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From antibiotic resistance to Roaring Twenties poisonings to body farms, you can find chemistry—and a good story—anywhere. Every month writer and host, Sam Jones, PhD, takes on a chemistry t...
We have some bittersweet news: Orbitals is coming to a close. BUT there's a new science podcast headed your way in 2022! It's called Tiny Ma...
If there's one flavor you can always count on, it's vanilla. Sweet, creamy, and nostalgic, it comes from a creeping orchid vine. But with in...
Think the science behind sponges must be boring? You're so, so wrong. Shrink down to the microscopic level with us and take a walk among spo...
Bacteria often get a bad rap, which is fair—they are responsible for diseases like strep throat, pneumonia, and tuberculosis, and antibiotic...
Polymer membranes make everything from rain jackets to medical devices. But they're also integral parts of hydrogen fuel cells, powering car...
When you hear the word "molasses" you probably imagine super slow-moving, brown-colored sweet stuff that you add to a cookie recipe. And tha...
5G is coming… but can your phone handle it? Surprisingly, a lot of that comes down to the chemistry inside! Let's crack open your phone to f...
Sweat is this thing that many of us seem to loathe, but also pay a lot of money to do while being yelled at by professionals. So what is swe...
A team of researchers making workout gear that never stinks realized that their invention could actually have a bigger impact fighting a glo...
In 2020, researchers discovered that more than 1,000 tons of plastic—that's over 100 million plastic water bottles worth—rains down on Natio...
Many of us slather sunscreen on in the summer to keep sunburns at bay. But new materials can improve sunscreens without adding more of the s...
Sam Kean's latest book, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science ,...
How do you keep moths from munching on apples? By confusing them with a field full of mating pheromones brewed in a lab. The same fermentati...
A lot has happened in the last year (understatement of the millennium), so we wanted to bring our listeners something a bit sillier than usu...
Vaccines help our immune system to learn to recognize invading pathogens before we ever get infected. But some vaccines include molecules th...
Over half a million people in the US have died from an opioid overdose over the last 20 years, and a lot of the time they were prescribed th...
In this episode of Solutions, we're going to travel from mangrove coasts to outer space, to the middle of Nebraska, and even to Norway to an...
April 22nd is Earth Day, so this month's episode is all about our warming planet--what the data are telling us about our planet's future, ho...
We humans are pretty smart, but sometimes our best solutions to big problems are inspired by nature! We're talking to scientists about how d...
In today's episode, we're talking about life. What it is, how it started here on Earth, and how we're trying to find it in other parts of th...
Natural extracts are in everything from food to medicine to beauty products. But how do we know which molecules from the natural world have...
Dr. Steven Townsend is a professor of Organic Chemistry at Vanderbilt University, studying the chemistry of breast milk—what makes it so goo...
Welcome to the first episode of Solutions, an Orbitals spin-off podcast for 2021! We need to move people and stuff around the globe, but the...
Introducing Solutions , a fun new Orbitals spin-off podcast hosted by Dr. Alex Dainis. E very month of 2021, we'll be releasing an episode t...
In the first half of the 20th century, there were very few environmental laws in the United States. Then, in 1962, environmentalist Rachel C...
As of November 16, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused over 1.3 million deaths globally, more than 246,000 of which have been in the Unit...
The only thing that's standing between life and lifelessness is about six feet of loose soil material covering the Earth. In this episode of...
Imagine buying mascara that makes you go blind, or picking up hair removal cream that causes your teeth to fall out. Before 1938 products li...
Antiviral drugs could help us fight the new coronavirus, but we don't currently have a highly potent and effective antiviral that cures COVI...
The COVID-19 pandemic has scientists considering a few less-conventional options while vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 are being developed. One...
We're each a big mush of chemicals surrounded by chemicals, and figuring out which of these chemicals are helpful, versus harmful, is compli...
Forensic toxicologists are frequently portrayed in shows like CSI and Bones, but what do they actually do? In this episode our writer and ho...
A potential vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 went into Phase I clinical trials in Seattle mid-March. So what exactly is being tested? How much lon...
Right now our team's focus has shifted to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our ACS and PBS Digital Studios series, Reactions , has become the priority...
Early-1900s New York City was a place of utter chaos—a place where poisoners reigned supreme. That is, until a unique duo stepped in and sta...
This week we chat with DC-based author Sam Kean about his most recent work: The Bastard Brigade , a book about a group of scientists and mil...
The parasitic roundworm Strongyloides stercoralis crawls through contaminated soil in search of one thing – human flesh. Often no more than...
On a body farm, scientists collect information from donated corpses to understand how things like weather and the positioning of a body will...
In the 1960s the drug thalidomide caused over 10,000 babies across the globe to be born with deformed limbs. Scientist Dr. Frances Oldham Ke...
Amphetamines have a troubled past that has carried into the present, but they can also greatly improve some people's lives. This week on Orb...
We need antibiotics, we rely on them. Much of humanity has survived because of them. But they could also lead to our demise if we're not car...
Today the Periodic Table is nicely filled out with 118 elements, but don't be fooled--the search is on for element 119. The question is, do...
We sat down for a conversation with Dr. Frances Arnold, 2018 Nobel laureate in chemistry for the directed evolution of enzymes. We asked how...
Many great minds have contemplated the question of how to get to Mars. In this episode of Orbitals , we learn how to get back home. With gue...
In this episode, we try to track down the chemical underpinnings of pine mouth syndrome: a persistent bitter taste some people experience af...
That expiration date on your pill bottle or nasal spray or autoinjector doesn't mean exactly what you think it means. Join Alexa Billow in h...