Distillations Podcast

Please note: In today’s episode we have included more mature content than a typical show.

A Valentine for our listeners, this show is dedicated to the chemistry of love. In today’s show, we explain why passion has always been associated with fire and how the stars can influence your love life.

Today’s show takes a look at how scientists and educators are reinventing American science education. We chat with Tom Tritton, former president of Haverford College and CHF’s new president and CEO, about how to introduce liberal arts students to science—and just as importantly, vice versa.

Western medicine has always looked at the body as a system in balance. Today’s show looks at how ideas about the body’s equilibrium have changed over the past few centuries, from humoral theory to the discovery of vitamins and the role of trace elements in human health.

Chemistry has always been a science of measurement. In this episode, we look at several cases of how measurements affect scientific research and practice as well as daily life.

This week, in honor of the holiday season, we’re offering a toast to chemistry. We’ll explain what makes champagne bubble, and why size matters when you’re talking about carbonation.

How do scientists explain what they do to the larger public, and how can historians help? In this first episode of Distillations, we explore this question by looking at phlogiston, an obsolete element once thought to explain combustion.