Standards are the unsung heroes that supporting modern product design and global trade. Why is a kg exactly the same everywhere? Why are sidewalks shaved at intersections for wheelchair users? How do you communicate the colour “blue” to 400 parts suppliers in 22 countries so that the final product is one shade of blue? Standards. Why can you use a US issued credit card in a bank machine in the Czech Republic or China? Because there are standards about the size of the card, how the magnetic strip works, how the data gets exchanged behind the scenes. Listen on . . .
Reporter Andrew Leland has always loved to read. An early love of books in childhood eventually led to a job in publishing with McSweeney’s where Andrew edited essays and interviews, laid out articles...Show More
Ever wonder where Library and Archives Canada (LAC) stores, protects and preserves Canada’s diverse and rich documentary heritage? Join us for this episode as we take you on a walking tour of LAC’s Pr...Show More
Tech analysts estimate that over six billion emojis are sent each day. Emojis, which started off as a collection of low-resolution pixelated images from Japan, have become a well-established and graph...Show More
Martha’s Vineyard has a Lyme disease problem. Now a scientist is coming to town with a possible fix: genetically engineered mice. An island associated with summer rest and relaxation is gaining a repu...Show More
The United States is one of just a handful of countries that that isn’t officially metric. Instead, Americans measure things our own way, in units that are basically inscrutable to non-Americans, near...Show More
Everyone knows it when they see it. The classic “castle with turrets” periodic table is a beautiful and concise icon that contains a great deal of amazing information, if you only know how to read it....Show More
Lawyers have an ethics code. Journalists have an ethics code. Architects do, too. According to Ethical Standard 1.4 of the American Institute of Architects (AIA): “Members should uphold human rights i...Show More
There is a beauty to a universal standard. The idea that people across the world can agree that when they interact with one specific thing, everyone will be on the same page– regardless of language or...Show More
When George Laurer goes to the grocery store, he doesn’t tell the check-out people that he invented the barcode, but his wife used to point it out. “My husband here’s the one who invented that barcode...Show More
In 1990, the federal government invited a group of geologists, linguists, astrophysicists, architects, artists, and writers to the New Mexico desert, to visit the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. They wer...Show More
When designing a commercial structure, there is one safety component that must be designed right into the building from the start: egress. “Egress” refers to an entire exit system from a building: sta...Show More
A month is hardly a unit of measurement. It can start on any day of the week and last anywhere from 28 to 31 days. Sometimes a month is four weeks long, sometimes five, sometimes six. You have to buy ...Show More
In many ways, the built world was not designed for you. It was designed for the average person. Standardized tests, building codes, insurance rates, clothing sizes, The Dow Jones – all these measureme...Show More
For most people, electricity only flows one way (into the home), but there are exceptions — people who use solar panels, for instance. In those cases, excess electricity created by the solar cells tra...Show More
There was no Olympics this year, but it's almost the anniversary of the single worst event in the history of the games: The 1904 Olympic Marathon. Get a free trial of The Great Courses Plus by going t...Show More
Technology and industry put more food on the shelves and in markets by extending the life of perishable goods with canning and processing methods. But was the food safe? By the late 19th century, the...Show More
A plum-sized lump of metal takes us from the French Revolution to an underground bunker in Maryland as we try to weigh the way we weigh the world around us.
Stephen is joined by Jeremy Burge, the founder of Emojipedia, to discuss the small images that define so many of our digital conversations.
Do you give food emojis much thought? If not, perhaps you should. Emily Thomas hears how these tiny digital images can have a big social and economic impact. We reveal who decides which emojis are acc...Show More
This week we discuss the 'shadiest' company around, the world's leading authority on color intelligence, Pantone. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudi...Show More
Minute Maid and Tropicana’s decades-long tête-à-tête for orange juice dominance.
At the dawn of the digital era, a group of engineers tasked with audio compression had to decide what information to keep, and what to leave behind. What was signal, and what was noise? Fast forward t...Show More
In our first safety episode, we lift the lid on the terrible crash that took place at Norton Fitzwarren on the GWR in 1940, and learn how it teaches us all too clearly of the dangers of making assumpt...Show More
When LOL just isn't enough to respond to a friend's killer joke, emoji are there for you. But for many people, there isn't an emoji to represent them or the things they want to say. This has pushed ac...Show More
Each year, the powers that be endow our phones with about 70 new emoji. For 2022, you’ll be getting a mirror ball, a crutch, an X-ray, coral, a ring buoy, and a bird’s nest—with or without eggs in it....Show More
In February 2021, Texas suffered an intense winter storm and the state power grid had a catastrophic failure that lasted many freezing cold days. To understand the situation, one has to look at the hi...Show More
Chinese is one of the oldest still-spoken languages in the world. But when technologies arrived like telegraphy and computing, designed with the Roman alphabet in mind, if Chinese wanted to be able to...Show More
Color is a beautiful thing that just exists in the world. But when color intersects with capitalism, somebody has to set some standards, make some decisions, and make some money. Podcast production b...Show More
Data is the lifeblood of public health, and has been since the beginning of the field. We take a look at data gathering in regards to public health from the 1600s to today and how it might change in t...Show More
From weight and distance, to calorie-counting and calculating the depths of space, throughout history, humans have loved to measure things. Speaking to Elinor Evans, James Vincent – author of Beyond M...Show More
A pint might be Britain’s most beloved measurement. But what’s the name for the distance a reindeer can walk before it needs to pee?The way we measure things changes the way we see the world. Measurem...Show More
Greg Jenner is joined by Dr David Rooney and Desiree Burch at the literal beginning of time to explore the history of timekeeping. Covering everything from the origins of timekeeping to time in space,...Show More
Lawyers and doctors have a code of ethics. Teachers have them. Even journalists have them. So why not the tech sector, the people who create and design our very modes of communication? Coders and desi...Show More
Thumbs up? Thumbs down. Skulls of joy. And so many expressions of pain and comfort. This, my babies, is the -ology that sparked this whole podcast. Curiology means “writing with pictures” but will ce...Show More
The thrilling conclusion of all-things-emoji! Eggplants, peaches, jumping ska dudes, gray hearts, family emojis, what NOT to text your Southern Italian friends, yellow hands, red hair, the birth of th...Show More
The spaces we live, work, play in shape our health and our psyche - and healthcare spaces are no different. In this episode, we take a deep, multifaceted look at the field of healthcare architecture. ...Show More
Colonel John Hoffman of the Food Protection and Defense Institute has been advising companies and government on how to harden their cyber functions. Here he deconstructs how JBS came to be hacked and ...Show More
If you’ve bought a plane ticket recently, you’ve probably had the option to pay a few extra dollars to offset your carbon emissions. That money might go toward planting some trees… but how many trees?...Show More
Reporter Emmett Fitzgerald was used to hearing people call his home state of Vermont a “climate haven.” But last summer, he got a wake up call in the form of a devastating flood.
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The development and use of braille as the dominant tactile reading aide for the blind points to the importance of including the people who experience the need in the development of the solution.