In the second episode of In a Nutshell, host Antonia Leise invites assistant professor and historian of emotion Anneleen Arnout into the studio. This episode is all about the material that we walk through the world on – and mostly tend to forget about. Guest Anneleen Arnout introduces the surprisingly emotional history of asphalt paving. Including an exploration into horse accidents of the 19th century, asphalt's prior history as a make-up component – and why people used to boil eggs on streets.

Anneleen Arnout is an assistant professor of Cultural History at Radboud University. Fascinated by the history of emotion, her current project, for which she received a VENI grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), focuses on the urban emotional experience in Amsterdam, London, and Paris of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Would you like to know more about the emotional history of asphalt paving and the making of the modern metropolis? Follow Anneleen's tip and watch the movie Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927; trans.: Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis).

Edit: Jara Majerus

Cover: Antonia Leise