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You might have heard that we are made of ‘star stuff’, but what exactly does that mean? In this collaboration between The Atlantic and the podcast TRBQ (The Really Big Questions), the NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller explains how every atom in the human body – and, indeed, every object in the Universe that is composed of anything more complex than hydrogen and helium atoms – can be traced back to the life cycle of a star.
Producer: Flora Lichtman, Katherine Wells
Websites: Soundvision Productions, TRBQ
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Ageing and death
Death is a trip – how new research links near-death and DMT experiences
9 minutes
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The environment
Photographs of rainforests dissolving in acid strike a beautiful note of warning
10 minutes
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Technology and the self
Adaptive technologies have helped Stephen Hawking, and many more, find their voice
5 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
Experience the dazzling displays that fireflies create when humans are far away
5 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
To renew Yosemite, California should embrace a once-outlawed Indigenous practice
6 minutes
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Music
Before the Beatles dropped acid, a BBC workshop was creating far-out sounds
6 minutes
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Biology
In the jungle of Suriname, Maria Sibylla Merian discovered insect metamorphosis
4 minutes
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Neuroscience
The brain repurposed our sense of physical distance to understand social closeness
5 minutes
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Physics
Spectacular fractal patterns emerge when electricity meets a wooden surface
4 minutes