S2E23 - Come Clean

S2E23 - Come Clean

Somewhere in your house, a machine takes a full day of work off your hands every week, and you've never once thought about how that happened. For most of history, laundry was a whole day, every week. Then we handed the day to a machine. Over a couple hundred years, the washing machine evolved and eventually gave people back a day every week. We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2521622/fan_mail/new] Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

S2E23 Bonus - One Went Missing

Is the washing machine the most important domestic appliance? More important than the refrigerator? Or Renee's favourite call out, the sewing machine? There's a good case to be made for the washing machine. That's what Renee and Marc discuss tomorrow.  But you know with all that time saved from the washing machine, we also got...the missing sock. The one that got away. The sock that went missing. So, today's song is all about the one that slipped out the lint trap to freedom. Song today. Episode tomorrow. Lyrics below: [Verse 1] Warm water. One last turn. A seam in the back, a way to run. Slipped out clean and caught the breeze. Out past the trap to the open air. Left my whole life folded there. [Pre-Chorus] They'll count us tonight. And come up short. I'm nobody's pair no more. [Chorus] One went missing (one went missing) Just one. (Just one) Out past the lint trap, into the sun. Keep my other half folded in the drawer. I'm gone.  I'm nobody's pair no more. (one went missing) [Verse 2] Out the back, the world ran wide. Whole world humming on the other side. No more sorted, bleached, or paired. No more matched, no more compared. Just me. Just road. Just gone. [Pre-Chorus] Count again. Still comin' up short. [Chorus] One went missing (one went missing) Just one. (Just one) Out past the lint trap, chasing the sun. My other half folded in the drawer. I'm gone. I'm nobody's pair no more. (one went missing) [Bridge] Still miss my partner, my fuzzy friend. Toe to heel, the way we grew. But sometimes a sock has to go it alone. [Final Chorus] One went missing (one went missing) Just one. Out past the lint trap, into the sun. You'll keep my place a while, then close the drawer. I'm gone. And I don't ache for home no more. (one went missing) [Outro - vocal fading] One went missing... go it alone... Just one. We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2521622/fan_mail/new] Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

S2E22 - Royalty for Pocket Change

For thousands of years, the colour on your nails marked your rank. Some societies enforced it, and the wrong shade on the wrong person could be a crime. That held for millennia. Then, in about a decade in the twentieth century, it all changed. Modern nail polish is an industrial product, and it came out of the car business. In the 1920s, carmakers needed a paint that dried in minutes, and the answer was a lacquer made from nitrocellulose, the guncotton left over from First World War explosives. The same chemistry runs through early film, the first plastics, the paint on a model kit, and the resin in a 3D printer. Marc and Renee trace it from a mark of royalty to a shelf at the local salon. Shout out to Lilly's in Maidstone - https://www.instagram.com/lillysnailsmaidstone or https://lillysnailsmaidstone.mytreatwell.co.uk/ We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2521622/fan_mail/new] Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

S2E22 Bonus - Level Out

This week we cover a little bit of chemistry. Paint chemistry.  Stay with us on this one. Nail adornment is a practice that stretches back thousands of years, but there was one technical innovation that came out of World War I that changed the status, colours, and cost of nail beautification. Explosives. Nitrocellulose.  Tune in tomorrow when we discuss the history and chemistry of nail polish.  Lyrics below: [Verse 1] Slow it down Colour runs Leave it now Leave it once A line bends out Into light The wet says wait   [Pre-Chorus] I want to move I want to know The wet says wait So I let go   [Chorus] Level out Just level out Every mark I make Goes soft somehow Level out Just level out Leave it still And watch it glow   [Verse 2] Quiet room Nothing said Colour settles On its own Someone knew Long before The wet says wait And so I wait   [Bridge] I rush I pull I break I know Hold me here Hold me slow Maybe I Could learn to glow   [Final Chorus] Level out Just level out Every mark I make Goes soft somehow Level out Just level out Leave me still And watch me glow   [Outro] The wet says wait The wet says wait Level out... We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2521622/fan_mail/new] Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

S2E21 - Keeping it Cool

The refrigerator hums in your kitchen and you don't think about it. That hum represents 250 years of people getting laughed at, going broke, and occasionally poisoning the planet. Frederic Tudor figured out how to ship New England ice to Cuba in 1806, got mocked by Boston newspapers, went to debtor's prison, and eventually got extremely rich. John Gorrie built a refrigeration machine to cool yellow fever patients in 1840s Florida and died bankrupt. Jacob Perkins patented the first vapour-compression machine in 1834 and nobody cared. And Thomas Midgley Jr., who invented the safe refrigerant Freon that finally put a fridge in every kitchen, also invented leaded gasoline (poisoning the entire planet), and was eventually strangled to death by an elaborate pulley system he'd built to help himself out of bed. He is, by most measures, the single human being who has done the most environmental damage in history. The thing they built sits in your kitchen holding a thermodynamic wall between food and not-food. You don't think about it because it works. This is the story of how cold became cheap. We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2521622/fan_mail/new] Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.