What Connects Bones, Bird Poop, and Toxic Green Slime? Hint: Without It, Half of Us Wouldn't Be Alive Today

It’s the 13th element on the periodic table, it glows in the dark,
and it spontaneously combusts if it gets any hotter than 80 degrees
Fahrenheit; little surprise, then, that phosphorus is known as “the
devil’s element.” But this satanic substance is also essential to
all life on earth, which is why it's a key ingredient in
fertilizer—without which, researchers estimate, we could only grow
enough food for half as many humans as are alive today. The
incredible crop-growing powers of phosphorus have led humans to do
some pretty extreme things to get it—from seizing Pacific islands
to scavenging bones from Europe’s most famous battlefields—but
they’ve also created a devilish paradox. The world is running out
of phosphorus, and yet there’s way too much of it running off farm
fields into rivers, lakes, and oceans, where it fuels toxic algae
blooms. This episode, we've got the story behind the phosphorus
paradox, as we ask: is there any way to fertilize the planet
without sending it to hell? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
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