S2E22 - Royalty for Pocket Change

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 tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. 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 tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. 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 tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

S2E21 Bonus - Cold One on the Porch

Running a day behind on release schedule, but here's the song for this week's podcast episode. Episode out tomorrow.  Since we talked about an essential household piece of tech last week, we figured it'd be cool if we talked about another piece of household tech...the refrigerator. For me, I remember the Harvest Yellow refrigerator in my mom's kitchen, the white boxy fridge on my grandma's back porch, and the avocado green tank in a neighbour's garage.  This week's song is all about the Cold One on the Porch. A jaunty poppy yacht rock piece.  [Verse 1] Lights out in the kitchen Screen door swingin' open Out on the back porch Where the night begins There's a chair that knows me A song on the radio And the cold one waitin' Right there for me [Pre-Chorus] Reach for the handle Light spills out yellow Take that bottle out And settle in slow [Chorus] Cold one on the porch (cold one on the porch) Always cold, always there Cold one on the porch (cold one on the porch) Heaven on a wooden chair Cold one on the porch Cold one on the porch Bless the cold one on the porch [Verse 2] Bottle's gone cool Sweat on the bottom Boots up on the railin' Fireflies coming out Same way my dad sat Same hour, same view Same hand on the bottle Same cold one in mine [Pre-Chorus] Reach for the handle Cold air comes rollin' Take what you came for That hum keeps going [Chorus] Cold one on the porch (cold one on the porch) Always cold, always there Cold one on the porch (cold one on the porch) Heaven on a wooden chair Cold one on the porch Cold one on the porch Bless the cold one on the porch [Bridge] Held the wedding leftovers Held the funeral pies Held the milk for the cereal When it's too hot to rise Held the pop for the cousins Held the ice for every ache Holds the cold one in my hand right now Same as ever, never moved [Final Chorus] Cold one on the porch (cold one on the porch) Always cold, always there Cold one on the porch (cold one on the porch) Heaven on a wooden chair Cold one on the porch Cold one on the porch Bless the cold one on the porch [Outro - vocal fading] Bless the cold one on the porch Bless the cold one on the porch 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 tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

S2E20 - The Royal Flush

Quick note - sorry about Marc's audio. With recording three people, the mic setup wasn't optimal for Marc and his daughter. We'll do better next time. But Marc's audio isn't the important bits of the episode anyway. Enjoy! The flushing toilet is the most important machine in your house and the one you think about least. We use one six to eight times a day for our whole lives without a second thought, which, when you flush it through, is a remarkable engineering achievement. Rome had running-water toilets two thousand years ago, watched the idea swirl down the drain when the empire fell, and didn't pick it back up until the 1590's, when Queen Elizabeth's "saucy godson" Sir John Harington invented the first proper flush toilet. Things start to flow after a Scottish watchmaker invents the S-bend in 1775, a Victorian plumber called Thomas Crapper builds his name into a coincidence too perfect to waste, and the Great Stink of 1858 finally drives Parliament to build the sewers that  become the single biggest reason most of us are alive. Then we wash up in Japan, where TOTO treats the toilet as serious  technology, and we close on the billions of people who still do not have a safe toilet at all. Special guest: a twelve-year-old history buff, a genuine Tudor expert, who carries the Harington section of our story. 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 tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.