Norming

Michael McAndrew

A succinct podcast about norms. One episode per month, 10 minutes per episode. No more, no less.

  1. 28 Jul

    Duty Free

    Airport duty free shops are very odd. You're there walking along the airport corridors, after going through security and all of a sudden it's like you've just walked in the front door of Macy's. So what is a duty free exactly? Why do so many airports have them? Why do they sell somewhat odd items to peddle at travellers, and are they actually any cheaper?

  2. 25 Jun

    Email

    Email was built to send messages, and not in a particularly sophisticated way, but it quietly became a very important piece of Internet infrastructure. It’s the lowest-common-denominator of online communication, but it’s also even more significantly the defacto standard for digital identity on the web. So how did a system designed to simply deliver messages evolve into the Internet’s universal form of digital verification?

  3. 31/07/2025

    The QWERTY Keyboard

    When I was younger, my Grandmother asked me to teach her to use a computer. We sat down in front of it, and before I even had a chance to press the power button, she asked “Why are the letters on the keyboard laid out in such a weird way”. The keyboard that we use to interact with them is called QWERTY.

  4. 22/06/2025

    Recycling

    A few years back China banned importing waste from other countries. This became quite the story because it turned out that the US had a bit of a dirty secret. They were dumping a lot of their plastic recycling waste on China. Thankfully, China has since put a stop to that, but is it true that most of our recycling is going to landfill, or being exported to become another countries problem, and does recycling actually even work?

  5. 01/02/2025

    Voting

    There’s a saying “Just because you do not take an interest in politics, doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you”. For those of us who live in some form of a modern democracy, voting is often one of the most direct ways that we can determine the leaders and futures of the places we live.

  6. 09/11/2024

    The Wayback Machine

    The library of Alexandria was one of the most famous libraries of the ancient world. The library was supposedly burned down, and with it, all the years of intellectual progress contained within it. This was the inspiration of a very Silicon Valley project, the Wayback machine.

  7. 03/08/2024

    The Five-Day Work Week

    The 40 hour, 5 day work week became the norm for industrialised countries almost 90 years ago, and it hasn’t changed much since. So why are we still working on average 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and does it still work all these years later?

  8. 29/06/2024

    Guinness

    Some European countries like France or Italy are known for incredible food cultures. Ireland on the other hand, is better known for their drinking than eating. Our Whiskey's and Coffee's are fairly well known worldwide, but we’re probably best known for Guinness. It is, after all, our national drink. So what makes a national drink, and why is Guinness ours?

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

A succinct podcast about norms. One episode per month, 10 minutes per episode. No more, no less.

Information

  • Creator
    Michael McAndrew
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    25
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Norming
  • Show Website
    Norming