Antibiotics like penicillin have a critical role in medicine, but using them is not a decision to be taken lightly.

Before the discovery of penicillin and other antibiotics, a cut on your knee or an ear infection could kill you. In 1928, a physician named Alexander Fleming found that a mold in one of his petri dishes was killing the bacteria he was trying to grow. This strain of mold formed the basis for one of the most significant medical discoveries in history: penicillin. Antibiotics soon became lifesavers, and so precious that unused penicillin was reclaimed from patients’ urine to give to others. However, even back then, Fleming knew that bacteria could become resistant to penicillin. In this episode, Ed Yong explains how serious the situation can become: “Bacteria have always been evolving ways of resisting the things that try to kill them. And now the overuse of antibiotics is exacerbating that problem.” Ed looks at shocking new footage of mutating bacteria thriving in antibiotics a thousand times stronger than can kill their non-superbug ancestors.

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