Tiny Matters The American Chemical Society

Every year, tuberculosis claims over a million lives despite being curable. Tuberculosis or TB is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. About 5–10% of people infected with TB will eventually get symptoms. In the early stages a TB infection might cause chest pain, a cough, night sweats, and loss of appetite. But eventually it could create holes in the lungs and cause you to cough up blood. And of course, TB can be deadly.

In this episode of Tiny Matters, Sam and Deboki talk with TB researcher Uzma Khan as well as John Green, the author of books including The Anthropocene Reviewed, Paper Towns, The Fault in Our Stars, and Turtles All the Way Down. John is also the co-creator of Crash Course and one half of the vlogbrothers — the other half being his brother Hank Green, who Deboki and Sam chatted with on the show last year.

Although he's best known as an author and YouTuber, last summer John made headlines for something else: fighting for more equitable access to tuberculosis treatments, particularly bedaquiline, an incredibly effective and essential medicine for patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis.

In this episode, Sam and Deboki cover the science and history of this devastating yet treatable disease, the recent public pressure on companies that is leading to increased treatment and testing access, and clinical trials that make John and Uzma hopeful that one day this humanity-plaguing disease could be gone.

If you’d like to learn more, go to tbfighters.org. You can also subscribe to John’s newsletter: tbfighters.org/newsletter. 

We have a YouTube channel! Full-length audio episodes can be found here. And to see video of Sam, Deboki, and episode guests, check out Tiny Matters YouTube shorts here!

Links to the Tiny Show & Tell stories are here and here. Pick up a Tiny Matters mug here! All Tiny Matters transcripts are available here.

Deboki and Sam put out a survey last month asking Tiny Matters listeners for feedback and were overwhelmed by the number of people who asked for more Tiny Matters episodes! At Tiny Matters, we like to give the people what they want, so we're going to begin releasing bonus episodes soon. But to do that, we need your help.

If you're a regular Tiny Matters listener you are well aware of something called the Tiny Show and Tell. At the end of every episode, Deboki and Sam each take a few minutes to share a science discovery or piece of news or maybe a science article they came across and found fascinating. Now they want YOU to share something!

Email tinymatters@acs.org with some science news you’re itching to share, a cool science factoid you love telling friends about, or maybe even a personal science story.

In these new “Tiny Show & Tell Us” bonus episodes, Deboki and Sam will read your emails out loud and then go a bit deeper into the tiny science of it all. 

At the beginning of the 1900s, New York City was in turmoil. Prohibition loomed, outbreaks of typhoid and an influenza pandemic had people on edge, and the city was steeped in corruption. One of the many consequences of that corruption was a completely inept coroners office.

Instead of having trained medical examiners work out the causes of sudden and suspicious deaths, New York City coroners were politically appointed. And they didn’t have the slightest idea of how to do a thorough autopsy. They were sign painters and milkmen and funeral home operators and people who had done favors for the party. They bungled the cause of death so consistently and so dramatically that the police and the district attorney's office told coroners to stay away from their crime scenes.

This was a horrific situation, unless you were a poisoner. In January, 1915, New York City’s government released a report saying that murderers were easily escaping justice and that “skillful poisoning can be carried on almost with impunity.”

In this episode of Tiny Matters, Sam and Deboki chat with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Deborah Blum, the author of The Poisoner’s Handbook, about the rise of forensic toxicology in the United States. Listeners will be taken on a journey through some of the disturbing poisoning cases of the time that helped lay the groundwork for the field — with a focus on arsenic, radium and cyanide — and the pivot role medical examiner Charles Norris and chemist Alexander Gettler played in restoring public safety and finally stopping poisoners in their tracks.

We have a YouTube channel! Full-length audio episodes can be found here. And to see video of Sam, Deboki, and episode guests, check out Tiny Matters YouTube shorts here!

We love our listeners and we want to bring you more of what you like! Head to bit.ly/tinypodsurvey to give us feedback and help us make Tiny Matters even better. The survey should take no more than 5-10 minutes to fill out. Your motivation? Filling out the survey will enter you into a Tiny Matters mug raffle!

Links to the Tiny Show & Tell stories are here and here. Pick up a Tiny Matters mug here! All Tiny Matters transcripts are available here.

On July 25th, 1978, in the northwest of England, a baby was born. On its surface, that’s not a big statement — babies are born every single day. But this birth attracted media attention from around the world. The baby’s name was Louise Brown, and she was the first baby born from in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

In this episode of Tiny Matters, Sam and Deboki answer a question that came from a listener who asked, “How on earth did they come up with IVF?” They cover the science behind IVF, the research and people — both scientists and patients — that made it possible, how it has improved over the years, and both the historical and current challenges it faces.
 
We have a YouTube channel! Full-length audio episodes can be found here. And to see video of Sam, Deboki, and episode guests, check out Tiny Matters YouTube shorts here!

We love our listeners and we want to bring you more of what you like! Head to bit.ly/tinypodsurvey to give us feedback and help us make Tiny Matters even better. The survey should take no more than 5-10 minutes to fill out. Your motivation? Filling out the survey will enter you into a Tiny Matters mug raffle!

Check out Strange By Nature here.

Links to the Tiny Show & Tell stories are here and here. Pick up a Tiny Matters mug here! All Tiny Matters transcripts are available here.

Tiny Matters listeners are THE BEST and we want to bring you more of what you like! Head to bit.ly/tinypodsurvey to give us feedback and help us make Tiny Matters even better. 

The survey should take no more than 5-10 minutes to fill out. Your motivation? Filling out the survey will enter you into a Tiny Matters mug raffle! 

Thank you in advance

This week, Sam and Deboki are joined by Trace Dominguez and Julian Huguet, the hosts of That’s Absurd Please Elaborate, a podcast where they do serious research to answer silly questions like, "What if the world had more sheep than people?" and "What would happen if you filled a volcano with concrete?"

In this episode of Tiny Matters, Trace and Julian answer the question, "Who invented the lawn?" It may sound like a question with a simple answer, but that is not the case! (Not even close). Their story begins in the Cretaceous period and ends with the lawns we know — and waste a whole lot of water on — today. This episode brings the perfect Tiny Matters mix of interesting science, fascinating history, important societal context and a sprinkle of goofiness.

Learn more about That's Absurd Please Elaborate here. Support the show by picking up a Tiny Matters mug here! All Tiny Matters transcripts are available here.