With fertilizers that supply phosphorus–what Asimov called “life’s bottleneck”– people broke the circle of life. Dan Egan’s new book The Devil’s Element traces the history of this essential element from curiosity to crop miracle. Egan documents the mayhem unleashed by a flood of phosphorus, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and discusses how people can act to stop phosphorus-fueled blooms of algae that are closing beaches, killing animals and sickening people.
#386 Humans Vs Robots
#385 Sociolinguistics
#384 Grunt
#383 The Atomic Era (Rebroadcast)
#382 Risk of Going Nowhere
#381 The Triumph of Seeds
#380 Yer A Wizard Harry
#379 A Special Hell (Rebroadcast)
#378 Paris Climate Agreement
#377 Hearing From The Humanities
#376 Technology, Work and The Future
#375 Severed (Rebroadcast)
#374 The Ninth Planet
#373 The Confidence Game
#372 The Planet Remade
#371 Meningitis
#370 Me, Myself, and Why (Rebroadcast)
#369 Fraud and Forgery
#368 Beyond the Galaxy
#367 Neurodiversity
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