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.

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Tomorrow we talk about a piece of tech that was millennia in the making. The humble flush toilet. We have a special guest coming in to record on this one to help us with the story.

But you can't make a song about flushing toilets without thinking about the things that water washes away. Physical and emotional. So, this song is all about flushing things away. And the little trap that keeps the bad stuff from coming up and stinking up your life again.

Lyrics below

[Verse 1]
End of a long Tuesday
Closed the door behind me
The day went down the drain
The way the days do
Water did its work
Carried what it could
Watched it disappear
The way I wished it would
[Pre-Chorus]
But somewhere down the bend
Where the water always sits
The smallest of the things
The smallest of the things
[Chorus]
I'll flush it away
I'll flush it away
But the trap holds a little
Of every yesterday
I'll flush it away
I'll flush it away
But a small part of you
Won't be carried away
[Verse 2]
Wedding ring down the drain
Wine poured out in the sink
Tears unseen in the shower
A day rinsed off my hands
Water takes things away
What it can, what it can
Underneath, beneath the bend
Is where the rest of it falls
[Pre-Chorus]
And somewhere down the bend
Where the water always sits
The deepest of the things
The deepest of the things
[Chorus]
I'll flush it away
I'll flush it away
But the trap holds a little
Of every yesterday
I'll flush it away
I'll flush it away
But a small part of you
Won't be carried away
[Bridge]
I used to think the water
Would carry every drop
But the curve below the bowl
Was always there to stop
Just enough to remember
Just enough to know
Some of what I let go
Is some of what I owe
[Final Chorus]
I'll flush it away
I'll flush it away
But the trap holds a little
Of every yesterday
I'll flush it away
I'll flush it away
And a small part of you
Stays here with me
[Outro - vocal fading]
Stays here with me
Stays here with me

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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.

Payphones were infrastructure until they weren't. They weren't missed until they were.
At their peak there were about two and a half million of them in America, one on what felt like every corner, and a dime got you anyone in the country. By 2018 there were about a hundred thousand left, most of them dead. The first one turned up in a Hartford bank in 1889. The last public one in Manhattan left ceremoniously in 2022, with a press release, like a retiring quarterback.
In between, the booth became a cultural object (Superman changed in one, every spy movie needed one). Drug crews turned payphones into open-air offices, so cities pulled the phones out of the neighbourhoods that leaned on them hardest. Then the cell phone showed up and the whole thing fell over in about a decade.
We'd decided a fire hydrant was a public good and a payphone was a business. When the business stopped paying, the phones came down, starting with the corners that could least afford to lose them. Then Katrina knocked out the cell towers, and the payphones still bolted to the wall had lines of people waiting at them. Turns out the thing you last cursed at for eating your quarter was was doing a job you'd written off years ago.

We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.

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.