Dough - Washing Machines

Sliced Bread

BBC

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 634 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Could washing machines soon be cleaning our clothes without using any water?

The entrepreneur, Sam White, hosts Dough - the BBC Radio 4 series which looks at the business behind profitable everyday products and where the smart money might take them next.

In each episode, Sam, and the futurist, Tom Cheesewright, are joined by product manufacturers and industry experts whose inside knowledge gives a new appreciation for the everyday things that we often take for granted.

Together they look back on a product?s earliest (sometimes ridiculous!) iterations, discuss how a product has evolved and the trends which have driven its profitability.

In this episode on washing machines, they hear from expert guests including:

- Teresa Arbuckle - Regional Managing Director for the UK and Ireland at the washing machine manufacturer, Beko Europe - John Elliott MBE - the founder and chairman of Ebac which make washing machines in County Durham - Paul Hide - chief executive of the Association of Manufacturers of Domestic Appliances

They trade opinions on the washing machine's 'game-changing' innovations and its most pointless, or least effective, ones too, before Tom draws on his expertise as a futurist to imagine what doing the laundry might be like in the decades to come.

Dough is produced by Jon Douglas and is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in the spring when Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread.

In the meantime, Dough is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before this BBC podcast kicks off, I'd like to tell you about some others you might enjoy.
0:05.1	My name's Will Wilkin and I Commission Music Podcast for the BBC.
0:08.7	It's a really cool job, but every day we get to tell the incredible stories behind songs,
0:13.5	moments and movements, stories of struggle and success, rises and falls, the funny, the ridiculous.
0:19.1	And the BBC's position, at the heart of British music
0:21.7	means we can tell those stories like no one else.
0:24.5	We were, are and always will be right there at the centre of the narrative.
0:28.6	So whether you want an insightful take on music right now
0:31.3	or a nostalgic deep dive into some of the most famous and infamous moments in music,
0:36.1	check out the music podcasts on BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. You're about to listen to the latest series of Doe.
0:47.0	Episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays wherever you get your podcasts. But if you live in the
0:52.3	UK, you can get the episodes seven days early
0:55.1	on BBC Sounds. Make sure you subscribe to get new episodes of Doe as soon as they become available
1:01.3	and listen first on BBC Sounds.
1:06.7	Hello and welcome to Doe, the series from BBC Radio 4, which looks at the business behind profitable everyday products and where the smart money might take them next.
1:16.7	I'm the entrepreneur, Sam White. With me is the futurist Tom Cheesewright.
1:21.3	Tom. How are you doing?
1:22.5	Excited to be back in the studio, Sam.
1:24.5	In every episode of Doe, we hear from product manufacturers and industry experts
1:29.0	whose inside knowledge offers a new appreciation for the household objects we tend to take for granted.
1:34.7	Then it's Tom's job to gaze into the future and tell us what he thinks our chosen product
	...

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