Podcast – The Episodic Table of Elements

33. Arsenic: It’s Not Easy Being Green

March 11, 2019

6:00 am

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Adenosine Triphosphate, Agatha Christie, Aqua Tofana, Botox, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Crime, Giulia Tofana, Italy, Literature, Napoleon, Paracelsus, Pharmaceuticals, Poisons, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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Considering how synonymous this episode’s element is with “poison,” it’s astounding how eager people have historically been to ingest the stuff.

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32. Germanium: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

February 25, 2019

6:00 am

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Bell Labs, Clemens Winkler, Computers, Dmitri Mendeleev, Electronics, Germany, Jack Kilby, John Bardeen, Texas Instruments, Walter Brattain, William Shockley

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Silicon gets all the press, but germanium was the real trailblazer of the Information Age.

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31. Gallium: Caught Wet-Handed

February 11, 2019

6:00 am

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Crime, Dmitri Mendeleev, Electronics, Etymology, France, Lasers, Neutrinos, Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, Russia, Wetting

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Meet one of the periodic table’s lesser-known liquid metals — and beware some dangerous competition from a few felonious element collectors.

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30. Zinc: The Lecture Circuit

January 28, 2019

6:00 am

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Alessandro Volta, American Civil War, Andrew Ure, Benjamin Franklin, Biology, Electricity, Electrolysis, Frankenstein, George Forster, Giovanni Aldini, India, Italy, Karl Weinhold, Literature, Lucia Galvani, Luigi Galvani, Mary Shelley, Pharmaceuticals, Primo Levi, Sculpture, Women In Science

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Learn about some of Italy’s most renowned chemists and how they inspired a most gruesome quest to conquer death.

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