This week, we discuss team discuss the boundaries of the atom and breakdown the US's plan to eliminate synthetic food dyes with Jennifer Newton and Phillip Broadwith.

The atomic radius of an atom is a concept we are taught from early in our chemistry careers, but for such an important value its definition remains ambiguous. Why is there no single answer to the size of an atom?

And, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr announced last year that the US will phase out all petroleum-based synthetic dyes in foods. But what are these chemicals, and what concerns exist around their consumption?

This week, we discuss reflections from this year's American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting and the latest advances in plasma chemistry with Rebecca Trager and Mason Wakley.

The annual meeting of the AAAS kicked off in Phoenix, on the heels of the recent minibus spending package announcement, as well as the rescinding of the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding. We'll fill you in on some of the conversations that took place that weekend.

And, plasma is often described as the fourth state of matter, but what exactly is it made of? We'll explain it's make-up and dive into how chemists are learning to unlock its power.

This week, we discuss the new deep learning model AlphaGenome and visit the very beginning of life on Earth with Mason Wakley and Neil Withers.

Google DeepMind has released a new deep learning model that can predict the effect of small changes to DNA sequences up to one million base pairs in length. What does this new tech mean for our understanding of the human genome?

And, how did life start on Earth, before the first cell came to be? We discuss the RNA world hypothesis and breakdown the chemistry it's built on.