The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenr...

Automobiles kill several million animals every single day. Scientists are still coming to grips with the carnage... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://r...

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great d...

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.co...

Naked mole-rats are medical marvels—impervious to cancer and immune to old age. Too bad they’re also vicious murderers... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: htt...

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advert...

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://eleven...

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://redci...

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://eleve...

A bonus excerpt from my book The Icepick Surgeon on the making of the Unabomber, through a cruel, unethical psychology experiment at Harvard University... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle....

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. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://re...

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. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code...

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. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my c...

What a strange little sparrow can teach us about love, sex, human biology, and a whole lot more... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/priv...

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great de...

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenr...

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!) Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal:...

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenrea...

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: htt...

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... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon"...

How a simple operation—castrating little boys—produced the greatest singers the world has ever known... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com...

How a bloody gun duel between two doctors in Transylvania sparked a frenzy of outrage—as well as the American Medical Association... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & O...

How a feisty, suicidal Nobel laureate infuriated both Hitler and Stalin, and stalled cancer research for fifty years along the way... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy &...

In a building full of dead bodies, how can you tell a murder victim from an unlucky stiff? Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The world’s first plastic made Hollywood possible—and killed thousands of people along the way... Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out ElevenReader and use my code "Spoon" for a great deal: https://elevenreader.io Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/priva...