The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast

Today is Election Day in the US. It feels like this mid-term election carries more weight than other years, so exercise your rights.Thomas Edison’s first invention was a machine for counting votes, and a committee turned it down because it would have ended their slow roll calls for votes. Societies have trusted votes to pottery, liquorice, gears, punch cards and touchscreens. Marc and Renee follow that one special step no voter ever gets to see, their ballot being counted the way they cast it, and work out why the best answer anyone has found is a piece of paper you can count again. If you’re in the US, go vote. We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.email us at [email protected] visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.

US Election Day is tomorrow.Marc and Renee voted. Have you? We're going to publish a day early this week so the episode will release on Election Day and you get the brand new dance craze "The Lever" today.Go vote!Lyrics below.[Verse 1]Step up and give 'em your nameFind you a booth for the gameReach for the handle, pull downCurtain is shut, it's your townMark all the names that you choosePull it on back, it goes through[Chorus]Everybody, do the lever!Step aheadRaise your armPull it downSpin aroundSide to sideMake your markArm againPull it backStep on outSpin aroundNow let's do it again![Verse 2]Pick up a pencil and goFill in the ovals in a rowSlide it on in, hear it beepSticker on, out on the streetWave to the folks in the lineTell 'em it's their turn this time[Chorus]Everybody, do the lever!Step aheadRaise your armPull it downSpin aroundSide to sideMake your markArm againPull it backStep on outSpin aroundNow let's do it again![Verse 3]Far away over the seaClick and it's home in a breezeMail it or drop it in townAny way, baby, get down[Final Chorus]Everybody, do the lever!Step aheadRaise your armPull it downSpin aroundSide to sideMake your markArm againPull it backStep on outSpin aroundNow let's do it again![Outro]Now let's do it again!Now let's do it again!We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.email us at [email protected] visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.

A Roman die hollowed out and filled with mercury, a slot machine that paid out in beer, and a casino floor that turned out to be a data centre. Every time gambling gets new technology it uses it to take more, faster, from more people, and every time the regulators arrive they set a limit on the house edge without getting rid of it. Marc and Renee go from Pascal’s arithmetic to near misses that are legal as long as they land just off the line, the first wearable computer, phone games that know what you’ll pay, and a sports bet relabelled as a financial contract. Come on...really? How can prediction markets be anything but gambling?!? Seriously, someone needs to explain that one.We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.email us at [email protected] visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.

This week, the nerds talk gambling tech. Which reminded Marc of a time he was walking to work in Japan and passed a man in a pachinko parlor feeding the machine and smoking his cigarette. Eight hours later...same seat, same man, and a whole lot more cigarettes. Our song is about that man. Here's to you chain-smoking pachinko parlor gambling man.[Verse 1]Shutters rattle up at nineI'm the first one through the doorThere you are, old friend of mineWaitin' like the day before[Pre-Chorus]Folks rush by, they got no clueThey don't know you like I do[Chorus]I'm still here (still here)By your side, old friendNowhere else to beYou and me until the endI'm still here (still here)[Verse 2]Ashtray's filling up by twoLunch crowd's gone around the bendAll my silver goes to youThat's the way you treat a friend[Chorus]I'm still here (still here)By your side, old friendNowhere else to beYou and me until the endI'm still here (still here)[Bridge]Ain't no gamblin', just a gameAll I win's a little prizeDiff'rent window, diff'rent nameTurns to cash, and no surprise[Verse 3]Same folks walkin' home at eightPhone's been ringin' half the dayLet it ring, they'll have to waitYou and me, we're here to stay[Final Chorus]Lord, I'm still here (still here)By your side, old friendNowhere else I'd goYou and me until the endI'm still here (still here)We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.email us at [email protected] visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.

In 1608 a Dutch spectacle maker put two lenses in a tube to spot enemy ships, and the government wouldn’t even give him a patent. Four hundred years later the same idea is a ten-billion-dollar gold mirror a million miles from home, catching light older than the Earth. Renee and Marc follow the glass from Galileo to Webb: telescopes held up with string, a mirror polished perfectly to the wrong shape, and Renee’s forty-year grudge against a smudge.We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.email us at [email protected] visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.

For this week's episode Marc and Renee look to the sky. Big fans of telescopes and astronomy the Nerds run through the history and future of astronomical instruments. Humble beginnings as tools for naval intelligence to instruments that peer into the very beginning of time. So, our song this week is about that longing to see farther that you can with your eye and the desire to see the heavenly bodies more clearly. Lyrics below.[Verse 1]Lay me down in the cool night grassMama gazing way up highThat one's a world just like oursJust a light up in the sky[Pre-Chorus]Only little lightsOnly tiny sparksTwinkle through the nightHiding in the dark[Chorus]I want to see farther (see farther)Farther than the eyeI want to see clearer (see clearer)Clear across the sky[Verse 2]Held the glass up to my eyeJupiter came swimming inFour small moons were at his sideSaturn wore a silver ring[Pre-Chorus]Oh, I never knewAll that waited thereHiding in the blueHanging in the air[Chorus]I want to see farther (see farther)Farther than the eyeI want to see clearer (see clearer)Clear across the sky[Bridge]Every light I'm looking atLeft before my mama's daySome of them burned out and goneStill they're shining down my wayLookin' back (lookin' back)A long, long way[Final Chorus - key change]I want to see farther (see farther)Farther, far awayI want to see clearer (see clearer)Clear to yesterday[Outro]Farther (farther)Farther than the eyeWe'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.email us at [email protected] visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.

A secret radar valve crossed the Atlantic in 1940, a candy bar melted in an engineer’s pocket, and the first microwave oven weighed 750 pounds and needed its own plumbing. Fifty years later it was a $200 box in nine out of ten kitchens. Marc and Renee get into the magnetron, a radio telescope tricked by somebody’s lunch, and a brother who set his hair on fire with a paper towel. And, after eighty years, why your leftovers are still cold in the middle.Shout out to Tom for correcting us on some pigeon facts from the storage episode. We talk about that and thank Tom at the end of the show after the outro. Here's a link to a film he worked on about microfilm. https://www.tombessoir.com/microfilm We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.email us at [email protected] visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.

Tomorrow's episode is all about the microwave...where it came from and where it's headed. But, as modern and convenient as the microwave is...sometimes it just leave your food cold in the middle. Have a listen to the episode's song and see if you can relate. The sadness, the disappointment, the frustration. The edges are too hot and the middle of that mystery burrito is still cold. Lyrics below.[Verse 1]Took it from the freezerLaid it on the plateWatched it turnin' in the lightLord, I could not wait[Verse 2]Bell rang out like SundaySteam rose to the skyEdges hot as lava, LordTears came to my eye[Pre-Chorus]Then I took a biteAnd it wasn't right[Chorus]Cold in the middle (cold in the middle)Cold, Lord, coldLava round the edgesAnd the middle's just like iceThey told me it was modernThey told me it was fastI had it on the highestI had it on full blast[Verse 3]Mama's stove took an hourGrandma's took all dayCame out warm the whole way throughNow it's gone away[Pre-Chorus]Then I took a biteAnd it wasn't right[Chorus]Cold in the middle (cold in the middle)Cold, Lord, coldLava round the edgesAnd the middle's just like iceThey told me it was modernThey told me it was fastI had it on the highestI had it on full blast[Bridge]Two more minutes (two more minutes)Stir it round againTwo more minutes (two more minutes)Lord, I don't know whenEdges gettin' harderMiddle still won't giveTwo more minutesThat's the way I live[Final Chorus]Cold in the middle (cold in the middle)Cold, Lord, coldLava round the edgesAnd the middle's just like iceThey told me it was modernThey told me it was fastI had it on the highestI had it on full blast[Outro - fading]Two more minutes (two more minutes)Two more minutes (two more minutes)[beep]Still coldWe'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.email us at [email protected] visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.

The first thing ever scanned at a supermarket checkout was a 67-cent pack of Juicy Fruit, in Troy, Ohio, in 1974. Now barcodes get scanned ten billion times a day, the price sticker is long gone, and the price on the shelf may soon depend on who's buying. Renee and Marc cover freight-car grime, grease pencils, the mark of the beast, and the smart cart that still wants you to hold everything up to the light.We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.email us at [email protected] visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.

What would the barcode say to you if it could talk? Would it wax poetic on its journey through the consumer landscape? Would it tell you all about the hands it passed through?No. It wouldn't. It's a barcode. Lyrics below.[Verse 1]I'm on the milk and the morning breadI'm on the pills beside your bedYou carry me through every doorYou never looked at me before[Pre-Chorus]There's so much in meWaitin' to come freeJust shine on me[Chorus]When the light hits me (when the light)Gonna tell you all I knowEvery mile and every handEverywhere I've had to goWhen the light hits me[Verse 2]I rode a truck from TennesseeI waited weeks in Aisle ThreeI've seen the loading dock at dawnI know the hands that passed me on[Pre-Chorus]There's so much in meWaitin' to come freeJust shine on me[Chorus]When the light hits me (when the light)Gonna tell you all I knowEvery mile and every handEverywhere I've had to goWhen the light hits me[Bridge]Here it comesI see it redEverythingI never saidCloser nowIt's findin' meOh, this is itNow you'll see[Final Chorus]When the light hits me (when the light)Gonna tell you all I knowEvery mile and every handEverywhere I've had to goWhen the light hits meWhen the light hits me[outro]Oh (oh)Seven, two, four (seven, two, four)One, oh, six (one, oh, six)Eight, three, nine (eight, three, nine)One... five[Outro - spoken]Huh....I thought there'd be more.We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.email us at [email protected] visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.