Episodes
39 episodes
Every episode comes with written show notes, a chapter list, and a full, speaker-labelled transcript you can read, search, and quote.
Season 2
Royalty for Pocket Change
11 June 2026 · 42 min
For thousands of years, the colour on your nails marked your rank. Some societies enforced it, and the wrong shade on the wrong person…
Keeping it Cool
5 June 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
The refrigerator hums in your kitchen and you don't think about it. That hum represents 250 years of people getting laughed at, going…
The Royal Flush
28 May 2026 · 40 min
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…
Ten Cents to Anywhere
21 May 2026 · 49 min
Payphones were infrastructure until they weren't. They weren't missed until they were. At their peak there were about two and a half…
Tubes With Wings
14 May 2026 · 1 hr 19 min
First things, first. We have merch. Silly, yes, but available here. Now onto the show... Have you ever pressed your face to the window in a…
Red Means Stop
7 May 2026 · 59 min
Have you ever sat at a red light at 2 AM with no traffic in any direction and waited anyway? Have you ever rolled through that same red…
You Are Here
30 April 2026 · 1 hr 16 min
Do you remember when "I think we missed the turn" caused a complete emotional spectrum of reaction? When the car would go quiet because…
Zork to Zelda
23 April 2026 · 55 min
Do you remember pulling a spring-loaded plunger without being told what it did? Watching a goomba walk toward you and dying without being…
When Your Car Says Subscribe
16 April 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
In 1882, Edison opened Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan and started selling electricity by the meter. He built the grid, built the…
Warm Coke and the Internet of Things
9 April 2026 · 1 hr 15 min
Does your thermostat know when you're approaching your own front door? Does your watch know you're stressed before you do? When your car…
WarGames Is A Documentary Part 2
1 April 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
In 1983, NORAD gave a president four minutes to decide whether to end the world. That was the Cold War's gift to the future: the principle…
WarGames Is A Documentary Part 1
26 March 2026 · 42 min
Remember when the scariest thing a computer could do was call another computer? In 1983, WarGames handed a teenage hacker a modem and a…
You Killed Your Tamagotchi and Now You Trust AI
20 March 2026 · 1 hr 15 min
The Tamagotchi (たまごっち) was a three-button egg that beeped when it was hungry, beeped when it was bored, and beeped when it was dying. Renee…
CAPTCHA Stolen Cognition
12 March 2026 · 59 min
CAPTCHA was supposed to keep the bots out. A simple lock on a simple door. Instead, it became one of the largest unpaid labour operations…
Neural Nets: The Assembly Line of Thought
5 March 2026 · 44 min
Henry Ford didn't invent the car. He turned building one into a series of motions so simple that no single worker needed to understand the…
The Age of Tiny Lights (LEDs)
27 February 2026 · 33 min
In S2E7, The Age of Tiny Lights, Renee and Marc trace the story of LEDs from a childhood electronics kit with a single red indicator to the…
Who Controls the News?
19 February 2026 · 1 hr 29 min
In this episode of The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, S2E6 – Who Controls the News?, Renee and Marc examine the machinery behind the headlines.…
Tape: Tough, Tested, Tenacious
13 February 2026 · 36 min
In this episode of The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, Tape: Tough, Tested, Tenacious, Renee and Marc explore the humble roll that holds the…
The Quiet Power of Batteries
6 February 2026 · 55 min
In this episode of The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, Renee and Marc dive into the quiet power of batteries. A technology we depend on constantly…
The Internet We Lost
30 January 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
Thanks for listening. Please rate and share with friends and family. It really helps! In this episode of The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, Marc…
Blue Boxes, SIM Swaps, and the Myth of Secure Phones
22 January 2026 · 50 min
In this episode of The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, S2E2 – Blue Boxes, SIM Swaps, and the Myth of Secure Phones, Renee and Marc go from the…
The AI Gigawatt Thirst Trap
16 January 2026 · 33 min
We're back with our first episode of Season 2 - The AI Gigawatt Thirst Trap. It was nice to have a little break, but Marc and Renee are…
Season 1
Built on Rubber!
19 December 2025 · 27 min
Quick note - a few audio drop outs here and there. Tried to edit around them, but nothing too serious and you'll get the gist in all the…
The (Shipping) Container Monologues
12 December 2025 · 54 min
Everyone loves fast delivery, but nobody loves thinking about how it works. In this episode, we dig into the overlooked story of logistics:…
Bubbles Build the Big Stuff: How Overhyped Tech Leaves Us Infrastructure We Rely On
5 December 2025 · 1 hr 0 min
Come for the canals and railroads. Stay for the part where Marc and Renee admit AI might just be the next overbuilt mess we rely on. In…
Cinema Reels and Digital Revolutions
28 November 2025 · 55 min
Cinema is built on technology, from the shape of the very first movie frame to the LED walls and AI tools used today. In this episode, Marc…
Please Enter Your Password… Again
14 November 2025 · 33 min
Renee and Marc break down the evolution of authentication in recent times. RSA tokens. The rise of mobile authenticators. The not-so-long,…
From Shells to Stablecoins: The Tech of Money
6 November 2025 · 1 hr 22 min
Marc once again drags Renee into a museum. This time the “Hall of Money." Five thousand years of humans trying (and mostly failing) to…
Tech Ethics: A Short History of Doing It Anyway
31 October 2025 · 52 min
Warning up front - we discuss some ethical conundrums and situations with tech. There's one mention of suicide and we talk about the…
Your Printer Hates You. And Now It Can Build Things
24 October 2025 · 55 min
Printers used to be the villains of the office...loud, cranky, and prone to eating your best work right before a deadline. But somewhere…
Barnum Would’ve Loved the Bots: The Digital Freakshow (Part 2)
17 October 2025 · 33 min
Welcome to the second half of our big-top breakdown, where the circus goes digital, and the clowns have ring lights. Wait...did we just…
Barnum Would’ve Loved the Bots: The Rise of Agentic Advertising Part 1
10 October 2025 · 46 min
Step right up and join Marc and Renee in this captivating episode of The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast where they embark on an exhilarating…
Throughput, Thrills, and Theme Parks
3 October 2025 · 45 min
This is Part 2 of our 2 part Theme Park episode! Roller coasters and databases have the same issues: concurrency, throughput, and panic…
Throughput, Thrills, and Theme Parks
30 September 2025 · 56 min
Roller coasters and databases have the same issues: concurrency, throughput, and panic when things go wrong. Theme parks are basically…
From Clippy to Agentic AI
11 September 2025 · 41 min
From Clippy’s awkward pop-ups to agentic AI plotting your next conquest, Marc and Renee laugh through the evolution of digital assistants.…
Bat Boy and How Algorithms Ate the Urban Legend
5 September 2025 · 52 min
Hold onto your tabloids! This week on the Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, Renee Murphy and Marc Massar explore the wild frontier where technology…
Sears, Amazon, and the Eternal Catalog
28 August 2025 · 39 min
To answer the burning questions from the episode - Could you buy dogs from the Sears catalog? Yes. Could you buy narcotics from the Sears…
Your Own Hyperlocal Meteorologist in Your Pocket - The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast
21 August 2025 · 38 min
Tune in for hot takes, cold fronts, and a 70% chance of questionable metaphors. In this episode, Renee and Marc of the Nostalgic Nerds…
The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast - The AI Gigawatt Hunger
15 August 2025 · 47 min
Great Scott! 150 NFL Football Stadiums running at night - all at the same time. That's how much energy a new Wyoming AI data center is…