There are something like a billion and a half cars on Earth. They're driving every day. They're all burning fuel.

Daniel wants to know how we don't just run out.

The answer goes back further than he expected. A lot further.

This is a longer episode — four chapters, roughly eight to ten minutes — covering where fossil fuels actually come from, how much we have, how oil shaped the modern world, and what's happening right now to make sure the future isn't a sudden cliff edge.

CHAPTER ONE: WHERE DOES OIL COME FROM?

Not dinosaurs. That's the first thing most people get wrong. Oil formed from tiny marine organisms — plankton, algae, microscopic bacteria — that lived hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs existed. When they died, they sank to the ocean floor, got buried under layers of mud and rock, and over million ...