Stereo Chemistry

C&EN Uncovered: Is Vitrification a Clear Solution for Nuclear Waste?

03 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of C&EN Uncovered, host Craig Bettenhausen speaks with C&EN Editor, Fionna Samuels, about her featured article detailing a recent brea...

C&EN Uncovered: From Alchemy to AI, and the Funds Behind It All

04 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of C&EN Uncovered, host Craig Bettenhausen speaks with C&EN Editor, Chris Gorski, as well as graphic artist and freelance illustrator,...

Stereo Chemistry revisited: 'Wicked amazing scientist' James Harris's untold story

18 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Little was publicly known about the first Black scientist to codiscover an element. Chemists may know James Harris as the first Black scientist to be ...

C&EN Uncovered: COP30 Takeaways - What Will Climate Action Look Like in 2026?

28 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

How can we combat rising temperatures around the world? How will the Chemical Industry affect our chances of success? In this episode of C&EN Uncovere...

Bonus episode: The ancient, 'juicy' origins of antibiotic resistance

26 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

C&EN's award-winning podcast Inflection Point leans on our 100-year archive to trace headline topics in science today back to their disparate and sur...

Bonus episode: The electric innovations that brought lithium-ion batteries online

24 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

C&EN's award-winning podcast Inflection Point leans on our 100-year archive to trace headline topics in science today back to their disparate and surp...

Inflection Point: The era-spanning epiphanies that enabled gene editing

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

C&EN's award-winning podcast Inflection Point leans on our 100-year archive to trace headline topics in science today back to their disparate and surp...

Inflection Point: How under-appreciated critters inspired GLP-1 drugs

26 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the first episode of our second season, hosts David Anderson and Gina Vitale travel back in time to relive three historical moments that led to blo...

MOFs: What is this Nobel-prize-winning group of materials?

07 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Uncovered hops back to the first episode of C&EN's StereoChemistry, which delved into the materials that won the 2025 Nobel Prize in ...

Inside the cavernous crystals that won the Chem Nobel

09 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded on Oct. 8 to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi for their work on metal organic framewor...

Uncovered: The Strange Copy and Paste Chemistry of Skeletal Editing

26 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Will Skeletal Editing revolutionize the way we see chemical interactions? In this episode of C&EN Uncovered, host Craig Bettenhausen speaks with C&EN ...

Bonus: C&EN's Future of Chemistry Degrees Panel

10 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this bonus episode of Stereo Chemistry, we are featuring a panel discussion from this year's ACS Fall Meeting. Our panelists, Stefan France, Glory ...

C&EN Uncovered: Global Top 50 Chemical Firms in 2025

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Can the world's top 50 chemical firms bounce back from a global economic downturn? In this episode of C&EN Uncovered, host Craig Bettenhausen speaks w...

Inflection Point: The mind-bending innovations that built quantum computing

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hosts David Anderson and Gina Vitale travel back in time to relive three historical moments that were meaningful to the development of quantum comput...

C&EN Uncovered: Will Emerging Technology Lead Us Into A New Antibiotic Golden Age?

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Are we on the cusp of a new era of Biochemical discovery? In this episode of C&EN Uncovered, host Craig Bettenhausen speaks with C&EN reporter Max Bar...

Bonus Episode: 'Inflection Point' traces the serendipitous origins of PFAS

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Inflection Point leans on C&EN's 100-year archive to trace headline topics in science today back to their disparate and surprising roots. In each epis...

C&EN Uncovered: Can altering ocean chemistry fight climate change?

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Can climate catastrophe be stymied by tweaking seawater chemistry? In this episode of C&EN Uncovered, host Craig Bettenhausen speaks with C&EN reporte...

C&EN Uncovered: Turning tides for endotoxin testing

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The drug industry may finally phase out using horseshoe crab blood. What took so long? In this episode of C&EN Uncovered, host Craig Bettenhausen spe...

Bonus episode: Introducing Inflection Point

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The new podcast Inflection Point leans on C&EN's 100-year archive to trace headline topics in science today back to their disparate and surprising ...

C&EN Uncovered: Indoor air monitoring goes to school

27 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The COVID-19 pandemic put the importance of indoor air quality in stark relief. The air in schools was of particular concern, and that concern spurred...

Stereo Chemistry: How the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was won

29 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On Oct. 9, the 2024 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John M. Jumper for their work in prediction and design o...

C&EN Uncovered: PhD to CEO, how chemistry entrepreneurs are making the jump

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the 20th century, corporate powerhouses like Bell Labs and DuPont Central Research funded R&D from their balance sheets, creating a clear path for ...

C&EN Uncovered: Solvent Waste Levels, EPA Regulations, and Disposal

30 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On average, from 2011 to 2021, academic labs generated around 4,300 metric tons of hazardous waste each year. One of the largest lab-used solvents dis...

C&EN Uncovered: Ongoing tragedies in Flint and East Palestine

19 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tragedies in the communities of Flint, Michigan, and East Palestine, Ohio, continue to affect residents 10 years and 1 year on, respectively, from the...

C&EN Uncovered: Can 'forever chemicals' be destroyed?

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of chemicals known as PFAS, are often called "forever chemicals" because of how long they persist in the ...

C&EN Uncovered: The small-molecule drug renaissance

09 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As the science of drug discovery has grown in scale and gotten more complicated, so have the drug molecules themselves. But there's a promising class ...

C&EN Uncovered: The ocean floor is littered with valuable minerals. Should we go get them?

11 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Resting on the bottom of the ocean are potato-sized nodules of valuable minerals that are more or less up for grabs. Multiple corporations and some na...

C&EN Uncovered: The race to report on the Nobel Prizes

31 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Nobel Prize announcements are big events at Chemical & Engineering News. But we find out the winners at the same time as everyone else.    Then,...

C&EN Uncovered: Looking back on 100 years of chemistry

29 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The first issue of C&EN was published in 1923 with the stated purpose of "the promotion of research, the development of the chemical industry, and the...

Jennifer DiStefano and Jared Mondschein on the transition from the bench to the policy office

13 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Early-career scientists are increasingly gravitating toward science policy, but the transition from the research bench to the policy office can be a t...

C&EN Uncovered: Making hydrogen is easy; making it green is a challenge

11 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hydrogen might be the key to a clean energy future, but only if it can be made without fossil fuels. Most hydrogen today is made from methane.   With...

Mining metals and minerals from seawater

25 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The modern world runs on electronic devices and energy systems that are powered by valuable elements such as lithium and uranium. There are a limite...

C&EN Uncovered: Can tires turn green?

07 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Be they powered by fossil fuels, batteries, or hydrogen, cars are here to stay. So what can be done to make tires greener? In this episode of Stere...

Here's what happens when wastewater treatment facilities fail

06 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When two wastewater treatment facilities in Baltimore, Maryland, broke down in early 2021, the surrounding waterways began filling up with sewage. In ...

Bonus: Executive producer Kerri Jansen hands over the mic

30 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stereo Chemistry's longtime host Kerri Jansen is stepping down from her role as executive producer of the podcast. Jansen has been with Stereo Chemist...

C&EN Uncovered: The battle for Lake Maurepas

16 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Carbon capture and sequestration is the trapping of CO2 emitted by industrial processes and depositing it beneath the Earth's surface. Spurred on by...

C&EN Uncovered: Lithium iron phosphate comes to North America

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries are cheaper, safer, and longer lasting than batteries made with nickel- and cobalt-based cathodes. In China, ...

Microplastics pollute our drinking water: What are the risks?

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers reported finding microplastics in drinking water nearly 5 years ago, prompting California lawmakers to require monitoring of the state's...

C&EN Uncovered: What exascale computing could mean for chemistry

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a supercomputer named Frontier has broken the exascale computing barrier, meaning it can calculate more than a milli...

Bonus: Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless reflect on winning the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

06 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this bonus episode of C&EN's Bonding Time, we hear from 2022 chemistry Nobel laureates Carolyn Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, who shared the priz...

BONUS: Click and bioorthogonal chemistry win Nobel Prize in Chemistry

05 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless for their development of click and bioorthogon...

Lithium mining's water use sparks bitter conflicts and novel chemistry

13 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Replacing gas cars with electric ones is a main pillar of plans to fight climate change. But the lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars come with...

Bonus: For John Goodenough's 100th birthday, we revisit a fan-favorite interview with the renowned scientist

25 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Famed lithium-ion-battery pioneer and Nobel Prize–winner John Goodenough has achieved yet another milestone—a century on Earth. Goodenough celebra...

Bonus: Jess Wade on Wikipedia and work-life balance

21 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This month, Stereo Chemistry is sharing an episode of the podcast ChemConvos featuring an interview with materials scientist, self-described "Raman sp...

Bonus: The sticky science of why we eat so much sugar

31 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Our bodies need sugar to survive. But most of us consume way more than we actually need, and many foods and beverages pack a dose of added sweeteners....

Bonus: There's more to James Harris's story

27 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chemists may know James Harris as the first Black scientist to be credited with codiscovering an element. In fact, we referenced this in a previous ep...

Bonus: The helium shortage that wasn't supposed to be

24 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Helium shortages can derail research and threaten expensive instruments that depend on the gas to operate safely. In late 2020, analysts predicted—a...

Sarah Reisman and Melanie Sanford on how organic chemistry is changing and how they've learned to choose priorities

15 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Being a chemistry professor is a juggling act. But sometimes professors have too many balls in the air. How do they know which ones to grab and which ...

Jose-Luis Jimenez and Kimberly Prather on the intersection of aerosol science and the COVID-19 pandemic

18 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine you're an atmospheric chemist. There's a pandemic. And public health officials release information about how the virus spreads from one person...

Jessica Ray and William Tarpeh on clean water, turning trash into treasure, and life as assistant professors

21 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How do we build water systems that are sustainable and also equitable? On this episode of Stereo Chemistry, Jessica Ray and William Tarpeh talk with C...

David Liu and Stuart Schreiber on the science that motivates, fascinates, and tells us who we are

23 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What motivates a creative scientific mind? How does an accomplished scientist pinpoint new subjects to explore? How is the field of chemical biology e...

Preview: New season coming on Nov. 23

26 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Stereo Chemistry's new season will launch on Nov. 23, featuring eight chemistry greats in conversation with . . . each other. In each episode, two sen...

BONUS: Molecule-building tool wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry

06 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Benjamin List and David W. C. MacMillan for their development of asymmetric organocatalysis, which has prove...

BONUS: Astronaut Leland Melvin's journey from chemistry to the cosmos

21 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This month, Stereo Chemistry is sharing an episode of Third Pod from the Sun, a podcast from the American Geophysical Union, featuring an interview wi...

BONUS: How body farms can help solve cases

24 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This month, Stereo Chemistry is sharing an episode of Orbitals that features an interview with forensic chemist Shari Forbes, an expert in human decom...

BONUS: Rare earths' magic comes at a cost (Part 2)

27 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

(Part 2/2) This month, Stereo Chemistry is sharing a pair of episodes from Distillations, a podcast from the Science History Institute. We rely on ra...

BONUS: Rare earths' magic comes at a cost (Part 1)

27 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

(Part 1/2) This month, Stereo Chemistry is sharing a pair of episodes from Distillations, a podcast from the Science History Institute. We rely on ra...

BONUS: Celebrating LGBTQ+ excellence with My Fave Queer Chemist

29 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This month, we're sharing an episode of the podcast My Fave Queer Chemist. Hosted by graduate students Bec Roldan and Geraldo Duran-Camacho, the show ...

Ep. 41: Searching for Mars's missing water

25 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

More than 50 years of missions to Mars paint a clear picture of a cold, dry, desert planet. And at the same time, photographs, minerals, and other dat...

Ep. 40: Reducing toxic metals in food

20 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Toxic elements like lead, arsenic, mercury, and cadmium in food are not a new problem. But when they show up in pureed vegetables and other foods inte...

Ep. 39: How research on aging could keep us healthier longer

23 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Living longer has been a human obsession for centuries, but while medical science has helped extend average life span, not all those extra years can b...

Ep. 38: Nobel laureates Frances Arnold and Jennifer Doudna on prizes, pandemics, and Jimmy Page

16 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Where do you take your career after you've won all of science's biggest prizes? In this episode of Stereo Chemistry, C&EN executive editor Lisa Jarvis...

Ep. 37: Historians pursue centuries-old chemical secrets—Green reading glass, Bologna stones, and Greek fire

19 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers want to invent the technologies of the future, but there are plenty of chemical questions lurking in the past. In this episode of Stereo C...

Ep. 36: How will Biden's election impact chemistry?

15 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As we prepare for a new US president, many chemists are wondering how the administration change may affect them and their work. Will President-Elect J...

Ep. 35: Grad students, lab injuries, and workers' compensation—it's complicated

17 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Many grad students may be surprised to learn their university's policies for reimbursing medical fees for lab injuries do not cover grad students, or ...

Ep. 34: Chemists confront the helium shortage

21 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Helium shortage 3.0 is winding down. But 2021 is likely to bring more changes to the global market for this critical, non-renewable gas. And even if t...

Ep. 33: On being #BlackInChem

23 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In August 2020, Black chemists and allies took to Twitter to celebrate the inaugural #BlackInChem week. The social media campaign highlighted the dive...

Ep. 32: Should organic chemistry's name reactions go the way of mouth pipetting?

19 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists have been naming ideas, theorems, discoveries, and so on after other scientists for a very long time (Newton's laws of motion, anyone?). Ch...

Ep. 31: A world without Rosalind Franklin

22 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rosalind Franklin and her lab assistant famously imaged the structure of DNA using X-ray crystallography, an achievement that directly facilitated Jam...

Bonus episode: Talking TSCA—is the chemical law living up to expectations?

17 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This month marks 4 years since the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, was revised to boost confidence in chemical safety in the US by strengthenin...

Ep. 30: The chemical culprit in 2019's mysterious vaping illnesses—what we still don't know

27 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Months before the novel coronavirus took hold of the globe in late 2019, clusters of patients began appearing in emergency rooms throughout the US wit...

Ep. 29: This virus is here now, it's going to stay with us

01 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As COVID-19 continues to spread, so does the effort to treat and vaccinate against the novel coronavirus that causes the disease. Around the world, sc...

Bonus episode: That just isn't how you land on the moon without crashing

10 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Fifty years ago this week, an explosion on the Apollo 13 moon mission stranded three astronauts hundreds of thousands of miles from home. You probably...

Ep. 28: So that's why we threw a robot into the back of a truck

18 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Chemistry is going the way of computing: It's getting smaller and faster. High-throughput experimentation, or HTE, is part of this push. Borrowing fro...

Bonus episode: We're watching it very closely

10 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As the novel coronavirus responsible for causing COVID-19 continues to spread, questions about the virus, the disease, and its impacts on our daily li...

Bonus episode: We saw a lot of that scientific sage savior syndrome

20 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Stereo Chemistry talked with six chemists who spent a year in Washington on a policy fellowship to find out what they learned and what advice they wou...

Ep. 27: The earth is going to be fine; what we're saving is ourselves

10 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Climate change is on the public's mind, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and protests and rallies involving y...

Bonus episode: It's this big, giant brouhaha of pharmaceutical companies

03 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

M&A, the FDA, and an empty elevator. In this bonus episode, C&EN reporters Ryan Cross and Megha Satyanarayana share their takeaways from their time at...

Ep. 26: Evolution is kind of the be all end all in the problem of influenza

31 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Although the Wuhan coronavirus is currently dominating headlines across the globe, influenza kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year...

Bonus episode: All this is happening at Northvolt speed

22 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Late last year, C&EN contributing editor Mark Peplow toured a new battery company's R&D facility in Sweden. That company, called Northvolt, aims to pr...

Ep. 25: It was like, bam, half the ozone layer over Antarctica is gone

20 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The discovery of the ozone hole in the mid-1980s sent shock waves through the scientific community and society at large. As scientists scrambled to ma...

Ep. 24: Kids are happy to get to ask whatever they want

26 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

For its latest episode, Stereo Chemistry handed its recorders over to kid journalists interviewing grown-up chemists about cutting-edge research. List...

Ep. 23: That's a hell of a lot of explosive material

18 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Rocket propellant research had its heyday in the mid-20th century, when the space race and the Cold War meant chemists had plenty of money and long le...

Ep. 22: I didn't know they were going to be worth billions—A conversation with John Goodenough

29 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Without fail, the name John Goodenough crops up during Nobel Prize season. Many scientists believe he's deserving of chemistry's top honor. The Univer...

Ep. 21: Culture always starts at the top, but it also starts from the bottom

09 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In our last episode of Stereo Chemistry, we talked to chemists who had survived accidents at the bench to learn what went wrong and what lessons we co...

Ep. 20: What happens when you take risks?

24 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Research science is full of hazards. Chemists and safety professionals do their best to minimize the danger, but accidents do happen and the stakes ca...

Ep. 19: This is a mess. But there might also be gasoline in here.

22 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the aftermath of a building fire, investigators study the scene for clues to the fire's cause. They look for burn patterns and suspicious materials...

Ep. 18: Our job is to make sure we have the data

22 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Robots in the ocean are giving scientists more details about processes above and below the surface that affect our weather, our food supply, and more....

Ep. 17: If you want to change the element, you have to change the nucleus

21 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In honor of the International Year of the Periodic Table, Stereo Chemistry explores the stories behind some of the elements in this episode. C&EN and ...

Ep. 16: It's all of these things that none of us get trained for

17 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Being a chemistry professor is Jen Heemstra's dream job. How she got there was a bit of a nightmare. But now she's running her own team at Emory Unive...

Ep. 15: Being scientists together in a relationship is the very best thing in the world

10 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

They say love is a many-splendored thing, and we have to agree. In the latest episode of Stereo Chemistry, love unites rotovap romance, intimate feeli...

Ep. 14: On the face of it, RNA is a terrible drug target

03 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

RNA should be a terrible drug target. It's long, noodle-like structure lacks the nooks and crannies that small molecule drugs use to grab onto protein...

Ep. 13: Kind of a schlepping sound

15 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Closing out the inaugural year of Stereo Chemistry, host Kerri Jansen and C&EN reporter Tien Nguyen share a collection of stories about ways of distil...

Ep. 12: Do you want to be the guy who rips out a page from a 1550s' New Testament?

21 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The smell of old books. The crinkle of the yellowing pages. While admiring the wonders of libraries, have you ever wondered how paper ages and why som...

Ep. 11: This is kind of not rational

28 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Even scientists can have superstitions: a lucky shirt, a supernatural paper towel, an elaborate ritual to keep the NMR running smoothly. In this episo...

Ep. 10: This book reinforced my belief that ketchup is a suspect condiment

21 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Deborah Blum's new book, "The Poison Squad," comes out Sept. 25. The author and award-winning science writer sat down with us to discuss the crusading...

Ep. 9: I'm ready for the world

09 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Graduate students handle myriad challenges, including a labmate's annoying habit and loneliness when transplanted into a foreign country. C&EN reporte...

Ep. 8: High-octane chemistry news trivia competition (Live)

03 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Three of chemistry's rising stars joined us on stage at the ACS national meeting in Boston for a light-hearted look at some of this summer's most buzz...

Ep. 7: The good ones don't dare to touch

26 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The European X-ray Free Electron Laser recently came online as the biggest and brightest source of X-rays on planet Earth. This will allow chemists to...

Ep. 6: Everything will be druggable

17 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Although genome sequencing has helped scientists reveal proteins wreaking havoc in our bodies, that doesn't guarantee scientists can invent the drugs ...