45 Empire of the Sum a history of the pocket calculator
15 March - 47 minsAnother episode title Im jealous of becuase I didn't pick it, it's the work of Keith Houston a writer and software engineer who has made a habit of writing about things that are there in plain sight. He has written about the history of punctuation, a book about the book and last year a book about the history of the pocket calculator.
There's lots of interesting nuggets in this episode including how an ant counts, who counts with their genitals, the unlikely role a Tea company played in making calculators, what happens when there's an actual bug in your computer, and when it comes to calculators, what does Keith think is the fairest of them all.
Series Episodes
41 Re: Volts with David Roberts
A look at some of the stories behind the massive sums of an energy revolution. My guest is David Volts, energy journalist and writer of the Volts newsletter and host of the volts podcast. After Catherine Sheridan's H2 Oh! last week, this is the second of what looks to be an inadvertent energy trilogy. (Or enilogy or trinergy. No doubt that's been trademarked already) David Roberts has been writing and talking for years about the challenges but also the incredibly cool stuff happening in the biggest equation the world has ever seen: The terrajoules of energy that the planet uses every year: how to make it from electrons moving around instead of just burning stuff in the ground. we talk about carbon fibre electric wires, magic cement, stone batteries, black mass and why changing the energy system of an entire planet sounds like a crazy idea but it just might work
1 hour 11 mins
6 February Finished
