Man, I worked in the field of free radical biology for a while, and everyone asked me what it was about all the time. On top of that, I hear tiny sound-bytes about free radicals whenever someone's trying to sell something with anti-oxidants in it. They're supposed to stop summarizing by saying "it prevents cancer" because that, of course, isn't strictly true, but they really do a bad job of dumbing it down without resorting to those words.
But, lo and behold, my hero Alton Brown has just given the shortest, most succint, and most beautiful explanation of free radicals ever, and it involved whipped cream and strawberries to boot.
