The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean (Sam Kean)

Thomas Schall was first blind member of Congress. There, he envisioned a better, smarter, more efficient world—brought about by his radical new calendar. Too bad the rest of us couldn’t see the future as clearly as he did...

Charles Byrne was an eight-foot Irish giant ️who loved a beer or 3 with the lads. His funeral became a legendary party—as well as one of biggest scandals in science history, when a famous anatomist named John Hunter stole his body for dissection.

He helped launch the British Empire and spawned a public-health epidemic that killed hundreds of millions of people. Blame him for the lost colony of Roanoke, too. Thomas Harriot has a lot to answer for...

Paul Stoutenburgh knew more atomic secrets than anyone on Earth. So was that why he killed himself? And if not, why was the government (seemingly) so uninterested in getting to the bottom of his death?

How a feisty, suicidal Nobel laureate infuriated both Hitler and Stalin, and stalled cancer research for fifty years along the way...

The New York Times one credited biologist Edward Knipling with “the most original idea of the 20th century.” What was it? A way to fight the screwworm, the vilest parasite on earth—and maybe stop malaria, the deadliest disease in human history, too.

Can you really collapse and wake up speaking a totally new language? Not quite. But “foreign accent syndrome” is a real, frightening—and bizarre—neurological disorder...

How a bottle of prison hooch doomed the most promising candidate in history for a male birth-control pill, and why scientists still can't make one today...

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Albert Einstein’s self-proclaimed “biggest blunder”—the cosmological constant in his theory of relativity—turned out to not be blunder at all. In fact, it might hold the key to the future of physics. (Now that’s genius!)

Jack Parsons was a devil-worshiping FBI rat who led a sex cult and was bosom buddies with L. Ron Hubbard. He was also one of the most important rocket scientists in history. (Episode 1 of 2)

In 1971, Stephen Hawking made a hasty, emotional mistake in a paper about black holes—and it turned out to be the smartest thing he ever did. Sometimes in science, big blunders are the best way forward...

It was the most powerful emotional moment of Albert Einstein’s life—the instant he knew he was a genius. But in confirming his theory of relativity, it also opened him up to attacks, sometimes rather vicious, from around the world...

Automobiles kill several million animals every single day. Scientists are still coming to grips with the carnage...

How a weird “scientific” diet fad conquered America in the early 1900s—and easily could have lost World War One for the Allies...

She helped discover arguably the most important drug in history. And she got zero credit. They called her Moldy Mary—but she turned that insult into triumph...

How early anatomists provoked some of the strangest riots in history, over stolen corpses (plus, bonus preview of my new book, The Icepick Surgeon!)

In a building full of dead bodies, how can you tell a murder victim from an unlucky stiff?

After a tenure dispute, mechanical engineer Valery Fabrikant murdered four colleagues in cold blood at his university in Montreal. So why is he still allowed to publish scientific papers?

The life of chimneysweeps was nasty, poor, brutish, filthy dirty, and usually short, thanks to a rare cancer of the genitals...

Rama IV of Siam (from the “King and I” musical) used an eclipse to save his kingdom from greedy colonial powers. But it cost him his own life in the end.

The Johnny Appleseed of Disney fame was complete bunk. He brought not wholesome apples to people, but liquor—and lots of it, all thanks to the bizarre biology of this misunderstood fruit...

Chemist Justus von Liebig was perhaps the most famous scientist in the world in the mid-1800s—but quickly became infamous for his role in the killing of four starving infants.

Naked mole-rats are medical marvels—impervious to cancer and immune to old age. Too bad they’re also vicious murderers...

The prologue and introduction to the book The Icepick Surgeon. Written by Sam Kean, read by Ben Sullivan.

Patient after patient died under the care of a single nurse in Holland. So why did so many statisticians think Lucia de Berk was innocent?

As recent submersible tragedies reveal, it’s harder to reach extreme ocean depths than the Moon. Meet the people who got there first—and barely lived to tell to the tale...

Despite what you’ve heard, neuroscience’s most famous patient did not turn into a lying, drunken psychopath. He’s actually an amazing example of resiliency and overcoming trauma...

Who put the cheese in your stuffed-crust pizza? Or cows on a Caribbean island? And when more than half the world's population can't actually digest milk, is it really essential for a healthy diet? On a trip through time and taste—to dairy-obsessed Bulgaria, colonial Trinidad and Tobago and the ‘Got Milk?’ era—we explore humanity's millennia-long relationship with milk.

Listen to Don't Drink the Milk wherever you get your podcasts! https://pod.link/1704462801

Also on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpBAZYDqAE8nzvIRx2dApgkDi3zkSe3GS

A summer bonus episode: Russ Schnell's professors mocked him for believing that plants somehow caused hailstorms. He not only proved them wrong, but uncovered profound connections between life, earth, and the air above...

How greed, and a group of Nazi prisoners, killed off one of the most iconic birds in American history, the ivory-billed woodpecker...

It fueled slavery, as well as the Nazi death machine. It kills millions of people every year through cancer and heart disease. And you almost certainly have some in your home. That’s the legacy of sugar...

William Halford thought he had a surefire vaccine to stop herpes. And he wasn’t going to let anything—laws, ethics, his patients’ well-being—stop him from saving the world...

Genetic genealogy can catch brutal killers. It can also unmask affairs, secret adoptions, and other dark secrets. As well as expose you—yes, you—to the unholy alliance of Big Tech and shady police work...

One Brazilian man’s brain damage transformed him into a selfless giver. So why did he infuriate so many people—and what does his case say about the biological roots of generosity?

Warfarin was the best rat poison in history. It’s also, now, one of the most important, life-saving—and freakishly unlikely—drugs in the history of medicine...

Americans happily ate monosodium glutamate for decades. Then one (possibly fake) letter sparked mass hysteria over “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”, and the bogus MSG scare was born...

Polar explorer Douglas Mawson made several mistakes on his harrowing journey across Antarctica. But the biggest blunder involved eating animal livers oversaturated with vitamin A, a sure death sentence...

Charles Darwin didn’t give a crap about Galápagos finches, despite what you maybe heard. So what animals did light his fire while forming his theory of evolution? Pigeons, worms, and especially a despised marine pest—the lowly barnacle...

The long, wacky, and surprisingly thought-provoking history of trying animals in human courts...

Can we ever truly lie to ourselves? Actually, yes—just ask Woodrow Wilson and William O. Douglas. They’re two famous examples of a bizarrely common neurological disorder. One that you might have fallen victim to yourself...

A two-fer: (1) A bonus interview with me about the orphan vaccine episode, from a great WNYC podcast called Science Diction. (2) A short episode of Science Diction on Edward Jenner and the very first vaccines.

Scientists know how other animals’ bodies will change in warmer climates, but how will human beings respond?

Jack Parsons was a devil-worshipping FBI rat who led a sex cult and was bosom buddies with L. Ron Hubbard. He was also one of the most important rocket scientists in history. (Episode 2 of 2)

One doctor’s controversial crusade to keep men and women out of prison through nose jobs, eye lifts, and other plastic surgery.

How a simple operation—castrating little boys—produced the greatest singers the world has ever known...

Is it serious historical work? Respectable gossip? Blatantly prying into people’s lives? Retro-diagnosing historical celebrities like Darwin and Lincoln and Hitler and Poe is all of the above and more...

A bonus excerpt from my book The Icepick Surgeon on the making of the Unabomber, through a cruel, unethical psychology experiment at Harvard University...

What a bizarre site in Africa—a 1.7-billion-year-old, completely natural nuclear reactor—says about the future of energy production on planet Earth...

Dr. Walter Freeman blamed himself for the death of his favorite son. But instead of reflecting or growing personally, he used that death to become the most notorious lobotomist in the history of medicine...

You think Isaac Newton was smart? Not so fast. He made one mistake so dumb that scholars still shake their heads over it. Find out how to avoid this mistake—and be smarter than Newton—in this episode...

In 1959, nine Russian hikers mysteriously died on a trek through the snowy wilderness—fueling a half-century of hysterical conspiracies. Has science finally cracked the case?

How the legendary Peking Man fossils from China disappeared in the 1940s, and why archaeologists think that maybe—just maybe—they now know where to find them...

Like Leonardo and Albrecht Dürer before him, photographer Eadweard Muybridge was a legendary pioneer in both art and science. He was also a cold-blooded murderer.

An update on the spring season of Disappearing Spoon (early episodes for Patreon subscribers!), plus a trailer for the new "Innate" series from the great people behind the Science History Institute's "Distillations podcast"

Leonardo da Vinci was brilliant, groundbreaking—and especially with regard to his science—wildly overrated. All because he lacked one all-important quality: sitzfleisch...

In 1878, two Paris dandies murdered an old woman—and blamed Charles Darwin for their crime. But the wild scandal that followed only solidified Darwin as the greatest scientist of his age...

The world’s first plastic made Hollywood possible—and killed thousands of people along the way...

Scientists have confirmed five basic human tastes—sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami. But is that all? Debate now rages about adding a sixth or seventh or even eighth(!) to the Big Five...

How one doctor in the early 1900s risked the lives of patients by pitting one ancient scourge (malaria) against another (syphilis)—and won a Nobel Prize in the process...

James Mellaart discovered one of the most important archaeological sites ever, Çatalhöyük in Turkey. But his lust for treasure—and a penchant for fraud—led him to throw it all away...

Ahead of the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, a look at the surprisingly important role science played in shaping—and remaking—an invasion that could have easily been a disaster...

How a bloody gun duel between two doctors in Transylvania sparked a frenzy of outrage—as well as the American Medical Association...

What a bizarre psychological disorder can teach us about memory, human nature, and our sense of who we are

He coulda would shoulda been the next Einstein. Instead, Robert Oppenheimer fritted away his talents on trendy science and political gamesmanship—and it burned him deep in his soul...

How did they spread vaccines around the world in the early 1800s? By injecting orphans and forcing them onto a ship...

How the Central Intelligence Agency’s recklessly outrageous Operation Midnight Climax revealed some surprising psychological insights into sex, drugs, and human nature...

How two unlikely immigrants teamed up and saved millions of women's lives by developing the most successful cancer screening tool in history...

When a crank scientist needed to get the attention of Einstein and others for his crazy physics theory, there was only one sure way he knew to get publicity: murder...

How did the nonstick frying pan in your kitchen make the first atomic bomb possible? A story about the innocent-seeming Teflon for this week’s 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs...

An Oliver-Sacks-like tale of a man with brain damage who can’t read numbers—even though he can still read words just fine! His amazing case could also shed light on the mysteries of human consciousness...

How a New York mob boss destroyed what would have been greatest dinosaur museum in the world...

How the brilliant geek Nikola Tesla grew obsessed with an outlandish “death ray,” and the ray’s surprising connection to Donald Trump

How a man who hated dinosaurs ended up revolutionizing our understanding of them, including dinosaur beauty and dinosaur sex...

How Galileo’s training in art helped topple the ancient Greek dogma about the moon...

How two crooked Nazis—and one top-secret scientific mission—saved thousands of American lives during World War II...

A story for the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs: How a now-forgotten teahouse in Los Alamos and its unlikely owners—the spitfire Edith Warner and the Pueblo builder Tilano Montoya—influenced Robert Oppenheimer and changed the face of the whole Manhattan Project...

How two Russian scientists defied death and imprisonment to run a top-secret genetics experiment, and what it revealed about how dogs, babies, and stuffed animals manipulate our minds...

Why otherwise sane and rational doctors love experimenting on themselves—up to and including self-surgery...

How a long-forgotten woman pioneered the first personal protective equipment (PPE) in history, rubber gloves for surgery, equipment that has been vital in fighting infections and pandemics ever since...

How one Jewish doctor, Leo Alexander, single-handedly exposed the worst Nazi medical atrocities of World War II...

Why hunter-gatherers had perfect teeth, why modern humans rarely do, and the profound consequences for our health...

How a nasty Renaissance spat toppled 2,000 years of Pythagoras...

How one heroic doctor, and his revolting experiments, singlehandedly ended the deadliest dietary epidemic disease in American history...

How one of the messiest homicides in history - when one scientist killed another scientist over a jug of raisin wine way up inside the Arctic Circle - foreshadows the first murder in outer space...

How a not-so-friendly bet over afternoon tea revolutionized modern science...

How the unique properties of carbon produced a 1,185-letter word...

When Impressionist painter Claude Monet developed cataracts, he thought his painting career was over. Hardly. He actually developed a human superpower—the ability to see, like bees do, a much wider range of colors...

Albert Einstein’s relativity was just another theory at first, speculative and unproven—until Arthur Eddington and a special eclipse. Meet the weirdo scientist who made Einstein into *Einstein*...

What a strange little sparrow can teach us about love, sex, human biology, and a whole lot more...

You wouldn’t think a lanky, awkward balloon geek would inspire Hollywood. But the death-defying Auguste Piccard was a worthy namesake for Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek fame...

How a steam-powered automobile in 1869 snuffed out the life of the brilliant female naturalist and astronomer Mary Ward...

During the Nazi invasion of Russia during World War II, nine Soviet scientists starved to death surrounded by millions of delicious fruits, seeds, and nuts. Were they mad? No. They wanted to save humankind from doomsday...

The “mouse utopia” experiment showed just how quickly animal heaven can turn into animal hell—and revealed how eager human beings are to interpret science through the lens of extremist politics...

The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Korea is a place of guns and heartache and anger—and also one of the most thriving natural wildlife habitats on Earth...

How the women of America, exactly 100 years ago, scrimped and saved and sacrificed to secure a vital gram of radium for their scientific hero, Marie Curie...

How a rogue archaeologist in Peru—and a stolen skull—provided the first real evidence that ancient people practiced neurosurgery...