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Welcome to the Kotky Ride Home for Friday, December 11th, 2020. I'm Jackson Bird. The household features that were shaped by previous epidemics. An ethics committee has approved the French military to start making bionic soldiers and hot Dr. Pepper.

Here are some of the cool things from the news today.

Every couple of months since the pandemic started, someone on Twitter rediscovers this fun fact.

Steam heat radiators, you know, those obtrusive silver-ribbed kinds, particularly

found in New York City, turns out the fact that they get so hot that many people find

themselves opening the windows in the dead of winter just to get some relief, that's a feature,

not a bug. And specifically, it was a feature designed during the 1918 epidemic, when experts,

as they do now, recommended fresh air and ventilation as among the best ways to avoid transmitting

disease. And those radiators aren't the only element of our homes whose design was impacted by

previous epidemics. There's also closets, half bathrooms,

sleeping porches, white tiling, and more. But let's start with the radiators, quoting Bloomberg.

Most radiator systems appeared in major American cities like New York City in the first third

of the 20th century. This golden age of steam heat didn't merely coincide with the

1918 pandemic. Beliefs about how to fight airborne illness influenced the design of heating systems

and created a persistent pain point for those who've cohabitated with a cranky old radiator.

Health officials thought correctly that fresh air would ward off airborne

...