The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean
By Sam Kean
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Category: History
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Rate for this podcast
Subscribers: 600
Reviews: 6
Episodes: 137
TM
Aug 10, 2025
I for one find the cheesy sound effects incredibly offputting. Occasionally, maybe, but constant inaccurate random noises are just tedious and sometimes ick. Also, people have to make a living, but the ad to content ratio is OTT
james2che
Jan 5, 2025
I like Sam Kean's podcasts with sound effects even more than Ally Ward, but don't tell her
Apr 10, 2021
HKT
Oct 31, 2020
A cornucopia of fascinating stories well told. Doesn't need the sound effects but still recommended.
Mahe
Jun 12, 2020
I loved the Book, and now the podcast! Great Job.
Stephanie
May 23, 2020
I love this podcast! I can't wait until the next episode comes out!
Description
A topsy-turvy science-y history podcast by Sam Kean. I examine overlooked stories from our past: the dental superiority of hunter-gatherers, the crooked Nazis who saved thousands of American lives, the American immigrants who developed the most successful cancer screening tool in history, the sex lives of dinosaurs, and much, much more. These are charming little tales that never made the history books, but these small moments can be surprisingly powerful. These are the cases where history gets inverted, where the footnote becomes the real story.
| Episode | Date |
|---|---|
|
NASA’s Unmentionable(s) Adventure
|
Jun 09, 2026 |
|
The Pioneers and Vestiges of Evolution
|
Jun 02, 2026 |
|
The Angel of the Concentration Camp
|
May 26, 2026 |
|
The Battery Dope
|
May 19, 2026 |
|
The Making of the “Flat Earth” Myth
|
May 12, 2026 |
|
Forensic Pseudoscience
|
May 05, 2026 |
|
Manhattan Project Propaganda
|
Apr 28, 2026 |
|
Back-Breaking Science
|
Apr 21, 2026 |
|
The Canaries in the Submarine
|
Apr 14, 2026 |
|
Charles Lindbergh, Lab Rat
|
Apr 07, 2026 |
|
The Publicity Stunt that Sparked the Scopes Monkey Trial
|
Dec 16, 2025 |
|
The Great Balloon Escape
|
Dec 09, 2025 |
|
The Corny, Cringy, Very Bad Television Show that Just Might Save Your Life
|
Dec 02, 2025 |
|
Bringing an Extinct Owl Back to Life
|
Nov 18, 2025 |
|
Trickster, Birder, Soldier, Spy
|
Nov 11, 2025 |
|
Why Not Just Rename the “Hitler Beetle”?
|
Nov 04, 2025 |
|
John James Fraudubon
|
Oct 28, 2025 |
|
The Bird that Made John James Audubon a Legend
|
Oct 21, 2025 |
|
The Dignity of the Ig Nobel Prizes
|
Oct 14, 2025 |
|
The Nobel Disease
|
Oct 06, 2025 |
|
Dinner with King Tut audiobook preview
|
Jun 24, 2025 |
|
Why Doctors and Scientists Embraced the Nazis
|
May 27, 2025 |
|
Hotter than the Dickens
|
May 20, 2025 |
|
Jake Leg Blues
|
May 13, 2025 |
|
The Worst of Times, the Asbestos Times
|
May 06, 2025 |
|
Human Photosynthesis
|
Apr 29, 2025 |
|
The Sad Story of Darwin’s Self-Procleimed “Stupidest” Child
|
Apr 22, 2025 |
|
The Birds and the Bees and the Frogs
|
Apr 15, 2025 |
|
The Would-Be Saint's Battle over Down Syndrome
|
Apr 08, 2025 |
|
The Battle over Human Chromosomes
|
Apr 01, 2025 |
|
The Halley's Comet Panic
|
Mar 25, 2025 |
|
The Winter when People Ate Tulips
|
Dec 10, 2024 |
|
Why Keep a Diary of a Toxic Snakebite?
|
Dec 03, 2024 |
|
Machiavellian Microbes
|
Nov 19, 2024 |
|
The Woman Who “Turned Back a Plague of Old Testament Proportions”
|
Nov 12, 2024 |
|
The Doom Lurking inside Trees
|
Nov 04, 2024 |
|
The Mona Lisa of the Seine
|
Oct 29, 2024 |
|
Savant Idiots
|
Oct 22, 2024 |
|
When Mummymania Swept the World
|
Oct 15, 2024 |
|
The Sadder Side of the Nobel Prizes
|
Oct 08, 2024 |
|
The Scientific Way to Fool a Nazi
|
Sep 30, 2024 |
|
The Mysterious Mote
|
Jun 26, 2024 |
|
The Science of D-Day
|
May 14, 2024 |
|
Can Plastic Surgery Keep You out of Prison?
|
May 07, 2024 |
|
The Russian Roswell
|
Apr 30, 2024 |
|
When Tenure Means Life and Death
|
Apr 23, 2024 |
|
A Deadly Soup for Babies
|
Apr 16, 2024 |
|
How the “Worst Serial Killer in Holland’s History” Went Free
|
Apr 09, 2024 |
|
The Eclipse that Killed a King
|
Apr 02, 2024 |
|
When Generosity Turns Pathological
|
Mar 26, 2024 |
|
The Sex-Cult “Antichrist” Who Rocketed Us to Space (part 2)
|
Mar 19, 2024 |
|
The Sex-Cult “Antichrist” Who Rocketed Us to Space (part 1)
|
Mar 12, 2024 |
|
Don't Drink the Milk bonus episode - Milk: From mutations to mustaches
|
Jan 16, 2024 |
|
Was Darwin a Murderer?
|
Nov 14, 2023 |
|
Mass Psychosis in Food Science
|
Nov 07, 2023 |
|
Accounting for Taste
|
Oct 31, 2023 |
|
If Indiana Jones Were a Swindler
|
Oct 24, 2023 |
|
The British Tobacco Empire
|
Oct 17, 2023 |
|
"Moldy Mary," The Forgotten Mother of Penicillin
|
Oct 10, 2023 |
|
The Most Exclusive Club in the World
|
Oct 03, 2023 |
|
Death-Defying Science at 75,000 Feet
|
Sep 26, 2023 |
|
Proving Einstein Right
|
Sep 20, 2023 |
|
Einstein's Golden Moment
|
Sep 12, 2023 |
|
Everything You Know About Phineas Gage Is Wrong
|
Jul 11, 2023 |
|
Why Do We Obsess Over Charles Darwin’s Health?
|
Jun 27, 2023 |
|
The Seeds of Starvation
|
Jun 20, 2023 |
|
When Scientific Brilliance Isn’t Enough
|
Jun 13, 2023 |
|
The Curse of Knowing Too Much
|
Jun 06, 2023 |
|
The Enigmas of Foreign Accent Syndrome
|
May 30, 2023 |
|
The World’s Only Natural Nuclear Reactor
|
May 23, 2023 |
|
How New DNA Sleuthing Can Expose Dangerous Killers—and You
|
May 16, 2023 |
|
The Real Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer
|
May 09, 2023 |
|
The Brilliant, Groundbreaking, and Wildly Overrated Leonardo da Vinci
|
May 02, 2023 |
|
Spring update and "Innate" trailer
|
Feb 06, 2023 |
|
Death Squared
|
Nov 29, 2022 |
|
Death by Nutrition
|
Nov 22, 2022 |
|
The Roadside Apocalypse
|
Nov 15, 2022 |
|
The Blind Visionary
|
Nov 08, 2022 |
|
The Scariest Paradise on Earth
|
Nov 01, 2022 |
|
The Naked Shibboleth
|
Oct 25, 2022 |
|
The Debaucherous Legacy of Johnny Appleseed
|
Oct 18, 2022 |
|
The Most Evil Molecule
|
Oct 11, 2022 |
|
The Life-Saving Rat Poison
|
Oct 04, 2022 |
|
The Making of a Lobotomist
|
Sep 27, 2022 |
|
Icepick Surgeon bonus excerpt on the making of the Unabomber
|
Jul 12, 2022 |
|
The Murderer Who Made Movies Possible
|
May 10, 2022 |
|
Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and the Irish Giant
|
May 03, 2022 |
|
The Screwiest—and Perhaps Most Original—Idea of the 20th Century
|
Apr 26, 2022 |
|
The Bird with Four Sexes
|
Apr 19, 2022 |
|
When the Brain Deceives Itself
|
Apr 12, 2022 |
|
Stephen Hawking and the Black Hole Mistake that Made His Career
|
Apr 05, 2022 |
|
Albert Einstein and the Worst Prediction in the History of Science
|
Mar 29, 2022 |
|
How to Be Smarter than Isaac Newton
|
Mar 22, 2022 |
|
Claude Monet and Bee Purple
|
Mar 15, 2022 |
|
The Unsung Heroes of Darwin’s Evolution
|
Mar 08, 2022 |
|
The Sinister Angel Singers of Rome
|
Dec 07, 2021 |
|
The Murderous Origins of the American Medical Association
|
Nov 30, 2021 |
|
The Big ‘What If’ of Cancer
|
Nov 23, 2021 |
|
The Harvard Medical School Janitor Who Solved a Murder
|
Nov 16, 2021 |
|
Burn After Watching
|
Nov 09, 2021 |
|
History’s First Car Crash Victim
|
Nov 02, 2021 |
|
Real Life Zombies
|
Oct 26, 2021 |
|
How Climate Change Will Remake the Human Body
|
Oct 19, 2021 |
|
The ‘Mary Poppins’ Cancer
|
Oct 12, 2021 |
|
Kangaroo (and Pig and Monkey and Dog and Donkey) Courts
|
Oct 05, 2021 |
|
Icepick Surgeon audiobook excerpt
|
Jul 13, 2021 |
|
The Anatomy Riots
|
Jun 01, 2021 |
|
When a Hole in the Head Is Good for You
|
May 25, 2021 |
|
When Mosquitos Cured Insanity
|
May 18, 2021 |
|
The Death of the Lord God Bird
|
May 11, 2021 |
|
Chewing it Over—and Over and Over and Over
|
May 04, 2021 |
|
What's the Longest Word in the English Language?
|
Apr 27, 2021 |
|
Why Don't We Have a Male Birth Control Pill Yet?
|
Apr 20, 2021 |
|
Bonus interview with WNYC's Science Diction
|
Apr 16, 2021 |
|
Marie Curie's (Nearly Disastrous) Trip to America
|
Apr 13, 2021 |
|
The Most Important Lost Fossils in History
|
Apr 06, 2021 |
|
The World’s First Global Vaccine Supply Chain Was Orphan Children
|
Mar 30, 2021 |
|
The Joys, and Pains, of Operating on Yourself
|
Nov 30, 2020 |
|
A School Shooting for Science
|
Nov 13, 2020 |
|
Star Wars, Death Rays, and Donald Trump
|
Oct 15, 2020 |
|
Vitamin G
|
Oct 01, 2020 |
|
The CIA’s Drug-Fueled Orgies and You
|
Sep 15, 2020 |
|
From Siberia with (Manipulative) Love
|
Sep 01, 2020 |
|
The Man Who Couldn’t Read Numbers
|
Aug 17, 2020 |
|
The Teflon Bomb
|
Aug 06, 2020 |
|
Chocolate Cake & Atomic Bombs
|
Aug 01, 2020 |
|
The Ice Island Murder
|
Jul 14, 2020 |
|
Our Slimy Nazi Saviors
|
Jul 07, 2020 |
|
Are Braces a Health Disaster?
|
Jun 23, 2020 |
|
The Science Immigrants Who Saved Millions
|
Jun 09, 2020 |
|
Tyrannosaurus Sex
|
Jun 02, 2020 |
|
The Lost Dinosaurs of Central Park
|
May 22, 2020 |
|
Exposing Nazi Medical Atrocities
|
May 11, 2020 |
|
Glove at First Sight
|
Apr 27, 2020 |
|
Galileo and Art, part 2
|
Apr 20, 2020 |
|
Galileo and Art, part 1
|
Apr 20, 2020 |
|
Tea Test Tempest
|
Oct 26, 2019 |