Dive into the atomic frontier of medicine with “Tiny Alpha Missiles: The Radiopharmaceutical Revolution and the Race to Decentralize Cancer Treatment.” From secretive Oak Ridge labs and Saul Hertz’s pioneering radioactive iodine therapy to today’s molecular “smart bombs” that fuse targeting antibodies with alpha and beta emitters like Ac‑225 and Lu‑177, this episode traces how nuclear physics met biology to transform oncology. Discover how cleavable linkers, enzyme clean‑ups, and PET-imaging companions are boosting precision and safety, why half-lives and supply chains are the new bottlenecks, and how cyclotrons, thorium-derived isotopes, and even fusion concepts aim to democratize access. It’s a fast-paced tour of history, science, and the high-stakes buildout poised to bring ultra-targeted cancer care from a few elite centers to patients everywhere.

Dive into the chemistry revolution reshaping our world. In this episode of Deep Dive (Science Edition), we unpack the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the rise of metal–organic frameworks—molecular “Legos” that self-assemble into vast, porous architectures. From Richard Robson’s crystalline breakthroughs to Susumu Kitagawa’s gas-breathing “soft porous crystals,” and Omar M. Yaghi’s MOF-5 and reticular synthesis, discover how designers now tailor matter with atomic precision. Explore how these customizable frameworks are cleaning PFAS from water, capturing carbon at scale, storing hydrogen, harvesting drinking water from desert air, and powering advances in medicine and catalysis. It’s a story of turning a “synthetic wasteland” into a playground of limitless design—where cavities the size of football fields fit inside a handful of powder, and chemistry builds the future one nanoscale room at a time.

Quantum Frontiers celebrates the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis for proving that quantum mechanics governs not just the microscopic but also macroscopic systems. Working with superconducting Josephson junctions in the 1980s at UC Berkeley, they demonstrated macroscopic quantum tunnelling—where a circuit’s collective phase “escapes” a metastable state—and showed that this macroscopic variable has discrete, quantized energy levels. By rigorously suppressing noise, independently measuring circuit parameters, and using resonant activation and microwave spectroscopy, they matched MQT theory and observed faster tunnelling from excited states, confirming energy quantization. This breakthrough established superconducting circuits as “macroscopic nuclei,” igniting the field of quantum engineering and paving the way for phase qubits, Transmons, circuit QED, and broader advances in quantum computing and quantum optics, culminating in technologies that test the very foundations of quantum theory.

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine honors Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi for revealing the body’s “braking system” for immunity—regulatory T cells (Tregs) controlled by the FOXP3 gene. Sakaguchi first identified Tregs in 1995 as a special subset of immune cells that prevent our defenses from mistakenly attacking healthy tissues, explaining why removing them triggers autoimmune diseases in animals. In 2001, Brunkow and Ramsdell discovered FOXP3 as the master switch that makes these cells work, linking mutations in this gene to a lethal immune disorder in mice and its human counterpart, IPEX syndrome. Together, their discoveries showed how the immune system actively maintains self-control and opened new medical strategies: boosting Tregs to treat autoimmune diseases or prevent transplant rejection, and dialing them down in tumors so the immune system can better attack cancer.