Never add sodium to your pasta water

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2026

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Put salt (aka sodium chloride) in your pasta water and you’ll end up with delicious spaghetti. Put pure sodium in it instead… and it will explode. It’s the latest edition of “The Element of Surprise,” our occasional series about the hidden stories behind the periodic table’s most unassuming atoms, isotopes, and molecules. This time we’re talking all about sodium. It’s the periodic table’s saltiest element. It powers your body like a battery and you need it to survive. So why is too much of it bad for you? Plus, how did salt help the North win the Civil War? Featuring Raychelle Burks, Trisha Pasricha, Ashley Dumas. Produced by Felix Poon. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Watch a 1947 newsreel of the US Army disposing thousands of pounds of pure sodium into a lake in Washington State, causing massive explosions. See images of the Slanic Salt Mine in Romania and the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland, now major tourist sites. Check out Theodore Gray’s “Sodium Party” YouTube video series where he drops sodium chunks of various sizes into water to observe how they explode. Here’s the first video in the series.Want to learn more about the role of salt throughout human history? Read Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	From an HBR, this is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide.
0:05.4	I am Nate Hedgy here with producer Felix Poon.
0:08.5	Hello, Nate.
0:09.3	Hello, hello.
0:10.3	I am here with you because I want to talk to you about sodium.
0:14.8	What do you know about sodium?
0:16.5	I know that I probably eat too much of it.
0:19.5	I love soy sauce.
0:20.7	I love salty things. Do you like sodium? Are you a salty guy? Um, sometimes I wonder if I get enough sodium. Really? Like when I get snacks, like pistachios, for example, like any nuts, I always look for the unsalted. Really? I mean, that's good. But, you know, the other controversial thing I do, when I cook pasta, people put salt in the pasta water?
0:41.5	I don't.
0:42.5	Really?
0:43.5	Yeah.
0:44.5	But let's take a step back because we've kind of been conflating salt and sodium.
0:49.5	Obviously, people put salt on all sorts of things.
0:53.1	But do you know what would happen if you put pure sodium into your pasta water instead?
0:58.2	No, what would happen?
0:59.5	Well, I've got a video to give you an idea.
1:02.9	A 3,500 pound container of sodium hurtles into the lake and crashes through a foot of ice.
1:08.2	As the water seeps in, smoke rises through a series of muffled explosion.
1:13.6	Whoa.
1:14.6	Yeah, this is no cooking video.
1:16.6	If you put pure sodium in your pasta water, it would explode.
	...

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