Thermal Delight

On August 20th, 1857 a ship set sail from the Port of San Francisco with 600 people and thousands of pounds of gold. That gold was destined for the vaults of New York City banks, but it never made it. Instead, the ship sank to the bottom of the ocean, taking all that gold with it ...  Show more

Across the West, there's a contentious debate playing out over how to adapt homes and neighborhoods to this era of increasingly extreme wildfire risk. In Berkeley, California, it's become a particularly emotional fight because of a very specific architectural history that began a ...  Show more

Tim Harford tells the surprising story of air conditioning which was invented in 1902 to counter the effects of humidity on the printing process. Over the following decades “aircon” found its way into our homes, cars and offices. But air conditioning is much more than a mere conv ...  Show more

Air conditioners are a nifty -- and sometime life-saving -- invention, but how does an air conditioner make air cooler? What does a compressor do? What’s a swamp cooler? Tune in for answers to these questions and more in this episode of TechStuff.

Air conditioning has had a profound impact on modern life -- and in more ways than you might realize. In this trio of Invention episodes, Robert and Joe explore pre-AC cooling methods, the invention itself and the many ways it changed the shape (and temperature) of our lives. Lea ...  Show more