In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we cover the recent discovery of a new (relatively speaking, more like 100 million year old) organelle called a nitroplast that could revolutionize agriculture. Then we embark on a highly entertaining journey of 1930s chemistry poetry, sometimes written by inebriated chemists, and track down a rare and stunning Chemical Map of North America. Check out the map in this YouTube short and this Instagram post. We need your stories — they're what make these episodes possible! Write in to tinymatters@acs.org *or fill out this form* with your favorite science fact or science news story you found captivating for a chance to be featured in a future episode!

You might be familiar with plant-based alternatives to animal products — things like the Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat. And maybe you’ve heard of places trying to grow fish or meat cells in a dish to make sushi or steak without a fish or cow. But in today’s episode we’ll cover an old technology that’s bringing us some new foods: precision fermentation. With precision fermentation, many everyday products including dairy-free milk, insulin, and the collagen in lotions are now being made by microbes. How did we turn microbes into teeny tiny production factories for so many different products, and where’s the limit when it comes to what we can use them to create?In this episode we’ll demystify the science behind this technology and its history. We’ll also dive into how public perception influences the success of new food technologies and how framing can change minds and reduce both misinformation and skepticism.Send us your science stories/factoids/news here for a chance to be featured on an upcoming Tiny Show and Tell Us episode and to be entered to win a Tiny Matters coffee mug!Subscribe to our newsletter at bit.ly/tinymattersnewsletterLinks to the Tiny Show & Tell stories are here and here. Pick up a Tiny Matters mug here! All Tiny Matters transcripts are available here.

Could dark energy be more dynamic than we thought? In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we cover a recent dark energy discovery that has us contemplating what the end of the universe might look like, and then we delve into if hydrangeas can actually absorb water through their petals (ahem, sepals).We need your stories — they're what make these episodes possible! Write in to tinymatters@acs.org *or fill out this form* with your favorite science fact or science news story you found captivating for a chance to be featured in a future episode!

The opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics is two short days away. As over 10,000 athletes gather in Paris, France, anticipation builds. But that anticipation is not just for the next 19 days of fierce competition, it’s also for the Seine. The Seine River is set to host events including the 10 kilometer marathon swim and the triathlon, but as the Games approached, much of the testing showed that the Seine was still teeming with dangerous levels of E. coli and other bacteria. And a lot of people are asking, "why is this river so dirty?" In today’s episode, we’re going to get into the interesting history of how people have dealt with sewage, from Mesopotamia times to today, and how the Seine, as well as a river Sam knows well — the Potomac — are trying to clean up their acts. We'll dive into questions like, 'Will it ever be legal to swim in the Potomac?' 'Did Thomas Crapper actually invent the cra... um, toilet?' 'How do you clean up dilapidated old mines that are poisoning a river?' and more. Send us your science stories/factoids/news here for a chance to be featured on an upcoming Tiny Show and Tell Us episode and to be entered to win a Tiny Matters coffee mug!Subscribe to our newsletter at bit.ly/tinymattersnewsletterLinks to the Tiny Show & Tell stories are here and here. Pick up a Tiny Matters mug here! All Tiny Matters transcripts are available here.

In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we cover a recent story about how spending time outdoors can help keep kids from becoming nearsighted and the mysterious absence of skeletons at the site of the Battle of Waterloo despite over 10,000 soldiers dying (and how the beet sugar industry may have played a gruesome role).Here's a link to 'Bones of contention: the industrial exploitation of human bones in the modern age' by Bernard Wilkin and Robin Schäfer.We need your stories — they're what make these episodes possible! Write in to tinymatters@acs.org *or fill out this form* with your favorite science fact or science news story you found captivating for a chance to be featured in a future episode and WIN a Tiny Matters coffee mug!

This summer is a sports fan’s dream! Beyond some major soccer tournaments, Paris 2024 kicks off at the end of July. If you think about it, sports are science in motion, which means that buried in incredible athletic feats is a lot of data about how athlete bodies are using and responding to chemistry, biology and physics. That data is helping scientists design new or better tools for athletes. Today, in honor of this very sporty summer, Sam and Deboki delve into how scientists go about developing the equipment that helps move athletes, and how that equipment is holding importance for the medical field as well, for instance in diagnosing cystic fibrosis in infants. Sam and Deboki will also cover the creative experiments one scientist did to design a better bike saddle for female pro cyclists, who endured decades of intense injuries that ultimately required many to undergo labiaplasties, until American racing cyclist Alison Tetrick came along and said “enough is enough.” Title IX may have revolutionized female sports participation, but until more recently building gender-specific sports equipment from the ground up was unheard of.Email us your science stories/factoids/news at tinymatters@acs.org for a chance to be featured on an upcoming Tiny Show and Tell Us episode!Subscribe to our newsletter at bit.ly/tinymattersnewsletterLinks to the Tiny Show & Tell stories are here and here. Curious as to why mosquitoes might be obsessed with you? Check out this video! Pick up a Tiny Matters mug here! All Tiny Matters transcripts are available here.

We have exciting news! This Wednesday, July 10th, Tiny Matters is launching a newsletter! It will come out every 2 weeks, so about twice a month. We will not spam you, promise. You can subscribe at bit.ly/tinymattersnewsletter.So what will be in this newsletter you may ask? Well, it will of course alert you to the latest episodes, providing you some additional details here and there. We'll also share fun Tiny Matters video clips, tell you about recent science discoveries we can't stop thinking about, provide future episode teasers, get your input, let you know about any upcoming mug raffles, maybe share a pet photo or two... and really just have fun interacting with this community. We (Sam and Deboki) want to get to know you all better and we want you to get to know us!Every subscription we get means a lot to us. We spend a lot of time on this podcast and all of the content surrounding it, and knowing that we're reaching our listeners is the best feeling!

In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, Sam and Deboki cover the role parrotfish poop may play in your next beach vacation and how the molecule 2,3-BPG helps people adapt to high altitudes and more. We need your stories — they're what make these episodes possible! Write in to tinymatters@acs.org *or fill out this form* with your favorite science fact or science news story you found captivating for a chance to be featured in a future episode and WIN a Tiny Matters coffee mug!

Standard reference materials — or SRMs — at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) serve as standards for many food, beverage, health, industrial and other products. There are over a thousand SRMs including peanut butter, house dust, dry cat food, soy milk, blueberries, stainless steel, fertilizer, and a DNA profiling standard. SRMs help make products safer and ensure that consumers are getting what they think they’re getting. But how do they work exactly?In this episode of Tiny Matters, Sam and Deboki cover SRMs that are helping us accurately detect toxic substances like lead and pesticides in our house dust, fight seafood fraud, and keep PFAS out of our meat. Sam also travels to the NIST headquarters outside of Washington, DC to get a behind the scenes tour of how SRMs are made. She even gets a chance to snoop around the warehouse where SRMs are stored.Email us your science stories/factoids/news that you want to share at tinymatters@acs.org for a chance to be featured on Tiny Show and Tell Us!Tiny Matters has 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. A video showing 'beef snow' and a bunch of other SRMs is 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.

At the end of 2016, a pilot reported that a volcano in Alaska called Bogoslof was erupting. Bogoslof had been quiet for 24 years, and there wasn’t any equipment on it that scientists could use to track its eruptions. But over the next 8 months, scientists were able to track at least 70 eruptions from Bogoslof, and they did so using something you might not expect: sound.In this episode of Tiny Matters, we’ll cover what sound can tell us about events as big as volcanoes and ‘Swiftquakes’ and as small as the insect world, where researchers are using AI to track different insect species, leading to important discoveries that could help not just public health but agriculture and climate policy.Email us your science stories/factoids/news that you want to share at tinymatters@acs.org for a chance to be featured on Tiny Show and Tell Us!Tiny Matters has 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.