The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean
A topsy-turvy science-y history podcast by Sam Kean. I examine overlooked stories from our past: the dental superiority of hunter-gatherers, the crooked Nazis who saved thousands of American lives, the American immigrants who developed the most successful cancer screening tool in history, the sex lives of dinosaurs, and much, much more. These are charming little tales that never made the history books, but these small moments can be surprisingly powerful. These are the cases where history gets inverted, where the footnote becomes the real story.
Episodes
Rickets was once a devastating disease: up to 90 percent of the children showed symptoms in some cities, including bent spines and bowed legs, and it resulted in many women dying during childbirth. The search for the cause of rickets took decades, and ended with a startling discovery—that much like plants, human beings had the ability to photosynthesize.
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Leonard Darwin had a lot to live up to. He was the son of the legendary Charles, and several siblings proved to be brilliant scientists as well. But Leonard never quite measured up as a mediocre military officer and two-bit politician. In his fifties, he pronounced his life a “failure.” But in his sixties, he finally found his calling—the dark pseudoscience of eugenics, a field he embraced in part to prove that he wasn’t the failur...
A young woman in the mid-1900s couldn’t take an at-home pregnancy test. Instead, she sent a vial of urine to a clinic, where a technician would, of all things, inject it into a frog, and hormones in the urine would cause the frog to lay eggs. This frog-based test was far faster, easier, and cleaner than any pregnancy test before, and it shifted power for family planning from doctors to women themselves.
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After scientists had a handle on how many chromosomes humans have, other researchers began exploring whether certain ailments might be caused by chromosomal abnormalities. To this end, a French cardiologist discovered that Down syndrome was caused by the presence of an extra chromosome in humans. But a colleague stole credit for her work, and the battle over their legacies continues to this day, in part because the colleague is on ...
It seems like a simple question: how many chromosomes do human beings have? But getting an accurate count proved surprisingly hard for much of last century. In fact, virtually every textbook once cited an incorrect number, until in 1956, a fiery Indonesian scientist finally determined the true count—and had to battle his boss over who would receive credit for this legacy-making discovery.
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The 1910 return of Halley’s comet was greeted with rapture around the world—at least at first. Due to irresponsible speculation by scientists about the theoretical dangers of a close encounter with a comet, many people grew terrified of Halley’s approach and took drastic measures. They fled their homes, hid out in wells or caves, even committed suicide. It’s a grave reminder of scientific communication gone very wrong.
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It’s the 80th anniversary of the Dutch Hongerwinter during World War II, which led to widespread starvation, and an inadvertent breakthrough in treating deadly celiac disease.
After 40 years of studying snakes, Karl Schmidt finally suffered his first bite. And when he did, he kept a gruesome diary to document the suffering and danger—right up to the edge of death...
Parasites can force animals to do nefarious things by manipulating their minds—including, uncomfortably, the minds of human beings.
In refusing to approve the drug thalidomide, FDA scientist Frances Oldham Kelsey spared thousands of babies from deadly birth defects and revolutionized drug research. But was her legacy all good?
Japanese physicist Fusa Miyake has sparked a revolution in archaeology by studying radioactive tree rings—work that also terrifies astronomers, who fear it foretells doom for our civilization.
A woman who drowned in Paris became one of the most famous faces in the world as the model for CPR dummies, saving millions of lives and inspiring artists from Pablo Picasso to Michael Jackson—all while remaining completely unknown.
In the early 1800s, the first Egyptian mummies in Europe served as a crucial test for evolution—a test that, according to people then, evolution flunked.
In the 1800s, mummies found their way into everything from fertilizer to food, and were especially prized as medicine. Mummymania was a strange time...
How did a man who developed a Nobel Prize–worthy idea (green-fluorescing protein, GFP) end up driving a shuttle van for a living, and missing the Prize completely? Therein lies a sad story...
Physicist Gyorgy Hevesy had a talent for tricks and stunts—including one that prevented Nazi stormtroopers from stealing a gold Nobel Prize.
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...
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...
One doctor’s controversial crusade to keep men and women out of prison through nose jobs, eye lifts, and other plastic surgery.
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?
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