Innovation Time Machine

In our Season 1 finale, Lucy recounts the history of the coffee shop: once the place where hip Muslims would go to escape the watchful eye of their imams; now the place where hipsters escape to because they still live with their mums. Blake shows he understands how, but not why, someone would take caffeine out of coffee. Finally, Rupe assures us that coffee is healthy for us… except in those many instances where it is not.

This week, Rupert returns to his youthful time spent running 3-card Monty scams with his crew on Blackfriars Bridge. Blake teaches us that not all magicians are douchebags – just the ones that aren’t Penn and Teller. And Lucy shares the British national treasure that was Paul Daniels and his most famous trick of making a puppet-thrown chunk of pizza disappear into his eye

In this episode, Rupert dons his polyester suit and drives us quickly behind an ambulance to tell us the history of personal liability law. Lucy explains how the UK Christmastime favourite, the minced pie, was once criminal for reasons beyond its flavour. Blake finishes up with a crime whose activities can range from salting someone’s lawn to breaking a window to get a hot meal.

This week, Rupe walks us down Confectionery Memory Lane, whose denizens include a suspiciously Caucasian Japanese grandfather, a chocolate munching trucker, and a pompous ambassador. Lucy invites us to bite off a hunk of a fish flavoured salty delight best known for giving you the runs and killing Bostonians. And Blake forgets he’s on a podcast with other people and mindlessly regurgitates everything he ever learned at a job he did 20 years ago.

In this episode, Laurie has us marvelling at the Victorian technology of wooden boards suspended over water, Blake introduces engineers so creative they named all of their rollercoasters the same thing, and Rupe names and shames the dentists who sold their souls to the cotton candy industry.

This week, the lovely Laurie joins us once more to recount the sticky orange history of the gourd-tuber pie wars of the 1800s. Rupe peels back some mashed potato to uncover culinary larceny being committed by the French, and Blake describes how to give your kitchen ceiling a delicious make-over with the world’s best-loved explosive dessert.

Order up! In this episode, our special guest Laurie serves us a hot platter of diner facts with a side of sass, Blake describes how his friends singlehandedly destroyed the all-you-can-eat buffet business model, and Rupe classily falls asleep in the toilet of an Indian restaurant.

With special guest, Laurie Glenn! This week, we revisit the decade female Olympic ice skaters’ hairstyles became even shorter than their skirts; we discover A Native American hairstyle that’s misnamed twice across two continents; and Rupe tells us why baldness treatments are expensive enough to make your hair fall out.

In this episode Blake explains the common bond between WWI glass shortages, glam-rockers and pre-schoolers. Rupe gets to the soggy bottom of the mysterious rise of home baking, prompting some reminiscence about kitchen disasters. Episode topic suggested by Kathy Glenn!

(Sorry for the long wait, Time Machine fans!)

This week we discuss how the Victorians uncovered a nefarious global feline retirement conspiracy, then we discover that the most dominant genetic trait to emerge from dog crossbreeding is a silly Pokemon-sounding name.