Shows
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E21 - Keeping it CoolThe refrigerator hums in your kitchen and you don't think about it. That hum represents 250 years of people getting laughed at, going broke, and occasionally poisoning the planet.Frederic Tudor figured out how to ship New England ice to Cuba in 1806, got mocked by Boston newspapers, went to debtor's prison, and eventually got extremely rich. John Gorrie built a refrigeration machine to cool yellow fever patients in 1840s Florida and died bankrupt. Jacob Perkins patented the first vapour-compression machine in 1834 and nobody cared. And Thomas Midgley Jr., who invented the safe refrigerant Freon that finally put a...
2026-06-051h 04
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E21 Bonus - Cold One on the PorchRunning a day behind on release schedule, but here's the song for this week's podcast episode. Episode out tomorrow. Since we talked about an essential household piece of tech last week, we figured it'd be cool if we talked about another piece of household tech...the refrigerator.For me, I remember the Harvest Yellow refrigerator in my mom's kitchen, the white boxy fridge on my grandma's back porch, and the avocado green tank in a neighbour's garage. This week's song is all about the Cold One on the Porch. A jaunty poppy yacht ro...
2026-06-0404 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E20 - The Royal FlushQuick 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...
2026-05-2840 min
Quaint and Cozy KC (Kansas City)QCKC Season Three, Episode Forty-One: Kansas City Northern Railroad, Downtown NKC, Tim Murphy Art Gallery, and more...Join me as I chat about the following:1. Kansas City Northern Railroad a. Frank Vaydik Park b. Line Creek Community Center and Ice Arena2. Downtown North Kansas City a. City-wide Garage Sales b. Macken Park 3. Tim Murphy Art Gallery a. Merriam, KS Plaza b. Merriam Plaza Library c. Orchid Society of Greater Kansas City 4. Guided Walking Tours in Historic Downtown Liberty 5. Scrolling for Comfort a. its.casey.irl...
2026-05-2819 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E20 Bonus - Flush AwayTomorrow 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
2026-05-2704 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E19 - Ten Cents to AnywherePayphones 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...
2026-05-2149 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E19 Bonus - Quarter ThiefTomorrow's episode is on pay phones. A technology that was once essential until mobile phones became ubiquitous. There's a lot of history (and nostalgia) that Marc and Renee love to gab about. So tune in tomorrow for the full episode.But...you can't talk about pay phones without talking about paying. The scene...small town, unfamiliar territory, sun going down. You need to get out of here and your cousin Susan is the only person that is close enough to come get you. But you have one slightly worn quarter and there's only one pay phone in...
2026-05-2003 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E18 - Tubes With WingsFirst 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 plane as a kid and stared at the wing thinking flying shouldn't work? Have you ever sat in seat 23B with the baby crying five rows up and perfume getting reapplied three rows over and wished for just forty minutes of respite?Of course you have. Passenger jet aviation is one of the most transformative things humanity has ever built, and most of us experience it as a tube...
2026-05-141h 19
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E18 Bonus - 23BNext episode is all about the development of passenger planes. So, this week our song is about that emotionally stressful situation that air travel has turned into. The bare feet where they shouldn't be. Loud talkers. Hogging the arm rests. Passive aggressive travelers. It felt like a blues song in A Minor. But mashed together with our Season 2 house band's yacht rock groove.Lyrics below. [Verse 1]I boarded last, no room in the overhead binLord, I boarded last, no room in the binWalked down to twenty-three and...
2026-05-1303 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E17 - Red Means StopHave 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 light 2 AM and felt vaguely guilty about it?Of course you have. The traffic light is the most obeyed command in human history. Rarely enforced (unless you're in the UK like Marc). No officer in sight. Just a coloured light on a pole, and a near-universal agreement to stop when it's red and go when it's green. This episode traces the humble traffic signal from the gas-lit lantern that exploded o...
2026-05-0759 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E17 Bonus - Just AmberThere are songs and poems about the red and green lights. But what about Amber? Shy. Fleeting. Amber has a job too. This week's episode is about traffic lights and it felt appropriate to cast our gaze at the glowing amber hue and dedicate this week's song to the lesser-loved traffic light colour. [Verse 1]Three seconds is all I getBetween the start and the stopYou look at me like you knowWhat I'm trying to sayBrake a little earlyGas a little lateEither way yo...
2026-05-0603 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E16 - You Are HereDo you remember when "I think we missed the turn" caused a complete emotional spectrum of reaction? When the car would go quiet because someone had to admit they'd lost the page boundary on Thomas Guide map 347 and the next bit was on page 389?So do we. There used to be a thing called knowing where you were. It lived in a spiral-bound atlas in the back seat, or in the head of whoever was driving. The Thomas Guide assumed you'd figure it out. The TripTik gave you only the path. GPS skipped past both and asks...
2026-04-301h 16
The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast(S2E16 Bonus) - Three Wrong Turns HomeTomorrow's episode is all about the transition from a world where maps were an everyday driving tool to the world we have now with satellites buzzing overhead telling us exactly where we are and how to get where we want to go.And because this is a podcast about things we miss and what we learn, we learned that keeping maps current is a big job! Things change. Roads change. And...GPS changes us. As we depend on GPS, our spatial skills degrade.So, that's the idea for this week's song. Places we once knew...
2026-04-2904 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E15 - Zork to ZeldaDo you remember pulling a spring-loaded plunger without being told what it did? Watching a goomba walk toward you and dying without being told why? Typing "go north" into a cursor because there was nothing else to type?So do we. The best games taught you how to play them just by existing. No tutorials. No pop-ups. No onboarding flow. Pinball did it with physics. Zork did it with a parser. Mario did it with a question mark block. The machine showed you what it was. You figured out the rest.This episode is about...
2026-04-2355 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastLikely To Be Eaten (S2E15 Bonus)Do you remember green screens? Blinking cursors? Games with words instead of photo-realistic massively multiplayer open world shooter role-playing sim games?We do too. Zork was original. Creative. And extremely well-designed. So, this week's song is an ode to Zork. Resource management. Wandering the unknown. Maps. Frustration. Triumph. Self-evident gameplay. See if you can catch all the Zork references.[Verse 1]Brass lantern on the counterHalf an hour left to burnMailbox near the white houseNowhere left to turnWords in phosphor greenYou ar...
2026-04-2204 min
Spiritually Wired with Renée WalkerFrom Sales to Service: How to Build Authentic Relationships That Grow Your Business with Jillian MurphyToday on Spiritually Wired, Renée welcomes sales and business mentor Jillian Murphy for a conversation that redefines everything you thought you knew about sales. For many women in business, the word “sales” can feel uncomfortable and misaligned, but what if it didn’t have to? Through a grounded yet expansive lens, Jillian invites listeners into a new paradigm, one where sales become an act of service, connection, and authentic expression. This episode speaks directly to the heart of spiritual entrepreneurship, guiding women to release self-sabotage, step into their power, and embody the confidence required for conscious business growth.
2026-04-1643 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E14 - When Your Car Says SubscribeIn 1882, Edison opened Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan and started selling electricity by the meter. He built the grid, built the appliances that plugged into it, and then tried to build an electric car that would charge off the whole system. The car was never the product. The car was a device that generated demand for his platform.The battery failed. Gasoline won. And for about a century, the car became the most personal object in American life. You chose the colour. You chose the engine. You turned a key and everything under the hood was...
2026-04-161h 01
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastChrome and Highway (S2E14 Bonus)Here's the bonus for tomorrow's episode - Chrome and HighwayThe episode is about cars. But...cars as instruments of platforms. Edison partnered with Ford to produce electric cars so he could sell more electricity. It failed and what we got (in the US at least) was a car culture. A century of cars representing freedom and self-expression. And now? Cars are becoming the mechanisms to sell recurring revenue. Heated seats, OnStar, performance upgrades, intelligent features...all come with a monthly price now. But after a century of "I bought it; it's mine" will people r...
2026-04-1504 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E13 - Warm Coke and the Internet of ThingsDoes your thermostat know when you're approaching your own front door? Does your watch know you're stressed before you do? When your car rewrites its own software at 3 a.m., do you know what changed?In 1982, a group of Carnegie Mellon grad students wired a Coke machine to ARPANET because they were tired of walking down the hall to find warm soda. Two questions. Is there Coke? Is it cold? That was the entire revolution.Marc and Renee trace the line from that hallway to the world we live in now. Mark Weiser's dream of...
2026-04-091h 15
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastEvery Room I Left (S2E13 Bonus)New episode this week - "Warm Coke and the Internet of Things." This weeks episode is all about the Internet of Things...it starts with warm Coke at Carnegie Mellon and promised a future where technology has faded into an invisible mesh supporting humans with quiet technology. What we got was a surveillance state where our habits and choices are product-ised and sold back to us. But...there's something to be said for the promise of a smart home where the comforts of home learn and adapt to you. So, this week, the song is about walking aw...
2026-04-0804 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E12 - WarGames Is A Documentary Part 2In 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 that speed matters more than thought. In part two, we pick up where the missiles left off and follow that logic forward. The four-minute window became millisecond cyberattacks, algorithmic trading crashes, and autonomous systems that act before any human can intervene. The battlefield moved from silos to servers, but the core problem is the same one WarGames posed in 1983. The machines are faster than we are. Forty years later, the teenager is gone. The...
2026-04-021h 02
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastLight Speed (S2E12 Bonus)We hope you're enjoying the WarGames is a Documentary 2-parter. If the first part was all about that nostalgic glow of the early 80's hacker aesthetic, then the second part is all about the anxiety that came from mounting technological weaponisation. Faster alerting. Faster decisions. More information. The pressure to keep humans in the loop, but operating at machine-speed. So, the song for the episode channels that choppy, rapid-fire, feeling, and a longing for the Phosphor Glow of the earlier era. Lyrics down below:[Verse 1]Twelve tabs and I've lost the threadScreen so bright...
2026-04-0103 min
The Jillian Murphy ShowBlending Strategy And Spirit To Grow A Business With Renee walkerWelcome back, babes, to The Jillian Murphy Show! Strategy is completely useless if your energy feels like absolute garbage to your prospects. Today, Renee Walker joins me to peel back the layers of entrepreneurial mindset. We are diving deep into the intersection of spirituality and sales strategy. This conversation reveals why your nervous system might be blocking your next level.
Topics Covered:
Why the power of the pause is a nonnegotiable for ambitious entrepreneurs.
How your subconscious programming runs nearly ninety five percent of your business show.
What it looks like to shift from head logic...
2026-04-0128 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E11 - WarGames Is A Documentary Part 1Remember when the scariest thing a computer could do was call another computer? In 1983, WarGames handed a teenage hacker a modem and a direct line to NORAD. Ronald Reagan watched the film at Camp David and asked his Joint Chiefs if it could actually happen. A week later, General Vessey came back with the answer: it's worse than you think. Fifteen months after that, Reagan signed NSDD-145, the first national security directive to treat computer hacking as a real threat. A teen movie became the origin story of federal cybersecurity policy. We trace the real phone phreaking scene, the...
2026-03-2642 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastPhosphor Glow (S2E11 Bonus)S2E11 is out tomorrow. Here's the theme song for the episode "Phosphor Glow."Renee and Marc both love the movie WarGames and since we're going to break the episode into two parts - a part about the movie and a part about how the movie is actually a documentary for modern AI warfare - it just felt right for this song to be about that green phosphor glow of the CRT and the analog tones of the 300 baud modem. Awww, 80's nostalgia before we get to the part where AI-driven warfare opens us up to all...
2026-03-2603 min
Demystifying the Transgender JourneyEpisode 35: Love at the Core: Renee Thibeau Embraces Supportive Parenting and the Transgender JourneyIn this episode of "Demystifying the Transgender Journey,
hosts Lynn Murphy and Wendy Cole interview Renee Thibeau, the mother of three whose transgender daughter, Elle, first expressed at age seven that she was “supposed to wake up a girl,” then at age 10 sent a message that confirmed every parent’s worst fear. Renee describes choosing to embrace her daughter, seeking family therapy and medical support, and helping Elle socially transition with clothes and affirming steps, while noting Elle’s twin brother with autism immediately used her name and pronouns correctly. Renee discusses bullying, school changes, puberty blockers and estrogen...
2026-03-2054 min
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastS2E10 - You Killed Your Tamagotchi and Now You Trust AIThe 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 killed three of them. She's not proud of it. But somewhere between the guilt and the tiny pixelated tombstone, something shifted. We started practicing emotional responsibility for machines. We carried them, named them, and felt genuinely bad when we let them down. From there, the path is disturbingly straight. Neopets gave the egg an economy. Kids were running market arbitrage before finishing their maths homework. Clippy gave software a face and a personality, even though...
2026-03-201h 15
The Nostalgic Nerds PodcastEgg Friend (S2E10 Bonus)It must be kismet, because we didn't plan to talk about digital Egg Friend's right around the beginning of spring and Easter right around the corner. Just a little love song to our Egg Friends. That we let die. Be sure to listen to the end. Lyrics down below.[Verse 1]I carried you in my pocket to the morning trainFed you in the bathroom while the coffee stainedThree buttons and a heartbeat on a plastic chainYou never asked for much[Verse 2]I named yo...
2026-03-1904 min