What if your files could live forever—or even come alive?

In this episode of Need to Know Nuggets, host Ahmet Baysal is joined by Aden Emre Ünal to explore the bizarre and rapidly emerging world of unconventional data storage. From encoding movies into quartz glass and photos into DNA, to storing entire libraries inside living bacteria, we break down how science is pushing storage far beyond hard drives and cloud servers.

You’ll learn why a teaspoon of DNA could hold more data than today’s biggest data centers, how glass-based storage could preserve information for thousands of years, and why biologists and computer scientists are teaming up to rethink what “hardware” even means. Equal parts mind-blowing and unsettling, this episode reveals how data density, durability, and even immortality are reshaping the future of information.

Your USB stick may never feel the same again.