The Hidden Life of Things

In this episode of The Hidden Life of Things, I pull back the curtain on the incredible history behind adhesives. I will unpack the wild, prehistoric adaptations used by Neanderthals to transform birch bark into synthetic tar long before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe, exploring how the unique physics of hafting a blade onto a handle transformed early hunting and set the baseline for human intelligence.

In this episode of The Hidden Life of Things, I pull back the curtain on the incredible, high-stakes science and history behind our fight against bacterial infection. I will unpack the wild, ancient adaptations used by Egyptian physicians and medieval healers to treat deadly wounds with mouldy bread and copper salts, exploring how the hidden chemistry of crushed garlic and the osmotic physics of honey kept humanity alive long before anyone ever knew bacteria existed.

In this episode of The Hidden Life of Things, I pull back the curtain on the incredible, high-stakes psychology behind the miniaturisation of time. I will unpack the wild, historical adaptations used by World War I officers to transform delicate pocket watches into survival instruments, exploring how the unique material science of synchronized artillery bombardments made reaching into a waistcoat pocket a fatal mistake, creating a demand for wrist-worn precision that simply could not be ignored.

In this episode of The Hidden Life of Things, I pull back the curtain on the incredible, high-stakes psychology behind the architecture of touch. I will unpack the wild, historical classroom tactics used by 18th-century sighted educators to force visual alphabets onto fingertips, exploring how the unique material science of embossed standard print letters allowed a page to be seen perfectly by an eye while remaining completely unreadable to a tracing finger, creating a barrier to literacy that simply could not be played.