Mar 4, 2026 · 24 min · 10 segments
In this episode of C&EN Uncovered, host Craig Bettenhausen speaks with C&EN Editor, Chris Gorski, as well as graphic artist and freelance illustrator, Ryan Inzana, about their collaborative efforts to…
Chris GorskiGuest
Ryan InzanaGuest
Craig BettenhausenHost
But in terms of things that got cut out, what I was trying to get to here is, before I so rudely interrupted myself...
As we got closer to the modern day, it's like there's just this spectrum of things that I know are going on.
Because I know five, ten times a week, there's something new happening in chemistry, and we're covering it.
So to try to slim that down to five images across the last 60 years was really mind-blowing and a really big thing to wrap my brain around.
What I think of is the World War I section, which was Germany, this kind of trade-off between Germany and Britain with industrial espionage, and Britain in World War I going, hey, this Haber-Bosch process, this is a big deal because you can make fertilizer and explosives, and we don't have a way to do this.
So that had to be in the story because not only is it dramatic, it's an important thing about funding because the UK parliament put funds toward this to build a factory and then handed it over to private business.
That was a fascinating mindset shift because, you know, I watch spy movies and war movies.
And to think of the technology that they're stealing as things that are for us now every day, you know, ammonia and steel and steam engines and pressure vessels.
It's not what I usually think of as what the German and British spies are stealing from each other.
This was just such a seed moment because they build this factory in Billingham in Northeastern England.
This factory then becomes an industrial center of its own and builds out from there.
The town's professional football team, their soccer team, is called Billingham Synthonia FC after synthetic ammonia.
So at one point, I said, hey, Ryan, can you get this team crest on this image somewhere? And we ended up going another way.
But I wanted to see, could we get the sinners in the shot somehow? This same factory becomes featured as a sort of like thematic influence or on Brave New World, the novel.
Another thing that struck me about that section was in that illustration of Billingham, you had two versions that you did, Ryan, and there's this slide, this shift in color that triggered me like we're moving into the modern day.
I was curious if you could talk about how you approached the color palettes that you used, which were harmonized across but also shifting as we went along.
But in terms of things that got cut out, what I was trying to get to here is, before I so rudely interrupted myself...
As we got closer to the modern day, it's like there's just this spectrum of things that I know are going on.
Because I know five, ten times a week, there's something new happening in chemistry, and we're covering it.
So to try to slim that down to five images across the last 60 years was really mind-blowing and a really big thing to wrap my brain around.
What I think of is the World War I section, which was Germany, this kind of trade-off between Germany and Britain with industrial espionage, and Britain in World War I going, hey, this Haber-Bosch process, this is a big deal because you can make fertilizer and explosives, and we don't have a way to do this.
So that had to be in the story because not only is it dramatic, it's an important thing about funding because the UK parliament put funds toward this to build a factory and then handed it over to private business.
That was a fascinating mindset shift because, you know, I watch spy movies and war movies.
And to think of the technology that they're stealing as things that are for us now every day, you know, ammonia and steel and steam engines and pressure vessels.
It's not what I usually think of as what the German and British spies are stealing from each other.
This was just such a seed moment because they build this factory in Billingham in Northeastern England.
This factory then becomes an industrial center of its own and builds out from there.
The town's professional football team, their soccer team, is called Billingham Synthonia FC after synthetic ammonia.
So at one point, I said, hey, Ryan, can you get this team crest on this image somewhere? And we ended up going another way.
But I wanted to see, could we get the sinners in the shot somehow? This same factory becomes featured as a sort of like thematic influence or on Brave New World, the novel.
Another thing that struck me about that section was in that illustration of Billingham, you had two versions that you did, Ryan, and there's this slide, this shift in color that triggered me like we're moving into the modern day.
I was curious if you could talk about how you approached the color palettes that you used, which were harmonized across but also shifting as we went along.
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