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
1/16/2024 • 42 minutes, 6 seconds
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
7/11/2023 • 19 minutes, 27 seconds
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
2/6/2023 • 4 minutes, 10 seconds
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
7/12/2022 • 20 minutes, 24 seconds
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
4/19/2022 • 19 minutes, 58 seconds
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
4/12/2022 • 18 minutes, 11 seconds
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
7/13/2021 • 18 minutes, 36 seconds
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
5/25/2021 • 16 minutes, 16 seconds
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
5/11/2021 • 19 minutes, 30 seconds
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
4/16/2021 • 26 minutes, 15 seconds
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
11/30/2020 • 17 minutes, 15 seconds
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
11/13/2020 • 18 minutes, 39 seconds
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
10/15/2020 • 19 minutes, 9 seconds
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
10/1/2020 • 19 minutes, 41 seconds
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
9/15/2020 • 18 minutes, 7 seconds
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
9/1/2020 • 19 minutes, 32 seconds
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
8/17/2020 • 14 minutes, 50 seconds
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
8/6/2020 • 19 minutes, 42 seconds
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
8/1/2020 • 19 minutes, 32 seconds
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
7/14/2020 • 19 minutes, 33 seconds
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
7/7/2020 • 16 minutes, 58 seconds
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
6/23/2020 • 19 minutes, 28 seconds
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
6/9/2020 • 19 minutes, 31 seconds
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
6/2/2020 • 18 minutes, 38 seconds
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
5/22/2020 • 18 minutes, 12 seconds
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
5/11/2020 • 19 minutes, 19 seconds
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
4/27/2020 • 18 minutes, 40 seconds
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
4/20/2020 • 17 minutes, 24 seconds
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