item's lifecycle stage: entry (first appeared), recurrence (came back), spread (reached additional shows), and current state. Visualizes how many items progress through each stage versus how many stall, showing the overall escalation funnel.
Open Funnel PathAnswer "which speakers connect which topics to which keywords?" A three-column Sankey flowing from topics through speakers to keywords at episode level. Reveals which speakers act as bridges between topic clusters and the specific language or keyword clusters they carry.
Open Bridge ViewAnswer "what phase is this narrative in?" Maps each item's lifecycle onto phases: introduction, burst, spread, peak, dormancy, and revival. See at a glance which items are currently peaking, which have gone quiet, and which are experiencing a revival after a dormant period.
Open Campaign TimelineAnswer "how are shows, speakers, and topics connected?" An interactive force-directed graph where nodes represent shows and their guests or topics, linked by co-occurrence. Filter by group, show, minimum episodes, and time period. Click any node to highlight its neighborhood and explore connection paths.
Open Network