Who are we to fight the alchemy?

Unexplainable

Vox

Science, Natural Sciences, Life Sciences

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2026

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many alchemical texts are full of bizarre, metaphorical language. But what if there's interesting science hiding behind some of those metaphors? Guest: Lawrence Principe, professor of the history of science and professor of chemistry at Johns Hopkins University For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And please email us! ⁠⁠⁠unexplainable@vox.com⁠⁠⁠ We read every email. Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for the show comes from BMC.
0:04.0	Before you trust AI to make your business decisions,
0:07.0	before you can reliably scale automation across every workflow,
0:10.0	before all your data pipelines are connected with intelligence,
0:13.0	your business faces some complex challenges ahead.
0:16.0	Namely, tackling things like orchestration as a competitive advantage,
0:20.0	unifying your modern and legacy systems, or transforming your mainframe.
0:24.6	Before you take them on, make sure you do one thing.
0:28.6	BMC first.
0:29.6	BMC is the automation engine for the AI era.
0:32.6	Over the years, they've helped customers worldwide run and modernize their businesses by automating,
0:37.8	managing, and optimizing complex IT environments. They've partnered with 80% of the Forbes Global 100.
0:44.3	Before automation, before scale, before transformation, before you begin, BMC first.
0:51.7	What can you do when you partner with BMC? Get started today. Learn more at BMC.com.
1:01.0	If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside rows and columns.
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1:25.6	We can't use the actual words they said in this ad, so let's
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1:34.7	faster at MongoDB.com slash build. Lawrence Prince Bay has been interested in alchemy for a while now.
	...

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