Charlotte Stavrou and Amit Katwala explore our culture of consumption through products that have changed the world. They unravel the mysteries of marketing and the formidable forces that drive purchasing habits. From toilet paper to funerals, perfume to package holidays they'll be combing the past to see how landmark innovations have shifted the course of history. And asking what happens next?
Charlotte and Amit dive into the story of microwaves and ask if they have enough power for a comeback.
Around nine out of ten of us have a microwave in the UK, making it a trendy gadget. But most of us use it for reheating food or zapping a microwave meal. Amit Katwala and Charlotte Stavrou find out if we are missing a trick by not incorporating microwaves further into our cooking and delve into whether these gadgets can help us during the cost of living crisis.
We meet MasterChef winner Tim Anderson who explains why he’s a self-described ‘microwave evangelist’ as he creates an emergency cookie for us in the studio. Alan Kelly, a professor in Food Science at University College Cork, tells us about the inner workings of microwaves and we trace the device's history, evolving from radar technology used in the Second World War.
Food writer Bee Wilson, author of the new book The Secret of Cooking, charts how her mother’s attitudes to microwaves changed through the years while Louis Platman, a curator at the Museum of the Home, tells us when microwaves began to appear in our homes.
Producer: Emily Uchida Finch
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
14 Sept 2023
Microchips
It’s not an understatement to say that microchips are now everywhere - from phone chargers to our beloved pets, there’s probably a microchip embedded within. But who invented them and how do they dictate computing power?
Amit Katwala and Charlotte Stavrou dig their hands into a bowl of microchips for this episode of All Consuming.
They meet Ken Shirriff, a former engineer at Google, who explains the crucial role of transistors in microchips, which are tiny switches etched into the silicon wafer.
When the first microchip was invented in the 1950s there were just three transistors, but some microchips can now contain billions. Over the decades, this has hugely increased computing power and changed our daily lives.
But microchip fabrication plants - called ‘fabs’ to those in the industry - require large volumes of water. Amit and Charlotte speak to Anurag Bajpayee, the co-founder of a company that recycles water at microchip manufacturing plants and Dr Yu Shu, a researcher at Oxford University, who is working on a novel method of creating microchips which are less harmful to the environment.
We end our tour of the world of microchips with a visit to the University of Sussex quantum lab where they’ve recently had a breakthrough in quantum microchips, which could change the world in a way that we can’t yet compute.
Producer: Emily Uchida Finch
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
7 Sept 2023
Denim
Around 70 million pairs of denim jeans are sold every year in the UK. They come in a dizzying array of shapes and styles, but the essentials haven’t changed since they were first conceived in the Californian gold rush 150 years ago.
Charlotte Stavrou and Amit Katwala continue their exploration of our culture of consumption by unpicking our abiding love affair with denim.
Mohsin Sajid, denim designer and lecturer at some of the UK’s top fashion colleges, takes us through the history of denim which originated as tough workwear, to its golden age of 1950s American youth culture.
Meanwhile, Bryan Szabo who runs an annual raw denim fade competition - the Indigo Invitational - explains how denim allows wearers to leave an imprint on their clothes and tell a unique story.
Sir John Hegarty discusses his agency’s relaunch of Levi’s 501 jeans in the 1980s when an irresistible combination of visual and music references made this item so desirable it became a symbol of rebellion in the Cold War. We hear from Nicolai Khalezin of the Belarus Free Theatre about how denim was used in Belarus to bolster a protest movement.
Produced by: Ruth Abrahams and Emily Uchida Finch
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
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