Science & discovery
What's happening in science this week. From fresh discoveries to how the world actually works.
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In 1984 Barry Marshall couldn't convince anyone that ulcers were caused by bacteria, not stress, so he swallowed a beaker of Helicobacter pylori and gave himself gastritis. This episode follows the messy, ridiculed decade between his hunch and the Nobel Prize that proved the establishment wrong.
In 1964, two engineers kept hearing a faint hiss in their antenna and blamed pigeon droppings before scrubbing every bolt. The noise was actually the afterglow of the universe's birth, and it won them a Nobel Prize. This is the story of how the biggest discovery in cosmology arrived disguised as an annoying glitch.
In 1925, a graduate student named Cecilia Payne figured out what stars are actually made of — and was pressured to call her own correct conclusion 'spurious.' This is the story of one thesis that quietly rewrote our understanding of the cosmos, and how long it took for her to get credit.
For centuries, the Architeuthis was dismissed as a sailor's myth until a single photograph changed marine biology forever.
How a failed attempt to measure 'aether' accidentally paved the way for Einstein and modern physics.
Explore how the double-slit experiment shatters our sense of a solid world and reveals the observer's role.
Why a material that conducts electricity without resistance at room temperature would trigger a second industrial revolution.
Discover how a simple cooling cup of coffee reveals the universe's strict one-way rule for the arrow of time.
Podcast episodes about how the world actually works, researched and written fresh for every topic. The stream runs from live physics — muons wobbling faster than theory allows, the hunt for superheavy elements on the island of stability — to the science hiding in plain sight: why almost nothing in nature is truly blue, how Roman concrete heals itself, why helium is the only element Earth loses forever. If a question isn't in the catalog yet, type it into Fylom and it becomes your next episode.
Fylom episodes are researched, written, and voiced by AI. Automated checks help catch inaccuracies, but episodes aren't reviewed by a human and AI can still get things wrong. Treat them as a starting point, not a source of record — more in our accuracy disclaimer.