On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either. We are bringing that heat literally because I want to introduce to you someone who doesn't get nearly enough credit, Alice H. Parker. Don't know her, well you should because if you enjoyed not freezing your butt off every winter, she's the reason for it. I didn't know, Maybe you didn't. I didn't know. Maybe I didn't know. Maybe I didn't know.
I didn't know. I didn't know. Alice Parker was this brilliant black woman born way back in eighteen ninety five, so already, you know, life wasn't handing out participation trophies to folks like her. But Alice looked around at how people were heating their homes using wood and cold and thought, this is trash. I mean, imagine chopping wood and freezing cold weather just so you cannot freeze in your house. Alice had the genius idea of using natural gas for
central heating. Hey, right, She basically said, what do we stopped pretending we're on the Oregon Trail and brought some twentieth century energy to the situation. How about that? Anybody in agreement with that? And she didn't just dream it up. She didn't just talk about it. She patented the design in nineteen nineteen. That's like inventing wildfire before anybody had ever seen a computer. And be clear, her design wasn't perfect, it wasn't what we used today, but it was revolutionary.
It laid the groundwork for modern central heating systems. Without Alice, a lot of us will still be huddled up around space heaters arguing about who gets to stand the closest or them kerosene heaters and go to school smell like Pumpy Levin And let's be real, there's only so many toes you can lose the frostbite before you start saying, maybe there's a better way, y'all. Now here's the kicker.
Why don't we know her name? Why are you today, years old, just finding out about Alice Parker And she did this over one hundred years ago, barely a footnote in history. Meanwhile, Thomas Edison farts out of light bulb and we all act like he invented the sun and he didn't even invent the light bulb. But that's a whole nother conversation for a whole another episode. It's wild how black women like Alice were out here quietly saving the world while getting none of the credit. But her
story should inspire us. She didn't let the fact that she was a black woman in nineteen nineteen, when the world wasn't exactly rooting for her stop her. She had an idea and she made it happen. So the next time you cozy in your warm house, remember Alice Parker. She's the reason you're not out chopping wood like a lumberjack. And if that's not worth a round of applause, or at least a thermostat adjustment in her honor, I don't
know what it is. Thank you, Alice Parker, for making winter survivable and for proven that sometimes the warmest ideas come from the coldest challenges. And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either, I didn't know.