Bedrock: Earth's Earliest History

Thank you all for your patience these few months as I've started a new professor position in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Moving and preparing my first classes took all of my time and mental energy, but n…

Miniseries Episode 2:

Australia is one of the top destinations for people who love the ancient Earth. Today, we take a brief tour around the three oldest regions in Australia: the Yilgarn Craton near…

Miniseries Episode 1:

The frozen continent holds many secrets, including some of the most ancient stones in the world, the Napier Complex 3.8 billion years old. Today we'll learn what things lurk in …

Our story will take a brief pause while I'm on summer vacation and fieldwork, including rocks more than three billion years old in Western Australia.

But don't worry! In the meantime, there will be a …

My guest today is Dr. Joti Rouillard, a research fellow at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, China. Dr. Rouillard talks about his research on the earliest fossils on Earth, microscop…

When did life arise on planet Earth?

Today, we look at the search for biological remains in the oldest minerals on Earth, the Jack Hills zircons of Western Australia, 4.4-4.0 billion years ago. We lea…

How do we know when the first oceans existed?

Water leaves its' fingerprints over every surface of Earth, even in the oldest, toughest crystals. Today, we'll take an imaginary ride through the earlies…

How did water arrive on planet Earth?

Today, we learn just how much water Earth has, and where it came from in the first place. We'll take a joyride around the early solar system, climb a snow-capped …

When did Earth's crust form?

It's easy to take the ground beneath our feet for granted, but the story of our crust's origins is one of the most hotly debated topics in Earth history. Today, we'll lea…

How is new crust made, and why isn't the Earth constantly expanding like a party balloon? To answer these questions, we'll track the life, death, and rebirth of Earth's surface. Stops along the way i…

The idea of plate tectonics is the cornerstone of modern geology.

But it wasn't always that way, and it wasn't an easy idea to sell. Today, we'll meet two scientists who faced ridicule for proposing c…

What is the oldest thing on our planet? How old is it, and where was it found?

Today, we tell the story of a worldwide, decades-long hunt for a single grain of sand. We'll journey to underground magma…

The Earth of 4.5 billion years ago was perhaps the most alien version of our world, thanks to a collision with a rogue planet. Days and nights were six times shorter, the newborn Moon was as close as…

My guest today is Dr. Nadja Drabon, a new professor at Harvard University. Dr. Drabon talks about her new discoveries of zircon crystals from South Africa that are more than 4 billion years old, some…

My guest today is Dr. Ella Holme, a postdoc at Yale University. Dr. Holme talks about her research on the mineral olivine as a potential antidote for climate change. Olivine can remove carbon dioxide…

If you've ever wondered where the Moon came from, this the episode for you! To answer that question, we'll collect Moon rocks with Neil Armstrong, spin merry-go-rounds with Charles Darwin's son, and …

Earth's first oceans were hundreds of times deeper than the Pacific and made of molten rock. Where did they come from, where did they go? What stuff was in them, how do we know? Today, let's dive in …

Today, we'll learn how deep humans have traveled into the planet, and how we know what's even deeper down. We'll meet mineral oozes, coils of liquid iron, and a Danish woman from the 1930s who discov…

How did Earth grow from ant-size to, well… Earth-size? What perils did it face along the way? And how is the Earth's interior like a fine vinaigrette? Find out as we move forward in time from 4.6 to …

Season 1 Premiere

We finally start the tale of Earth’s history from the beginning, in the cold depths of outer space. The Sun is born and the first asteroids assemble. When these asteroids crash into…