Science Current

In our bodies, 80% of the nitrogen has at one point cycled through the Haber-Bosch Process. That’s because the process is crucial for agriculture’s ability to feed the world. The Haber-Bosch Process allowed humanity to make fertilizer at scale. It’s estimated that global production would decrease to roughly half without it. Today, we are going to learn about how scientists figured out how to turn the most abundant component of our atmosphere, nitrogen, into a powerful chemical tool.

The GPS on our phones has revolutionized the way we travel. When was the last time you looked at a physical map for directions? For me it has been many years. That’s because we don’t need to. Today, we are going to learn the story of how we went from tracking the stars to being tracked ourselves to get us to our destination.

Luckily for all of humanity, when we jump into the air, we come right back down instead of floating off into infinity. That’s because there is a force called gravity to bring us back down. It seems intuitive, but putting a pin on gravity was pretty hard. The story behind gravity’s discovery and development is amazing and continues to this day.

What did people do before microwaves? Heat food over an open fire? Ok, probably not, but microwaves have revolutionized our eating habits. This is an interesting story about how microwaves were discovered along with how they got to the public.

Before synthetic dyes, life was bland especially if you weren't royalty or didn't have a lot of money. Natural dyes were expensive and in some cases, even banned for the common-folk. In this episode, we learn how synthetic dyes were discovered and how they changed the world to make it a much more colorful place.

Imagine an amputation without anesthesia. Hard, right? Well, it wasn't too long ago that this was reality. Surgeons would have to work at lighting speed to reduce pain as much as possible. Because of anesthesia, the medical field changed completely.

What started off as a study of the immune system of unique bacteria turned into CRISPR, a powerful gene-editing technology that can accurately and efficiently edit our DNA. Wat should we do with this technology? How far should we go? How far WILL we go? If you don't know what CRISPR is, now is the time to learn.

Many people sacrificed everything to make humanity aware that the universe doesn't revolve around us. At the time, this idea was revolutionary. With any revolutionary idea comes those who are willing to do anything to stop it.

Alexander Fleming came back from his vacation to find that his experiments had all been a failure. What he didn't know is that this failure along with World War II would leave humanity with penicillin, a drug that would change history.