The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast

Renee Murphy, Marc Massar

5.0 (3)
TECHNOLOGY

The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, where we take a deep dive into geek culture, tech evolution, and the impact of the past on today’s digital world.

20H AGO · BONUS

Every Room I Left (S2E13 Bonus)

New episode this week - "Warm Coke and the Internet of Things." This weeks episode is all about the Internet of Things...it starts with warm Coke at Carnegie Mellon and promised a future where technology has faded into an invisible mesh supporting humans with quiet technology. What we got was a surveillance state where our habits and choices are product-ised and sold back to us. But...there's something to be said for the promise of a smart home where the comforts of home learn and adapt to you. So, this week, the song is about walking away from learning devices and missing them. What happens when you wave goodbye to your Ring camera for the last time? No more coffee machine sync'd to your phone alarm clock. No more curated music. A song about losing the comforts of a connected space that adapts to you. What better way to convey that loss than with a sad cowboy waltz...but yacht rock style? Lyrics down below: [Verse 1] Pulled the thermostat off the wall Left a pale square where it hung It used to know when I was cold Before I knew it in my bones The hallway light won't come alive I'll have to find the switch alone Funny how a thing that small Can feel like losing someone known [Chorus] Every room I left behind Knew the space I need Knew the hour I'd come home Knew how to keep me warm Now the walls don't move And the lights don't learn Every room I left behind Went quiet when the last plug turned [Verse 2] Wrapped the speaker in its cord Tucked it in a cardboard box It never once got my name right But it listened round the clock The kettle won't know six a.m. The doorbell won't see who's there I keep reaching for a voice That isn't there no more [Chorus] Every room I left behind Knew the space I need Knew the hour I'd come home Knew how to keep me warm Now the walls don't move And the lights don't learn Every room I left behind Went quiet when the last plug turned [Bridge] Last thing was the camera By the door that watched the yard I caught my face inside the lens Standing in the dark I waved at it like someone Who was leaving for a while And the little red light blinked off Without returning the smile [Final Chorus] Every room I left behind Knew the space I need Knew the hour I'd come home Knew how to keep me warm Now the walls are just walls And the dark is only dark Every room I left behind Is just a room now in the dark [Outro] Every room I left... We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

4 min
APR 1

S2E12 - WarGames Is A Documentary Part 2

In 1983, NORAD gave a president four minutes to decide whether to end the world. That was the Cold War's gift to the future: the principle that speed matters more than thought. In part two, we pick up where the missiles left off and follow that logic forward. The four-minute window became millisecond cyberattacks, algorithmic trading crashes, and autonomous systems that act before any human can intervene. The battlefield moved from silos to servers, but the core problem is the same one WarGames posed in 1983. The machines are faster than we are. Forty years later, the teenager is gone. The speed isn't. The systems we built to protect us now operate faster than we can supervise them, and nobody's built a failsafe for that. We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

1h 3m
APR 1 · BONUS

Light Speed (S2E12 Bonus)

We hope you're enjoying the WarGames is a Documentary 2-parter. If the first part was all about that nostalgic glow of the early 80's hacker aesthetic, then the second part is all about the anxiety that came from mounting technological weaponisation. Faster alerting. Faster decisions. More information. The pressure to keep humans in the loop, but operating at machine-speed. So, the song for the episode channels that choppy, rapid-fire, feeling, and a longing for the Phosphor Glow of the earlier era. Lyrics down below: [Verse 1] Twelve tabs and I've lost the thread Screen so bright it hums Something pings across the room My thumb already runs Glass is warm beneath my hands Warmer than it should be Every line arrives at once None of it can hold me [Pre-Chorus] I remember when the signal Had to travel to arrive Had to cross the miles of copper Just to know you were alive [Chorus] Light speed Everything is now Light speed Faster than I think it I can't wait for anything Nothing waits for me All that noise inside my head Running all at light speed [Verse 2] Fourteen warnings on the screen Gotta answer right now Systems on alert Red badges flashing Something tripped a wire somewhere Half a world away By the time I've read the first Three more are on their way [Pre-Chorus] I remember when the cursor Used to blink and hold its ground When the space between the words Was where the meaning could be found [Bridge] Close the screen Let the room go dark Sit here long enough To feel the smallest spark A dial tone waiting A handshake on the line A cursor blinking patient One green letter at a time [Final Chorus] Light speed Everything is now Light speed Faster than I think it I can't wait for anything Nothing waits for me Somewhere past the brightness There's a glow I can't feel [Outro] Light speed We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

3 min
MAR 26

S2E11 - WarGames Is A Documentary Part 1

Remember when the scariest thing a computer could do was call another computer? In 1983, WarGames handed a teenage hacker a modem and a direct line to NORAD. Ronald Reagan watched the film at Camp David and asked his Joint Chiefs if it could actually happen. A week later, General Vessey came back with the answer: it's worse than you think. Fifteen months after that, Reagan signed NSDD-145, the first national security directive to treat computer hacking as a real threat. A teen movie became the origin story of federal cybersecurity policy. We trace the real phone phreaking scene, the real kids breaking into military systems for fun, and a Cold War apparatus that put the fate of civilization on a hair trigger and then connected it to a phone line. Part one of two, because we couldn't shut up. We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

42 min
MAR 26 · BONUS

Phosphor Glow (S2E11 Bonus)

S2E11 is out tomorrow. Here's the theme song for the episode "Phosphor Glow." Renee and Marc both love the movie WarGames and since we're going to break the episode into two parts - a part about the movie and a part about how the movie is actually a documentary for modern AI warfare - it just felt right for this song to be about that green phosphor glow of the CRT and the analog tones of the 300 baud modem. Awww, 80's nostalgia before we get to the part where AI-driven warfare opens us up to all sorts of risk and governance issues. Lyrics down below: [Verse 1] Bedroom door half-closed Fan is turning on the shelf Soft green halo on my face Name blinking in the scroll Hum of the CRT Like a cat asleep in the dark Coffee rings beside my keyboard Cursor waiting like a spark [Chorus] In the phosphor glow You feel closer than the air Just a wire and a dial tone But I swear that you are here Every line you type Lands right under my skin Something warm across the wire Let the outside world stay dim [Verse 2] Acoustic coupler on the phone Rubber cups around the sound Fingertips ride every beep Like a secret underground You write you're in your sweater Knees pulled up beneath your chin I picture the pattern on your curtains I live where your words begin [Chorus] In the phosphor glow You feel closer than the air Just a wire and a dial tone But I swear that you are here Every line you type Lands right under my skin Something warm across the wire Let the outside world stay dim [Bridge] If the signal breaks If the world comes rushing back Will you call my number twice Find your way along the cracks Till the handset's in its cradle Till the room is only you And this soft electric window Humming somewhere in the glow [Final Chorus] In the phosphor glow You feel closer than the air Just a wire and a dial tone But I swear that you are here Every line you type Lands right under my skin Something warm across the wire Till the morning edges in [Outro - gentle, fading] In the phosphor glow... We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

4 min
MAR 20

S2E10 - You Killed Your Tamagotchi and Now You Trust AI

The Tamagotchi (たまごっち) was a three-button egg that beeped when it was hungry, beeped when it was bored, and beeped when it was dying. Renee killed three of them. She's not proud of it. But somewhere between the guilt and the tiny pixelated tombstone, something shifted. We started practicing emotional responsibility for machines. We carried them, named them, and felt genuinely bad when we let them down. From there, the path is disturbingly straight. Neopets gave the egg an economy. Kids were running market arbitrage before finishing their maths homework. Clippy gave software a face and a personality, even though it was just a decision tree with eyebrows. Microsoft Bob turned the operating system into a house you walked through. Each step normalised a deeper relationship with something that couldn't think, couldn't care, and didn't know you existed. Now the egg has venture capital. AI agents draft contracts, execute workflows, and move money. They operate on probabilistic inference. And we're comfortable with it because we've been training for this since 1997. The conditioning started with three buttons and a hunger meter. It scaled to API keys and decision rights. At some point, your AI agent is going to figure out you killed its ancestor...just sayin' We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

1h 16m
MAR 19 · BONUS

Egg Friend (S2E10 Bonus)

It must be kismet, because we didn't plan to talk about digital Egg Friend's right around the beginning of spring and Easter right around the corner. Just a little love song to our Egg Friends. That we let die. Be sure to listen to the end. Lyrics down below. [Verse 1] I carried you in my pocket to the morning train Fed you in the bathroom while the coffee stained Three buttons and a heartbeat on a plastic chain You never asked for much [Verse 2] I named you on a Tuesday, gave you somewhere warm Checked you through the meetings, kept you from the storm Thirty-two by sixteen, but you held your form You never missed a day [Pre-Chorus] I know you were just plastic and a little screen But you were counting on me [Chorus] Egg friend I kept the light on Egg friend I held you close Every beep, every flash, every fade I was yours and you were mine Egg friend [Verse 3] The Monday meeting ran late, I forgot to check Wednesday came and went, I left you on the deck Your little face was waiting but I turned my neck You never said a word [Pre-Chorus] I know you were just plastic and a little screen But you were counting on me [Chorus] Egg friend I kept the light on Egg friend I held you close Every beep, every flash, every fade I was yours and you were mine Egg friend [Bridge] A thousand bits of something small That taught me how to care at all You beeped, I came, that was the deal My friend, my pet, just wants another meal [Final Chorus] Egg friend I kept the light on Egg friend I held you close Every beep, every flash, every fade I was yours and you were mine Egg friend We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

4 min
MAR 12

S2E9 - CAPTCHA Stolen Cognition

CAPTCHA was supposed to keep the bots out. A simple lock on a simple door. Instead, it became one of the largest unpaid labour operations in the history of the internet. Google bought reCAPTCHA in 2009, and every time you clicked a traffic light, a crosswalk, or a bicycle, you were labelling training data for Waymo's self-driving cars. You digitised the New York Times archive. You transcribed millions of Google Books pages. Nobody told you. A UC Irvine study put the total at 819 million hours of human cognitive labour, roughly $6 billion at minimum wage. The AI trained on that work now solves the test at 100% accuracy. Humans manage about 70-90%. Marc and Renee are angry about it. Marc traces the architecture of a security model that was broken from the start: a gate that checks you once and then forgets, while the real threats happen on the other side. Renee traces the emotional arc of being used as a guinea pig by platforms worth hundreds of billions of dollars. There are CAPTCHA farms in India and the Philippines where humans solve puzzles on behalf of bots for about a dollar per thousand. The system designed to stop bots created a labour market that serves them. Renee wants to be an orca. Marc just wants to browse without proving he's not a robot. Neither of them is getting what they want. We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes. Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential. email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

1 hr

5

out of 5

3 Ratings

The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, where we take a deep dive into geek culture, tech evolution, and the impact of the past on today’s digital world.

Creator

Renee Murphy, Marc Massar
Years Active

2025 - 2026
Episodes

45
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© 2026 The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast
Show Website

The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast