The Disappearing Spoon podcast

Topsy-Turvy Tales from Our Scientific Past

Health & Medicine

Bodies, minds, and the things that help and harm them

Health & Medicine

When Mosquitoes Cured Insanity

How an early 20th-century doctor pitted one scourge (malaria) against another (syphilis).

Health & Medicine

Chewing It Over—and Over and Over and Over

How a weird “scientific” diet fad conquered America in the early 1900s.

Health & Medicine

Why Don’t We Have a Male Birth Control Pill Yet?

Scientists created an effective male birth control pill in the 1950s, but it had one undesirable side effect.

Health & Medicine

Orphan Vaccines

When the global vaccine supply chain depended on children.