For thousands of years, the rise and fall of empires and the global economy were closely tied to something you might not expect: spices. The spice trade began around 1000 BCE, localized to southeast Asia and the Middle East. But by the beginning of the next millennia, it had rapidly expanded and nations vied to control it. Today it’s typically far less work to find and purchase spices you want, but just because they’re no longer starting wars that upend nations doesn’t mean they’re any less important. Because while you might think spices are mostly about making your food taste good, science — and particularly chemistry — is finding they can do a whole lot more.

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In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we get to the bottom of if glass is a liquid or a solid and why riboflavin makes milk fluorescent. Then we talk about the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) — the first space-based observatory that NASA scientists and their collaborators are sending up into space to detect and study gravitational waves, better known as “ripples in spacetime.” 

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In 1856, after yet another day of disappointing experiments, a chemist named William Henry Perkin was cleaning up his glassware when he made a discovery that would harken a new — and colorful — era of science and industry. Just 18 years old, Perkin was a promising young student in a prestigious lab at the Royal College of Chemistry in London and he was supposed to be figuring out a way to make a chemical compound called quinine. Despite his best efforts, Perkin was coming up empty — or rather — producing a lot of dirty dishes with little to show for it. But he did notice that there was a curious goop in one of his flasks, and it turned a brilliant shade of purple in the wash. Intrigued, Perkin decided to try dyeing a swatch of silk with his serendipitous solution. Although he had failed yet again to produce quinine, Perkin had created the very first synthetic dye and launched a scientific industry that is still bringing new drugs and dyes to market today.

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In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, a listener on “team wasp” writes in with some interesting info on USDA wasps for pesticide-free pest control and we learn about some wasp versus beetle drama. Then we talk about how our red blood cells use and expel iron, and how a huge percentage of the iron we get is from broken down blood cells.

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Back in April, a company called Colossal Biosciences announced that they had brought dire wolves — ancient canines of Game of Thrones fame — back from extinction. The internet went wild. But while some media outlets proclaimed the return of a long-gone species, many scientists shot back on social media that these weren’t really dire wolves, they were just genetically engineered grey wolves. Suddenly everybody had an opinion on what de-extinction is, what it is not, and whether or not we should be doing things like this in the first place. In this episode, we talk to scientists who have been working in this area for a while, and they not only share their thoughts on these wolves — they completely change our understanding of the term “de-extinction.”

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In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we talk about cute woolly mammoth mice and debate whether research to bring back extinct species (or their genes) is ethical or a good use of money and time. Then we discuss the best way to remove microplastics from water.

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How did the early Earth, over four billion years ago, evolve into the planet we know and love today? It’s a big question, and an open question. To get answers, geologists turn to a surprising source — a tiny mineral no bigger than the diameter of a human hair, that has secrets about our planet locked away in its crystal structure. This miniscule mineral, with its big stories is called zircon.

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In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we talk about a new and exciting biodegradable polymer that seems to outperform commercial super glues. Then we discuss a compound called sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) that is used in high voltage equipment. Not only is SF6 a potent greenhouse gas, if you breathe it in it has the opposite effect of helium — it makes your voice deep. But it can also lead to asphyxiation so you should not breathe it in. We repeat: do not breathe this gas in.  

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An estimated 132 million babies were born across the globe last year — really just a drop in the bucket when you think about the over 100 billion babies born since modern humans first lived on Earth 200,000 years ago. And until very recently we had few tools to understand how they were doing in the womb, how they would fare in the days after birth, and how a pregnant person would change physically and mentally not just during pregnancy but in the months and years that followed. Things have changed dramatically, particularly over the last decade, in terms of the care and technology that’s available preconception, during pregnancy, and post-birth. But there is still so much we don’t know about these time periods, both for baby and mom, and many a black box remains. 

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