Shows / Stereo Chemistry
Stereo Chemistry
Stereo Chemistry shares voices and stories from the world of chemistry. The show is created by the reporters and editors at Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), an independent news outlet published by the American Chemical Society.
Episodes
Stereo ChemistryJose-Luis Jimenez and Kimberly Prather on the intersection of aerosol science and the COVID-19 pandemic
Imagine you're an atmospheric chemist. There's a pandemic. And public health officials release information about how the virus spreads from one person to…
Stereo ChemistryJessica Ray and William Tarpeh on clean water, turning trash into treasure, and life as assistant professors
How do we build water systems that are sustainable and also equitable? On this episode of Stereo Chemistry, Jessica Ray and William Tarpeh talk with C&EN…
Stereo ChemistryDavid Liu and Stuart Schreiber on the science that motivates, fascinates, and tells us who we are
What motivates a creative scientific mind? How does an accomplished scientist pinpoint new subjects to explore? How is the field of chemical biology evolving?…
Stereo ChemistryPreview: New season coming on Nov. 23
Stereo Chemistry's new season will launch on Nov. 23, featuring eight chemistry greats in conversation with . . . each other. In each episode, two sensational…
Stereo ChemistryBONUS: Molecule-building tool wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Benjamin List and David W. C. MacMillan for their development of asymmetric organocatalysis, which has proved to be a…
Stereo ChemistryBONUS: Astronaut Leland Melvin's journey from chemistry to the cosmos
This month, Stereo Chemistry is sharing an episode of Third Pod from the Sun, a podcast from the American Geophysical Union, featuring an interview with…
Stereo ChemistryBONUS: How body farms can help solve cases
This month, Stereo Chemistry is sharing an episode of Orbitals that features an interview with forensic chemist Shari Forbes, an expert in human decomposition…
Stereo ChemistryBONUS: Rare earths' magic comes at a cost (Part 2)
(Part 2/2) This month, Stereo Chemistry is sharing a pair of episodes from Distillations, a podcast from the Science History Institute. We rely on rare-earth…
Stereo ChemistryBONUS: Rare earths' magic comes at a cost (Part 1)
(Part 1/2) This month, Stereo Chemistry is sharing a pair of episodes from Distillations, a podcast from the Science History Institute. We rely on rare-earth…
Stereo ChemistryBONUS: Celebrating LGBTQ+ excellence with My Fave Queer Chemist
This month, we're sharing an episode of the podcast My Fave Queer Chemist. Hosted by graduate students Bec Roldan and Geraldo Duran-Camacho, the show…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 41: Searching for Mars's missing water
More than 50 years of missions to Mars paint a clear picture of a cold, dry, desert planet. And at the same time, photographs, minerals, and other data tell…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 40: Reducing toxic metals in food
Toxic elements like lead, arsenic, mercury, and cadmium in food are not a new problem. But when they show up in pureed vegetables and other foods intended for…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 39: How research on aging could keep us healthier longer
Living longer has been a human obsession for centuries, but while medical science has helped extend average life span, not all those extra years can be…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 38: Nobel laureates Frances Arnold and Jennifer Doudna on prizes, pandemics, and Jimmy Page
Where do you take your career after you've won all of science's biggest prizes? In this episode of Stereo Chemistry, C&EN executive editor Lisa Jarvis sits…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 37: Historians pursue centuries-old chemical secrets—Green reading glass, Bologna stones, and Greek fire
Researchers want to invent the technologies of the future, but there are plenty of chemical questions lurking in the past. In this episode of Stereo Chemistry…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 36: How will Biden's election impact chemistry?
As we prepare for a new US president, many chemists are wondering how the administration change may affect them and their work. Will President-Elect Joe Biden…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 35: Grad students, lab injuries, and workers' compensation—it's complicated
Many grad students may be surprised to learn their university's policies for reimbursing medical fees for lab injuries do not cover grad students, or cover…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 34: Chemists confront the helium shortage
Helium shortage 3.0 is winding down. But 2021 is likely to bring more changes to the global market for this critical, non-renewable gas. And even if there…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 33: On being #BlackInChem
In August 2020, Black chemists and allies took to Twitter to celebrate the inaugural #BlackInChem week. The social media campaign highlighted the diversity and…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 32: Should organic chemistry's name reactions go the way of mouth pipetting?
Scientists have been naming ideas, theorems, discoveries, and so on after other scientists for a very long time (Newton's laws of motion, anyone?). Chemists…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 31: A world without Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin and her lab assistant famously imaged the structure of DNA using X-ray crystallography, an achievement that directly facilitated James Watson…
Stereo ChemistryBonus episode: Talking TSCA—is the chemical law living up to expectations?
This month marks 4 years since the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, was revised to boost confidence in chemical safety in the US by strengthening…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 30: The chemical culprit in 2019's mysterious vaping illnesses—what we still don't know
Months before the novel coronavirus took hold of the globe in late 2019, clusters of patients began appearing in emergency rooms throughout the US with a…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 29: This virus is here now, it's going to stay with us
As COVID-19 continues to spread, so does the effort to treat and vaccinate against the novel coronavirus that causes the disease. Around the world, scientists…
Stereo ChemistryBonus episode: That just isn't how you land on the moon without crashing
Fifty years ago this week, an explosion on the Apollo 13 moon mission stranded three astronauts hundreds of thousands of miles from home. You probably know…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 28: So that's why we threw a robot into the back of a truck
Chemistry is going the way of computing: It's getting smaller and faster. High-throughput experimentation, or HTE, is part of this push. Borrowing from…
Stereo ChemistryBonus episode: We're watching it very closely
As the novel coronavirus responsible for causing COVID-19 continues to spread, questions about the virus, the disease, and its impacts on our daily lives…
Stereo ChemistryBonus episode: We saw a lot of that scientific sage savior syndrome
Stereo Chemistry talked with six chemists who spent a year in Washington on a policy fellowship to find out what they learned and what advice they would give…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 27: The earth is going to be fine; what we're saving is ourselves
Climate change is on the public's mind, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and protests and rallies involving young…
Stereo ChemistryBonus episode: It's this big, giant brouhaha of pharmaceutical companies
M&A, the FDA, and an empty elevator. In this bonus episode, C&EN reporters Ryan Cross and Megha Satyanarayana share their takeaways from their time at the J.P…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 26: Evolution is kind of the be all end all in the problem of influenza
Although the Wuhan coronavirus is currently dominating headlines across the globe, influenza kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year. In the…
Stereo ChemistryBonus episode: All this is happening at Northvolt speed
Late last year, C&EN contributing editor Mark Peplow toured a new battery company's R&D facility in Sweden. That company, called Northvolt, aims to produce the…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 25: It was like, bam, half the ozone layer over Antarctica is gone
The discovery of the ozone hole in the mid-1980s sent shock waves through the scientific community and society at large. As scientists scrambled to make sense…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 24: Kids are happy to get to ask whatever they want
For its latest episode, Stereo Chemistry handed its recorders over to kid journalists interviewing grown-up chemists about cutting-edge research. Listen in as…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 23: That's a hell of a lot of explosive material
Rocket propellant research had its heyday in the mid-20th century, when the space race and the Cold War meant chemists had plenty of money and long leashes…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 22: I didn't know they were going to be worth billions—A conversation with John Goodenough
Without fail, the name John Goodenough crops up during Nobel Prize season. Many scientists believe he's deserving of chemistry's top honor. The University of…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 21: Culture always starts at the top, but it also starts from the bottom
In our last episode of Stereo Chemistry, we talked to chemists who had survived accidents at the bench to learn what went wrong and what lessons we could share…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 20: What happens when you take risks?
Research science is full of hazards. Chemists and safety professionals do their best to minimize the danger, but accidents do happen and the stakes can be…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 19: This is a mess. But there might also be gasoline in here.
In the aftermath of a building fire, investigators study the scene for clues to the fire's cause. They look for burn patterns and suspicious materials while…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 18: Our job is to make sure we have the data
Robots in the ocean are giving scientists more details about processes above and below the surface that affect our weather, our food supply, and more. They're…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 17: If you want to change the element, you have to change the nucleus
In honor of the International Year of the Periodic Table, Stereo Chemistry explores the stories behind some of the elements in this episode. C&EN and ACS on…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 16: It's all of these things that none of us get trained for
Being a chemistry professor is Jen Heemstra's dream job. How she got there was a bit of a nightmare. But now she's running her own team at Emory University and…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 15: Being scientists together in a relationship is the very best thing in the world
They say love is a many-splendored thing, and we have to agree. In the latest episode of Stereo Chemistry, love unites rotovap romance, intimate feelings…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 14: On the face of it, RNA is a terrible drug target
RNA should be a terrible drug target. It's long, noodle-like structure lacks the nooks and crannies that small molecule drugs use to grab onto proteins and…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 13: Kind of a schlepping sound
Closing out the inaugural year of Stereo Chemistry, host Kerri Jansen and C&EN reporter Tien Nguyen share a collection of stories about ways of distilling…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 12: Do you want to be the guy who rips out a page from a 1550s' New Testament?
The smell of old books. The crinkle of the yellowing pages. While admiring the wonders of libraries, have you ever wondered how paper ages and why some sheets…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 11: This is kind of not rational
Even scientists can have superstitions: a lucky shirt, a supernatural paper towel, an elaborate ritual to keep the NMR running smoothly. In this episode of…
Stereo ChemistryEp. 10: This book reinforced my belief that ketchup is a suspect condiment
Deborah Blum's new book, "The Poison Squad," comes out Sept. 25. The author and award-winning science writer sat down with us to discuss the crusading…