If you feel confused and left behind by cryptocurrency then this is for you. We're taking you on a journey through the strange history of cryptocurrency. Why and how does it exist?

It turns out this history isn’t so much about clever codes as good old-fashioned politics.

Our guide is Finn Brunton, author of Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency.

Get ready for a rip-roaring tale of Bletchley Park codebreakers, the wild west early days of the internet, dystopian visions of the future, and a man with a fortune buried somewhere in a rubbish dump in Wales.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick.

The editor was Thomas Ntinas.

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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The patent for the Ring doorbell cites this as the starting point. A Heath Robinson looking design with peep holes, sliding cameras and radio controlled alarms. An invention, and an inventor, ahead of their time.

Marie van Brittan Brown was an African American nurse living in Queens in New York in the 1960s. In 1969 she and her husband received a patent for what is the first modern home security system. It had many of the same fundamental features as the smart doorbells of today. But after the patent and some positive press coverage, nothing happened. No big companies swooped in to help build the system. Marie never became a millionaire.

Who was Marie van Brittan Brown? What was her invention? And why didn’t it take off?

My guest today is Shontavia Johnson, vice president for entrepreneurship at Clemson University and patent lawyer in a former life. Shontavia has been helping to revive Marie’s remarkable story as we will hear, thus allowing us to explore what Marie’s story teaches about who gets to be an inventor.

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Find out what Play-Doh has to do with sooty walls. And how we have a nursery teacher called Kay Zufall and a TV presenter called Captain Kangaroo to thank for it.

Our guest is Chris Bensch from the Strong Museum of Play, surely the world’s funnest museum. Chris takes us for a jaunt down memory. Along the way we sniff deeply from a tub of everyone's favourite modelling compound.

If you could spritz yourself with a Play-Doh scented perfume, would you?

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick

The editor was Anisha Deva

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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Pyres on the Appalachian mountains. Planes spraying chemicals into clouds. Mirrors in space. “I can make it rain, I can make it rain, I can make it rain…by waggling my stick”.

For more than a century, scientists, soldiers and charlatans have tried to manipulate the weather, wildly exaggerating what is possible.

Does any of it actually work?

And even if we could control the climate, should we? Whose hand would be on the thermostat?

Today we’re joined by James Fleming, a leading historian of meteorology and climate change and author of Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control.

James helps us chart the dubious history of attempts to control the weather from the 19th century meteorologist dubbed the ‘Rain King’, to Cold War efforts to drench opposing armies, to cloud seeding at the start of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick

The editor was Anisha Deva

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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!!!REAL LIFE INVENTOR ALERT!!!

Usually we talk about dead people on this podcast. It is history after all. But this week we’ve got living, breathing Ben Jen on talking about his invention Vantablack.

Vantablack is so dark, so black, that all details of the objects it covers dissolves. 99.965% of light that hits it is absorbed. It is no longer possible to tell what you are looking at. All you see is a black hole in space.

It was created by Ben and his colleagues at his company Surrey Nanosystems. They produced it for the space industry who had asked for something really, really good at absorbing light.

But this darkest of materials has gone on to have a life of its own causing outrage in the art world and provoking emotional responses in everyone that sees its strangeness.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest building in the world for nearly four thousand years…until it was beaten by Lincoln Cathedral.

This week Dallas is joined by Egyptologist and friend Chris Naunton for a crash course in pyramid construction and the mysteries that surround them.

Discover where pharaohs were buried before pyramids came along; find out who is believed to have designed the very first pyramid; and learn why they wanted to build giant triangles in the desert in the first place.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Thomas Ntinas

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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The transistor; solar panels; the first telecommunications satellite; cell phone networks; UNIX code; information theory. All these and more were invented in one place: Bell Labs.

Bell Labs was where the future, which is what we now happen to call the present, was conceived and designed. It was the research and development arm of AT&T, which had monopoly control of the American phone system for much of the 20th century, and had more than ten thousand employees in its heyday.

Why is Bell Labs not a household name?

How did the transistor chip come to be?

Which genius rode a unicycle around the office while smoking a cigar?

Our guest today is Jon Gertner, author of The Idea Factory as we explore the secret to Bell Labs’ success.

With thanks to AT&T Archives and History Center for the archive recordings.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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90% of everything you own arrived by sea.

And there’s one invention to thank above all else – the humble shipping container.

Today on Patented we’re joined by Rose George - journalist and author of the book Deep Sea and Foreign Going about her experience of spending five weeks on board a container ship.

Who do we have to thank for the modern shipping container?

Which country provides a quarter of the world’s merchant seamen?

Batten down the hatches and man the riggings as we set course for another edition of Patented.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick & edited by Joseph Knight

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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Barbie. What is it about Barbie? Love her or loathe her this 11 ½ inch doll gets a big reaction.

Which is strange in a way because she’s over sixty years old. Few things have managed to stay relevant so long, surviving seismic cultural change.

This week it’s the story of how the doll that changed childhood for millions came to be.

Our guest is Tanya Stone author of The Good, the Bad and the Barbie. 

And we meet Tristan Piñeiro and some of his more than 600 barbies.

Find out what Barbie has to do with a 1950s cartoon hooker…And what Teen Talk Barbie said that so incensed the world…

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick & Seyi Adaobi.

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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*tap* *tap* *tap*

That’s the sound of physical cash being consigned to the dustbin of history by us tapping cards/phones/watches instead.

Contactless payments are growing so rapidly that it seems a safe prediction that a cashless future is not far away.

In the UK contactless payments rose 52% between 2019 and 2021. Some shops already don’t take cash. And it’s a similar picture in countries across the world.

We’ve been using hard cash as the primary way to pay for things for millenia. How has this new technology crept up on us so fast?

Today we find out how contactless payments began, how they work, and who really benefits from them. Joining us today are guests Natasha de Teran and Gottfried Leibbrandt.

The episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The editor was Peter Dennis

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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