Hey there, I'm Vietlay, Editor of Shirt Wave. If you've been listening over the past couple of

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Again, that's donate.mpr.org slash short. Okay, here's the show.

You're listening to Shirt Wave from NPR. Maddie Sify here, it's the 150th anniversary of the

periodic table of elements and we have been celebrating by highlighting some of our favorite elements.

We did helium. We did aluminum. We did erudium. And NPR science correspondent Joe Palca is going to

bring it home today with one of the rarest elements. That's right, Maddie, I've got for you

Tennessee. It's one of the last elements to be discovered and only a couple dozen add-ups of

this stuff have ever existed. Okay, so Tennessee and T.S. on the periodic table, the atomic number 117,

it's super rare. What else do we know about it? Truth is, not much. There's very rare. They only

had a few to discover and they didn't last very long, but they do know it lies on the outer edges

of the periodic table and it's one of a group of unstable synthetic elements that poof go away

in a quick blink of an eye. And there's one other thing you should know to understanding how this

element came to be. Okay, what? Tennessee is a synthetic element. Basically, unlike a lot of

elements, you can't find it in nature. You have to make it. And to make it, you need to fuse

together two existing elements. So it's like two elements get together and make a new baby element.

Well, if you're talking about a mommy element and a daddy element and they love each other very

much, I'd say no. It's more like they two get together and form a partnership or fusion.

In this case, it's Berkeley and Minkalcium, but Maddie getting them into the same room together

...