Inventing Fire: the First Spark of Humanity

If you can never connect to a printer, if furniture jumps out to stub your toe, if when you do the dishes the water jumps out the sink to soak you - then you are victim of the inanimate malice of things.

The belief that all things are essentially out to get us us has a name - Resistentialism. This is a theory created by columnist Paul Jennings. On one level it's clearly a joke, on another level though he was convinced of its truth. Dallas, a man who has spent a lifetime celebrating tech, agrees.

Paul's daughter joined Dallas to help explain her father's theory about the spiteful behaviour of inanimate objects. Les choses sont contre nous.

Produced by Charlotte Long and Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

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400 years ago on the River Thames a mad genius showed off the world's first submarine. A crowd of thousands including King James watched as Cornelis Drebbel disappeared beneath the murky water, only reemerging after three whole hours had passed.

The same genius also came up with perpetual motion machines, self-regulating ovens, chemical air conditioning for Westminster Cathedral, and a project to provide central heating for all of London by building a perpetual fire on a hill outside the city, transporting the flames in pipes to people's houses.

Elon Musk eat your heart out.

Dallas's guest today is the amazing Vera Keller, historian of technology and author of a new book "The Interlopers: Early Stuart Projects and the Undisciplining of Knowledge"

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

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For most of their history, High Heels were resolutely masculine. The most manly of manly footwear. How did they turn into burning icons of femininity? And now that the heyday of women's high heels is over, what lies ahead for them?

Dallas's guest today is Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum.

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Alex Carlon, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

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