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April 18, 2024 65 mins

You know those amazing science document-aries you love so much? National Geo-graphic, Discover, Science, and History Channels? Yeah, you need to thank Dan Levitt—responsible for producing such shows as Unsolved History (2002), Great Transitions: The Origin of Birds (2015) and Naked Science (2004). That one sounds right up our street. Well, now Dan has decided to give us a new kind of scientific candy crunch: WHATS GOT INTO YOU, a book about, well, YOU. A 150-pound human body contains 60 elements, including “enough carbon to make 25 pounds of charcoal, enough salt to fill a saltshaker, enough chlorine to disinfect several backyard swimming pools, and enough iron to make a three-inch nail.” On the open market, our body chemicals would bring about $2,000. And.. here’s the kicker… the stuff that makes up you and me has been evolving since the Bing Bang. You are made of actual bang dust. “Carl Sagan once famously said we are made of star stuff,” Levitt writes in his introduction. “This is the improbable story of how it happened.” It’s a journey of atoms, astronomy, physics, biology, and chemistry—and you are invited! Join us to chat live with the author on April 11, only on the Peculiar Book Club! (Of COURSE there will be cocktails).


Episode was recorded live April 11, 2024.

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