Foiled! Napoleon's cutlery and the Aluminati

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You might associate it with the foil that wraps leftover pizza and the shiny craft beer cans sold in breweries, but aluminum is literally everywhere. Scoop up a handful of soil or gravel anywhere on Earth and you’ll find atoms of bonded aluminum hidden inside. But even before it was used in everything from airplanes to deodorant, the trade of aluminum minerals helped color the world, finance the Vatican, and led to the mass collection of human urine. In this installment of “The Element of Surprise” — a series all about the hidden histories behind the periodic table’s most unassuming atoms, isotopes, and molecules — we’re talking about aluminum. This episode was first published in 2024.…