Is the meaning of life really just a struggle to get and use five chemical elements?

When organisms evolve a new way of getting these elements. They have the capacity to change the world.

It's Thursday, November 9th, but you know it's really Science Friday. I'm Cyfra producer Charles Burgquist. In his book

elemental, how five elements changed Earth's past and will shape our future.

Author Stephen Porter writes about how carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and phosphorus,

what he calls life's formula, tell the story of our planet.

Porter is also Associate Provost for Sustainability

and Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology

at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

He joined IRA to tell the tale. at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

He joined IRA to tell the tale.

Stephen, welcome to Science Friday.

Oh, it's so great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

You know, I get the impression from reading your book

that you felt a real need to write this book. Is that right?

I really did and the reason that I did was that we are in the middle of really existential environmental anxiety and sometimes it feels like what we're doing is so bizarre and abnormal and impossible to solve that it engenders despair.

And I think actually that what we can learn from the commonalities we have with other organisms

that have changed the world can help us think clearly and shape a more sustainable future.

And so I thought looking back at the past and thinking about how that would allow us to move forward

in a productive way would be a message that we might need right now.

Okay, let's look back at the past then. Life doesn't all use these elements in the same way, right? What's useful to one might be detrimental to another?

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