For centuries the brightest scientists, philosophers and theologians chased a single substance said to turn lead into gold, cure every disease, fuel everlasting lamps, revive dead plants and even grow a homunculus in a jar. This episode decodes the Philosopher's Stone from its first written mention by Zosimos of Panopolis around 300 AD, through Elias Ashmole's 17th-century claim that Adam received the secret from God, to Plato's idea of prima materia as the formless matter every substance shares.

The hosts follow Jabir ibn Hayyan's grid of hot, cold, dry and moist qualities and his red sulfur elixir, Avicenna's argument that alchemists were only changing appearances, and parallel traditions in Buddhism and Hinduism, including a gem said to produce roughly 1,700 pounds of gold a day. They then walk through the four color phases of the magnum ...