Turning Solar Energy Into Fuel (The Solar Er...

After bacteria were discovered, it took scientists 200 years to figure out that they cause disease. If scientists had made the link sooner, hundreds of millions of lives could have been saved. In his recent book So Very Small, Tom Levenson, a professor of science writing at MIT, ...  Show more

Evan Ratliff co-founded a publishing startup in 2011. Now he hosts a podcast called Shell Game. In the latest season of the show, Evan creates a company run by AI agents. The project is absurdly funny – Evan calls it an office satire – but it also illuminates the power and limits ...  Show more

Solar electricity generation is on the rise. In fact, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reported in late 2023 that more new solar generating capacity was installed in the U.S. during the first eight months of 2023 than any other renewable or fossil fuel-based energy sou ...

Hydrogen has been called the Swiss Army knife of energy, because it has so many potential applications, from home heating to heavy industry. But so far, deployment around the world has been slow. And in recent months there has been a series of setbacks for plans to use clean h ...

Complex, outdated, expensive: concentrating solar power used to be a clunky way of harnessing the sun. What’s changed to now make it viable? 

Concentrating Solar Power, or CSP, takes energy from the sun, converts it to heat, and uses it to drive a t ...

First up in our energy series: solar! How do we harness the energy from the sun to produce electricity? Why should we? What are the environmental impacts?   Resources for this episode: National Renewable Energy Laboratory How Does Solar Work (energy.gov) End of Life Solar Panels: ...  Show more