The Disappearing Spoon podcast

Topsy-Turvy Tales from Our Scientific Past

When Science Is Used for Evil

Nazism was a society-wide catastrophe, so why did so many people in technical fields in Germany embrace it?

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The Disappearing Spoon is Distillations’ sister podcast, hosted by best-selling author Sam Kean. The show examines overlooked stories from our past, such as the dental superiority of hunter-gatherers, the sex lives of dinosaurs, and many more moments that never made the history books. When the footnote becomes the real story, small moments become surprisingly powerful.

Health & Medicine

The Murderous Origins of the American Medical Association

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

Inventions & Discoveries

The Big ‘What If’ of Cancer

How a feisty, suicidal Nobel laureate infuriated both Hitler and Stalin, and stalled cancer research for 50 years along the way.

Health & Medicine

The Harvard Medical School Janitor Who Solved a Murder

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

Inventions & Discoveries

Burn After Watching

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

Environment & Nature

History’s First Car Crash Victim

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

Health & Medicine

Real-Life Zombies

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

Environment & Nature

How Climate Change Will Remake the Human Body

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

Health & Medicine

The ‘Mary Poppins’ Cancer

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

Arts & Culture

Kangaroo (and Pig and Monkey and Dog and Donkey) Courts

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

Health & Medicine

The Anatomy Riots

How early anatomists provoked some of the strangest riots in history by stealing the dead bodies of the poor.

Arts & Culture

When a Hole in the Head Is a Good Thing

How a rogue archaeologist in Peru found indisputable evidence of something previously unthinkable—ancient neurosurgery.

Health & Medicine

When Mosquitoes Cured Insanity

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

Environment & Nature

The Death of the Lord God Bird

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

Health & Medicine

Chewing It Over—and Over and Over and Over

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

Arts & Culture

What’s the Longest Word in the English Language?

And what does it have to do with the unusual chemistry of carbon?

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.

People & Politics

Crowdfunding Radium

When American women bought Marie Curie a vital gram of the element.

Arts & Culture

Parking Lot or Peking Lot?

Have modern archeologists finally tracked down the legendary ‘Peking Man’ bones?