The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong · Mark Chrisler

The Last Alchemist, Part One

March 24, 2026·1 hr 4 min·5 clips

In 1782, a young, rich chemist named James Price publicly demonstrated turning mercury into silver and gold.

James Price arrives pre-funded. The episode opens with the neat little absurdity of a man born James Higginbotham, given money by a relative, and told he has to become James Price to get it. Oxford comes quickly after that. By 25, Price has a master's degree, a doctorate, a Royal Society membership, and enough standing that the story stops feeling like pure inheritance comedy. Then the episode pulls back. The host moves from Price's education into alchemy itself, treating it less like a joke and more like a messy mix of technique, philosophy, and ambition. Zosimos is where it turns. Earlier surviving texts, including Pseudodemocritus aka Bolos, come off like recipe books: do this, get that, thanks for playing. Zosimos wants a system. For him, turning lead into gold is not only a practical attempt to make gold. It is also a way to test ideas about nature and existence. Then comes Gnosticism. Zosimos is presented as almost certainly a Gnostic Christian, someone who saw the material world as corrupt and spiritual truth as trapped inside it. That changes the chemistry. Separating body from spirit starts to rhyme, weirdly, with making a base body ready for a noble spirit, silver or gold. Suddenly the whole thing feels less like a money trick and more like a metaphysical machine with burners attached. The host keeps the caveats in view. Not every Gnostic idea fits Zosimos, and the surviving story leaves room for doubt. Still, the pattern holds. Alchemy here is belief and technique knocking elbows in a very crowded room. Price comes back through colored powders. The closing beat points to another origin story for alchemy, with one white powder, one red powder, mercury, silver, and gold. That is the hook. Those powders sound a little too close to what James Price starts doing in 1782, which is exactly where the next part waits. Even the signoff gets a final jab. In 1925, University of Chicago chemists made mercury weigh the same as gold by bombarding it with electrons, and somehow it was still only mercury.

As heard by us

A funny, engaging look at alchemy, wealth, and the urge to turn matter into gold.

The episode follows James Price from born James Higginbotham to a young chemist with a rare streak of privilege: Oxford, a master's degree, a doctorate, and Royal Society membership by 25.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a rich young chemist, a stranger-than-it-looks origin story, and a narrator who keeps checking the myth.

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