Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The new podcast Hyperfixed has a simple format: listeners write in with a question and host Alex Goldman goes off, talks to some people, and comes back with a comprehensive answer. It’s not unlike Reply All, the popular, long-running US podcast that Goldman used to host with PJ Vogt, and which ceased production 18 months ago. There, Goldman and Vogt would solve tech-related conundrums which led to them microdosing LSD to gauge if it increases productivity and chasing down one man’s musical earworm in “The Case of the Missing Hit” (the latter was hailed — justifiably — as one of the greatest ever podcast episodes). But then Vogt and a senior reporter left the show following allegations of toxic workplace practices, and a year later the series puttered to a halt. Now Goldman is back with the fortnightly Hyperfixed, which bills itself as “the help desk of life’s most intractable problems”, and in which he is flying solo. I thought this might be a problem — Reply All depended on Goldman and Vogt’s larky double act — but it turns out he has easily enough charisma to carry a show alone. Questions have thus far veered from the wilfully banal to the alarmingly existential. “Dylan’s Supermarket Cold Case” asks whether grocery refrigerators are doing their job properly; “Casey Wants to Believe” features a librarian wanting to trace the origins of a very unusual badge; and in “Eva Needs to Measure”, a British listener and keen baker wants to know what an American “cup” is measured in grams.The last question might seem a straightforward case of mathematics, but apparently not. There’s no universal conversion from cups to grams and it turns out that US cup sizes, which measure volume rather than weight, aren’t uniform. After delving into the history and philosophy of world measuring systems (fun fact: Thomas Jefferson rejected the metric system on account of it being “too French”), Goldman discovers there is no clear answer — something Eva suspected all along. In the newest episode, “Kristin Has Doubts”, a 32-year-old Californian asks whether she should have a child, given the parlous state of the world. This leads Goldman, tenacious and probing as ever, to consult forecasters about the future of democracy, the climate crisis and the overarching trajectory of humanity. As with all the questions, our host falls down a rabbit hole of data, historical precedent and a whole panoply of opinions, though here he weaves in his own personal feelings and his abiding sense that the world is going to hell (note: this has not stopped him having children). You wouldn’t want him to insert himself into every query, but here his input brings depth and humanity to what is a fundamental, and rather brutal, question about life. Goldman’s conclusion — that optimism is crucial to human progress, and that there’s never been a better time to procreate — made me feel quite weepy. hyperfixedpod.com
