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Distillations

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When the Brain Deceives Itself
Health

Learn what two famous neurological traumas—one involving a U.S. president, the other a Supreme Court justice—can teach us about how our own brains perceive reality in this episode of The Disappearing Spoon.

The Simple Usefulness of the Secchi Disk
Water

A centuries-old sailor’s hack enters the ecologist’s toolkit.

Stephen Hawking and the Mistake That Made His Career
People

This episode of The Disappearing Spoon is the third in a three-part series on legendary physicists and their dumbest mistakes.

Albert Einstein and the Worst Prediction in the History of Science 
People

Learn about the physicist’s biggest-blunder-turned-greatest success in this episode of The Disappearing Spoon.

The Toll of the Road
Environment

Calculating the automobile’s grisly impact on wildlife.

How To Be Smarter Than Isaac Newton
People

This episode of The Disappearing Spoon explores why the iconic physicist made an unbelievable error while hunting down criminals, and how you can avoid the same dumb mistake.

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The Dark Stars of Marietta Blau
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A scientist pitted hard work and ingenuity against the constraints she faced as a Jewish woman.
Searching for Isabel Morgan
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Reconsidering the fate of an overlooked polio fighter.
Crowdfunding Radium
People
When American women bought Marie Curie a vital gram of the element.
The Sun Queen and the Skeptic: Building the World’s First Solar Houses
Environment
In the mid-20th century, colleagues-turned-rivals Maria Telkes and Hoyt Hottel engineered new ways of heating American homes.
The Nurse Who Introduced Gloves to the Operating Room
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 Caroline Hampton and the forgotten origins of the first personal protective equipment.
Dr. Butler and the Quest for the Philosophers’ Stone
Early Science & Alchemy
How searching for alchemy’s secrets helped create modern science.
Lou Henry Hoover, Lost in Translation
People
Though often celebrated, the adventurous First Lady never received full credit for her scientific accomplishments.
Ruth Patrick’s Lovely Creatures
Water
The groundbreaking ecologist showed that the biological diversity within a stream can be used to diagnose its health.
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