Orbitals – Details, episodes & analysis

We have some bittersweet news: Orbitals is coming to a close.

BUT there’s a new science podcast headed your way in 2022! It’s called Tiny Matters, and it's a show about things small in size but big in impact.

Every other Wednesday, hosts Sam Jones and Deboki Chakravarti uncover the little stuff that makes the big stuff possible, answering questions like, “how does our brain form memories?” and “why haven’t we terraformed Mars yet?"

The first full episode drops on Wednesday, January 26, 2022.

Check it out! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tiny-matters/id1599757941 

If there’s one flavor you can always count on, it’s vanilla. Sweet, creamy, and nostalgic, it comes from a creeping orchid vine. But with increased demand, scientists are finding new ways to make it, including starting from an unexpected plant…rice!

Solutions is made with funding and featuring scientists from 3M, Ascend Performance Materials, Baker Hughes, BASF, Dow, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, PPG, Royal DSM, SABIC, Solvay, and W. L. Gore & Associates, none of whom influenced any editorial decisions.

Many of us slather sunscreen on in the summer to keep sunburns at bay. But new materials can improve sunscreens without adding more of the sticky, greasy compounds we all hate. The surprising origin of those new ingredients? Wood! 

Solutions is made with funding and featuring scientists from 3M, Ascend Performance Materials, Baker Hughes, BASF, Dow, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, PPG, Royal DSM, SABIC, Solvay, and W. L. Gore & Associates, none of whom influenced any editorial decisions.

Sam Kean's latest book, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science, dropped earlier this week. It’s about when knowledge becomes everything—the only thing. At whatever the cost.

You'll hear about what made Sam want to write the book, and about a couple of the characters within its pages.

You can find the book here: https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/sam-kean/the-icepick-surgeon/9781549102929/ 

How do you keep moths from munching on apples? By confusing them with a field full of mating pheromones brewed in a lab. The same fermentation strategy can also make enzymes to help chickens digest their feed and keep their farmyards a little less… sticky. Today we’ll talk about the biochemistry that helps food make it from the field to your fridge without getting eaten first!

Solutions is made with funding and featuring scientists from 3M, Ascend Performance Materials, Baker Hughes, BASF, Dow, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, PPG, Royal DSM, SABIC, Solvay, and W. L. Gore & Associates, none of whom influenced any editorial decisions.

A lot has happened in the last year (understatement of the millennium), so we wanted to bring our listeners something a bit sillier than usual. In this episode we’re talking food and drink chemistry—just fun bits of trivia that you can take with you as you venture back out to bars and restaurants this summer.

Sam's joined by Orbitals executive producer George Zaidan (as promised in the episode, you can see his hot pepper struggle here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R98O29Fs7s) 

Featuring Matt Hartings, PhD and Selina Wang, PhD

Vaccines help our immune system to learn to recognize invading pathogens before we ever get infected. But some vaccines include molecules that act like an extra alarm system, alerting our immune cells to pay attention! These molecules are called adjuvants, and scientists are working on creating new ones that could help create vaccines against pandemics that haven’t even happened yet!

Solutions is made with funding and featuring scientists from 3M, Ascend Performance Materials, Baker Hughes, BASF, Dow, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, PPG, Royal DSM, SABIC, Solvay, and W. L. Gore & Associates, none of whom influenced any editorial decisions.

Over half a million people in the US have died from an opioid overdose over the last 20 years, and a lot of the time they were prescribed those opioids by a doctor. So what makes these drugs so dangerous? And if we know they can be this dangerous, why are they still prescribed? 

This month’s episode is about opioids—their history, their use, and the research that might help us emerge from this epidemic.

Featuring opioid researcher Kelly Dunn, PhD

In this episode of Solutions, we’re going to travel from mangrove coasts to outer space, to the middle of Nebraska, and even to Norway to answer the question of how microscopic algae could help save our oceans from overfishing by making literal tonnes of omega-3 fatty acids.

Solutions is made with funding and featuring scientists from 3M, Ascend Performance Materials, Baker Hughes, BASF, Dow, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, PPG, Royal DSM, SABIC, Solvay, and W. L. Gore & Associates, none of whom influenced any editorial decisions.

April 22nd is Earth Day, so this month’s episode is all about our warming planet--what the data are telling us about our planet's future, how scientists are working to find solutions to deal with it, and how you the listener can actually make a difference.