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The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean Cover
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The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean

English, History, 7 seasons, 85 episodes, 1 day, 3 hours, 28 minutes
About
A topsy-turvy science-y history podcast
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Don't Drink the Milk bonus episode - Milk: From mutations to mustaches

Who put the cheese in your stuffed-crust pizza? Or cows on a Caribbean island? And when more than half the world's population can't actually digest milk, is it really essential for a healthy diet? On a trip through time and taste—to dairy-obsessed Bulgaria, colonial Trinidad and Tobago and the ‘Got Milk?’ era—we explore humanity's millennia-long relationship with milk.Listen to Don't Drink the Milk wherever you get your podcasts! https://pod.link/1704462801 Also on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpBAZYDqAE8nzvIRx2dApgkDi3zkSe3GS Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
1/16/202442 minutes, 6 seconds
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Everything You Know About Phineas Gage Is Wrong

Despite what you’ve heard, neuroscience’s most famous patient did not turn into a lying, drunken psychopath. He’s actually an amazing example of resiliency and overcoming trauma...Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
7/11/202319 minutes, 27 seconds
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Spring update and "Innate" trailer

An update on the spring season of Disappearing Spoon (early episodes for Patreon subscribers!), plus a trailer for the new "Innate" series from the great people behind the Science History Institute's "Distillations podcast"Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
2/6/20234 minutes, 10 seconds
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Icepick Surgeon bonus excerpt on the making of the Unabomber

A bonus excerpt from my book The Icepick Surgeon on the making of the Unabomber, through a cruel, unethical psychology experiment at Harvard University...Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
7/12/202220 minutes, 24 seconds
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The Bird with Four Sexes

What a strange little sparrow can teach us about love, sex, human biology, and a whole lot more...Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
4/19/202219 minutes, 58 seconds
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When the Brain Deceives Itself

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...Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
4/12/202218 minutes, 11 seconds
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Icepick Surgeon audiobook excerpt

The prologue and introduction to the book The Icepick Surgeon. Written by Sam Kean, read by Ben Sullivan.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
7/13/202118 minutes, 36 seconds
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When a Hole in the Head Is Good for You

How a rogue archaeologist in Peru—and a stolen skull—provided the first real evidence that ancient people practiced neurosurgery...Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
5/25/202116 minutes, 16 seconds
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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...Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
5/11/202119 minutes, 30 seconds
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Bonus interview with WNYC's Science Diction

A two-fer: (1) A bonus interview with me about the orphan vaccine episode, from a great WNYC podcast called Science Diction. (2) A short episode of Science Diction on Edward Jenner and the very first vaccines.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
4/16/202126 minutes, 15 seconds
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The Joys, and Pains, of Operating on Yourself

Why otherwise sane and rational doctors love experimenting on themselves—up to and including self-surgery...Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
11/30/202017 minutes, 15 seconds
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A School Shooting for Science

When a crank scientist needed to get the attention of Einstein and others for his crazy physics theory, there was only one sure way he knew to get publicity: murder...Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
11/13/202018 minutes, 39 seconds
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Star Wars, Death Rays, and Donald Trump

How the brilliant geek Nikola Tesla grew obsessed with an outlandish “death ray,” and the ray’s surprising connection to Donald TrumpAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
10/15/202019 minutes, 9 seconds
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Vitamin G

How one heroic doctor, and his revolting experiments, singlehandedly ended the deadliest dietary epidemic disease in American history... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
10/1/202019 minutes, 41 seconds
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The CIA’s Drug-Fueled Orgies and You

How the Central Intelligence Agency’s recklessly outrageous Operation Midnight Climax revealed some surprising psychological insights into sex, drugs, and human nature... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
9/15/202018 minutes, 7 seconds
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From Siberia with (Manipulative) Love

How two Russian scientists defied death and imprisonment to run a top-secret genetics experiment, and what it revealed about how dogs, babies, and stuffed animals manipulate our minds...   Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
9/1/202019 minutes, 32 seconds
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The Man Who Couldn’t Read Numbers

An Oliver-Sacks-like tale of a man with brain damage who can’t read numbers—even though he can still read words just fine! His amazing case could also shed light on the mysteries of human consciousness... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
8/17/202014 minutes, 50 seconds
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The Teflon Bomb

How did the nonstick frying pan in your kitchen make the first atomic bomb possible? A story about the innocent-seeming Teflon for this week’s 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
8/6/202019 minutes, 42 seconds
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Chocolate Cake & Atomic Bombs

A story for the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs: How a now-forgotten teahouse in Los Alamos and its unlikely owners—the spitfire Edith Warner and the Pueblo builder Tilano Montoya—influenced Robert Oppenheimer and changed the face of the whole Manhattan Project... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
8/1/202019 minutes, 32 seconds
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The Ice Island Murder

How one of the messiest homicides in history - when one scientist killed another scientist over a jug of raisin wine way up inside the Arctic Circle - foreshadows the first murder in outer space... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
7/14/202019 minutes, 33 seconds
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Our Slimy Nazi Saviors

How two crooked Nazis—and one top-secret scientific mission—saved thousands of American lives during World War II... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
7/7/202016 minutes, 58 seconds
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Are Braces a Health Disaster?

Why hunter-gatherers had perfect teeth, why modern humans rarely do, and the profound consequences for our health... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
6/23/202019 minutes, 28 seconds
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The Science Immigrants Who Saved Millions

How two unlikely immigrants teamed up and saved millions of women's lives by developing the most successful cancer screening tool in history... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
6/9/202019 minutes, 31 seconds
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Tyrannosaurus sex

How a man who hated dinosaurs ended up revolutionizing our understanding of them, including dinosaur beauty and dinosaur sex... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
6/2/202018 minutes, 38 seconds
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The Lost Dinosaurs of Central Park

How a New York mob boss destroyed what would have been greatest dinosaur museum in the world... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
5/22/202018 minutes, 12 seconds
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Exposing Nazi Medical Atrocities

How one Jewish doctor, Leo Alexander, single-handedly exposed the worst Nazi medical atrocities of World War II... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
5/11/202019 minutes, 19 seconds
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Glove at First Sight

How a long-forgotten woman pioneered the first personal protective equipment (PPE) in history, rubber gloves for surgery, equipment that has been vital in fighting infections and pandemics ever since... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
4/27/202018 minutes, 40 seconds
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Galileo and Art, part 2

How Galileo’s training in art helped topple the ancient Greek dogma about the moon... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
4/20/202017 minutes, 24 seconds
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Galileo and Art, part 1

How a nasty Renaissance spat toppled 2,000 years of Pythagoras... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
4/20/202019 minutes, 55 seconds