Chemistry episodes
7 episodes so far
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21 min
Bread from Air: How Nitrogen Fertilizer Came to Feed Billions
The element in every breath you take quietly determines who eats, who starves and who holds power
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15 min
Mendeleev's Gamble: The Periodic Table and the Elements No One Had Seen
How one Russian chemist's dream of order transformed chaos into the master blueprint of all matter
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18 min
Why the Ocean Is Salty: The Slow Chemistry of Earth's Great Solution
From the first rains on bare rock to hydrothermal vents, the surprising story of what is dissolved in every drop of sea.
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23 min
The Philosopher's Stone Was Real: Alchemy and the Birth of Modern Chemistry
Why Isaac Newton spent thirty years trying to make gold, and what the alchemists' failures left behind
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15 min
The Silicon Alchemists: Materials That Remember, Heal Themselves and Bend Light
Metal that snaps back into shape, concrete that seals its own cracks, and the race for a wire that wastes no power
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18 min
Fire, Pressure, and Time: The Hidden Chemistry of How Diamonds and Gems Are Born
From the deep mantle to the jeweler's bench, the violent chemistry behind Earth's most coveted crystals
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18 min
Sweet Chemistry: The Strange Story of How Fermentation Built Civilization
From accidental beer to bread, cheese, and soy sauce: how invisible microbes and human curiosity shaped what we eat and who we became
Hear any of them in full
Every episode is in the Compound app; Compound+ opens the whole library.