---
type: preference-model
updated: 2026-08-16
tags: [library, podcasts, recommendations]
---

# Podcast Preferences

## Primary discovery tracks

1. AI as institutional infrastructure; organizational adoption; state capacity; professional knowledge; verification; epistemology; and governance.
2. Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopian, and Oriental Orthodox Christianity; Alexandrian theology; patristics; liturgy; ascetic formation; church history; and lived institutions.
3. Governance through Congress, parties, administration, implementation, constitutional design, public management, democratic responsiveness, and comparative state capacity.
4. Philosophy of science through Peirce, pragmatism, Latour and science studies, complex systems, models, measurement, evidence, expertise, and trust.

Cross-track episodes receive a bonus when the connection is substantive rather than merely topical.

## Positive signals

- Domain experts making concrete explanatory claims.
- Institutionally and historically grounded analysis.
- Strong frameworks, interdisciplinary synthesis, and practical implications.
- Interpretive fairness, comparative perspective, and meaningful disagreement.
- Lectures, serious panels, expert interviews, and constructed investigative narratives.
- High expected intellectual value per minute.

## Negative signals

- Avoidable length, weak structure, conversational padding, and shallow news recaps.
- Generic AI news or elementary explainers.
- Generic Christian content that collapses distinct Eastern traditions.
- Polemic that flattens opponents or treats one provincial tradition as universal.
- Abstraction disconnected from organizational or institutional behavior.
- Repeated guests or arguments already well represented in the subscription set.

## Evidence hierarchy

Weight preference evidence in this order:

1. `loved` and `more-like-this` reactions.
2. Explicit selection into the discoveries feed.
3. Completion, abandonment, and reason codes.
4. Curated YouTube playlist additions.
5. Library holdings and reading notes.
6. Ordinary podcast subscriptions.
7. Routine daily listening.

Subscription and frequency do not imply endorsement. The Economist, The Daily, and Daily Orthodox Scriptures are routine sources and should have low taste-model weight. Current subscriptions are an exclusion map as well as a taste signal: ordinary episodes from subscribed shows are not discovery candidates.

## Daily output limits

- Add one to three high-confidence discoveries automatically when warranted.
- Show up to five exploratory discoveries on the dashboard for optional addition.
- Prefer fewer items when the candidates are weak.
- Recommend episodes, not shows.
- Always include the reason, novelty, guest expertise, duration, publication date, and direct link.

## Feed architecture

**Soren's Discoveries** (`https://mini.taila1ac2d.ts.net/discoveries.xml`) contains only unfamiliar episodes or videos found outside the current Pocket Casts subscription set. High-confidence items may be added automatically; dashboard reactions train later selection.

**Soren's Favorite People** (`https://mini.taila1ac2d.ts.net/recommendations.xml`) automatically collects new podcast episodes or YouTube videos substantially featuring:

- David Bentley Hart
- Fr. Anthony Messeh (including the spelling `Messah` when it clearly refers to the same priest)

This applies to interviews, lectures, panels, sermons, and substantial guest appearances. Incidental mentions do not qualify. Avoid duplicating existing items. Search broadly across publisher RSS feeds, YouTube, institutional event pages, STSA Church, STSA Ministries, and Upper Room Media.