Month: July 2017

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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Dynamo

You might think electricity had an immediate and transformative impact on economic productivity. But you would be wrong. Thirty years after the invention of the useable light bulb, almost all American factories still relied on steam. Factory owners simply couldn’t see the advantage of electric power when their steam systems – in which they had invested a great deal of capital – worked just fine. Simply replacing a steam engine with an electric dynamo did little to improve efficiency. But the thing about a revolutionary technology is that it changes everything. And changing everything takes imagination. Instead of replacing their steam engines with electric dynamos, company bosses needed to re-design the whole factory. Only then would electric power leave steam behind. As Tim Harford explains, the same lag has applied to subsequent technological leaps – including computers. That revolution might be just beginning. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Dynamo AC exciter Siemens, Credit: Igor Golovniov/Shutterstock)
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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Leaded Petrol

In the 1920s lead was added to petrol. It made cars more powerful and was, according to its advocates, a “gift”. But lead is a gift which poisons people; something figured out as long ago as Roman times. There’s some evidence that as countries get richer, they tend initially to get dirtier and later clean up. Economists call this the “environmental Kuznets curve”. It took the United States until the 1970s to tax lead in petrol, then finally ban it, as the country moved down the far side of the environmental Kuznets curve. But as Tim Harford explains in this astonishing story, the consequences of the Kuznets curve aren’t always only economic. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Petrol Nozzle, Credit: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images)
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the memory palace - Episode 112 (The Taking of Tom Sawyer’s Island)

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows. 

Music

Notes

  • By far my favorite and the most thorough examination of the Pow Wow I came across was actually Disney Historian Todd James Pierce's three (!) part series about the incident on his podcast Disney History Institute.