What We Built...And What We Buried: Episode One - The Immortal Bulb

The Devil Within

EVIO Creative

True Crime

3.3 • 176 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

🎧 The Devil Within — Episode 1: The Immortal Bulb What if the limits we accept… were never really limits at all? In a small fire station in Livermore, California, a lightbulb has been burning—almost continuously—since 1901. It hasn’t been replaced. It hasn’t failed. It has simply… remained. At first, it feels like a curiosity. A relic from a different time. But the longer you sit with it, the more uncomfortable the question becomes: If something built over a century ago can still work today… why don’t we expect things to last anymore? In this episode, we step into the early days of electric light—when durability wasn’t a bonus, it was the goal. When engineers built for endurance, not replacement. And when the idea of something lasting decades wasn’t unusual… it was expected. But somewhere along the way, that expectation changed. Not suddenly. Not obviously. But deliberately. Because when a product lasts too long… it stops being a product—and starts becoming a problem. This is where the story shifts—from invention to intention. From progress… to something else entirely. 🎯 Follow & Listen 🎧 Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts  📺 Watch full episodes on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel Because once you start questioning how things are made… you start seeing it everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:55.0	EVO Welcome back to the devil within
1:02.6	starting a brand new series this week. Let me explain.
1:07.0	So first, I need to give you all a brief history of an ancestor of mine, my maternal grandfather, Richard Ross.
1:14.4	Grandpa Ross was born in the early 1920s, was a standout engineering and mathematics student in high school
1:21.5	and in college. After Pearl Harbor, he joined the Navy and served his country during World War II.
1:29.0	But after a few years in the Navy, the government called him away for a different type of service for the war effort,
1:34.2	where he joined a growing number in the thousands, actually, of nuclear physicists and theoretical physicists and mathematicians and craftsmen on something called the Manhattan
1:44.8	Project, which, as we all know, produced humanity's first atomic weapon. My grandfather was a
1:50.0	nuclear physicist by trade, and this isn't some massive flex. I'm not saying he was Oppenheimer's
1:55.6	right-hand man. No, he was one of hundreds of nuclear physicists working on specific problems, and obviously,
2:02.5	they were successful. After the war, my grandfather went to the private sector and settled outside
	...

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