You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey everybody, Maddie Sifai here.

Today we are chatting with Anisa Ramirez, a materials scientist.

Or as she describes it.

I'm an Adam Whisperer and that's what I do.

I learn how Adams interact and then I try and get them to do new things.

To say form steel, glass or copper.

The tools that we've used throughout history to create the inventions all around us.

But Anisa takes it a step further.

She argues that those inventions have shaped us in return.

When we talk about invention, we usually say, I invent this and then we put a period

at the end of that sentence.

And what I'm saying is replace that period with a comma and say, and this invention

changed me this way.

She writes about this in her new book, The Alchemy of Us, How Humans and Matter Transformed

One Another.

And trying to impress upon people that there's a dance, we create something.

But then it changes us somehow.

Sometimes in ways that we predict and sometimes in ways that we don't predict.

Today on the show, we focus on an invention that's transformed how we live, work and even

sleep.

And, while learning about the process of invention, as well as the personalities and the

...