TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean

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137 episodes
2019 to 2026
Median: 19 minutes
Collection: Science

Description (podcaster-provided):

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

This podcast tells science history through short, character-driven stories that spotlight overlooked episodes, disputed discoveries, and the messy human forces that shape what we accept as “scientific truth.” Across the episodes, the focus often falls on individuals working at the edges of institutions—nurses, lab scientists, doctors, detectives, and eccentric researchers—whose actions led to breakthroughs, scandals, or quiet revolutions in public health, medicine, and technology.

A recurring theme is how science interacts with politics, propaganda, and ideology. The show explores how wars and authoritarian regimes influenced research priorities and ethical boundaries, including the ways professionals accommodated or resisted Nazism and how official narratives about major projects reshaped public memory. It also examines how myths and misinformation take hold, from classroom “facts” that were invented later to forensic methods and other practices presented as scientific despite bias or shaky foundations.

Another throughline is the cost of discovery: dangerous self-experimentation, medical tragedies, mass poisonings, and environmental hazards that forced societies to confront trade-offs between progress and harm. Several stories revolve around fraud, misattribution, and reputation—how charismatic figures can manipulate evidence, how credit can be stolen, and how prizes and prestige can distort judgment or push laureates toward fringe ideas.

The subject matter ranges widely, touching astronomy, biology, taxonomy, archaeology, epidemiology, psychology, and spaceflight, while repeatedly returning to the question of how science is practiced by imperfect people—and how those imperfections can save lives, ruin them, or rewrite history.

Episodes:

NASA’s Unmentionable(s) Adventure 2026-Jun-09 18 minutes

The Pioneers and Vestiges of Evolution 2026-Jun-02 18 minutes

The Angel of the Concentration Camp 2026-May-26 17 minutes

The Battery Dope 2026-May-19 18 minutes

The Making of the “Flat Earth” Myth 2026-May-12 17 minutes

Forensic Pseudoscience 2026-May-05 18 minutes

Manhattan Project Propaganda 2026-Apr-28 17 minutes

Back-Breaking Science 2026-Apr-21 18 minutes

The Canaries in the Submarine 2026-Apr-14 17 minutes

Charles Lindbergh, Lab Rat 2026-Apr-07 19 minutes

The Publicity Stunt that Sparked the Scopes Monkey Trial 2025-Dec-16 18 minutes

The Great Balloon Escape 2025-Dec-09 18 minutes

The Corny, Cringy, Very Bad Television Show that Just Might Save Your Life 2025-Dec-02 18 minutes

Bringing an Extinct Owl Back to Life 2025-Nov-18 19 minutes

Trickster, Birder, Soldier, Spy 2025-Nov-11 18 minutes

Why Not Just Rename the “Hitler Beetle”? 2025-Nov-04 19 minutes

John James Fraudubon 2025-Oct-28 18 minutes

The Bird that Made John James Audubon a Legend 2025-Oct-21 18 minutes

The Dignity of the Ig Nobel Prizes 2025-Oct-14 18 minutes

The Nobel Disease 2025-Oct-06 18 minutes

Dinner with King Tut audiobook preview 2025-Jun-24 27 minutes

Why Doctors and Scientists Embraced the Nazis 2025-May-27 21 minutes

Hotter than the Dickens 2025-May-20 18 minutes

Jake Leg Blues 2025-May-13 20 minutes

The Worst of Times, the Asbestos Times 2025-May-06 17 minutes

Human Photosynthesis 2025-Apr-29 18 minutes

The Sad Story of Darwin’s Self-Procleimed “Stupidest” Child 2025-Apr-22 18 minutes

The Birds and the Bees and the Frogs 2025-Apr-15 18 minutes

The Would-Be Saint's Battle over Down Syndrome 2025-Apr-08 18 minutes

The Battle over Human Chromosomes 2025-Apr-01 18 minutes

The Halley's Comet Panic 2025-Mar-25 18 minutes

The Winter when People Ate Tulips 2024-Dec-10 19 minutes

Why Keep a Diary of a Toxic Snakebite? 2024-Dec-03 17 minutes

Machiavellian Microbes 2024-Nov-19 18 minutes

The Woman Who “Turned Back a Plague of Old Testament Proportions” 2024-Nov-12 19 minutes

The Doom Lurking inside Trees 2024-Nov-04 17 minutes

The Mona Lisa of the Seine 2024-Oct-29 18 minutes

Savant Idiots 2024-Oct-22 17 minutes

When Mummymania Swept the World 2024-Oct-15 17 minutes

The Sadder Side of the Nobel Prizes 2024-Oct-08 18 minutes

The Scientific Way to Fool a Nazi 2024-Sep-30 19 minutes

The Mysterious Mote 2024-Jun-26 18 minutes

The Science of D-Day 2024-May-14 19 minutes

Can Plastic Surgery Keep You out of Prison? 2024-May-07 20 minutes

The Russian Roswell 2024-Apr-30 21 minutes

When Tenure Means Life and Death 2024-Apr-23 20 minutes

A Deadly Soup for Babies 2024-Apr-16 20 minutes

How the “Worst Serial Killer in Holland’s History” Went Free 2024-Apr-09 20 minutes

The Eclipse that Killed a King 2024-Apr-02 19 minutes

When Generosity Turns Pathological 2024-Mar-26 18 minutes

The Sex-Cult “Antichrist” Who Rocketed Us to Space (part 2) 2024-Mar-19 21 minutes

The Sex-Cult “Antichrist” Who Rocketed Us to Space (part 1) 2024-Mar-12 19 minutes

Don't Drink the Milk bonus episode - Milk: From mutations to mustaches 2024-Jan-16 46 minutes

Was Darwin a Murderer? 2023-Nov-14 20 minutes

Mass Psychosis in Food Science 2023-Nov-07 19 minutes

Accounting for Taste 2023-Oct-31 18 minutes

If Indiana Jones Were a Swindler 2023-Oct-24 19 minutes

The British Tobacco Empire 2023-Oct-17 19 minutes

"Moldy Mary," The Forgotten Mother of Penicillin 2023-Oct-10 21 minutes

The Most Exclusive Club in the World 2023-Oct-03 19 minutes

Death-Defying Science at 75,000 Feet 2023-Sep-26 20 minutes

Proving Einstein Right 2023-Sep-20 19 minutes

Einstein's Golden Moment 2023-Sep-12 19 minutes

Everything You Know About Phineas Gage Is Wrong 2023-Jul-11 19 minutes

Why Do We Obsess Over Charles Darwin’s Health? 2023-Jun-27 20 minutes

The Seeds of Starvation 2023-Jun-20 21 minutes

When Scientific Brilliance Isn’t Enough 2023-Jun-13 19 minutes

The Curse of Knowing Too Much 2023-Jun-06 19 minutes

The Enigmas of Foreign Accent Syndrome 2023-May-30 18 minutes

The World’s Only Natural Nuclear Reactor 2023-May-23 21 minutes

How New DNA Sleuthing Can Expose Dangerous Killers—and You 2023-May-16 20 minutes

The Real Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer 2023-May-09 20 minutes

The Brilliant, Groundbreaking, and Wildly Overrated Leonardo da Vinci 2023-May-02 20 minutes

Spring update and "Innate" trailer 2023-Feb-06 7 minutes

Death Squared 2022-Nov-29 20 minutes

Death by Nutrition 2022-Nov-22 20 minutes

The Roadside Apocalypse 2022-Nov-15 20 minutes

The Blind Visionary 2022-Nov-08 21 minutes

The Scariest Paradise on Earth 2022-Nov-01 18 minutes

The Naked Shibboleth 2022-Oct-25 20 minutes

The Debaucherous Legacy of Johnny Appleseed 2022-Oct-18 21 minutes

The Most Evil Molecule 2022-Oct-11 18 minutes

The Life-Saving Rat Poison 2022-Oct-04 20 minutes

The Making of a Lobotomist 2022-Sep-27 18 minutes

Icepick Surgeon bonus excerpt on the making of the Unabomber 2022-Jul-12 19 minutes

The Murderer Who Made Movies Possible 2022-May-10 21 minutes

Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and the Irish Giant 2022-May-03 18 minutes

The Screwiest—and Perhaps Most Original—Idea of the 20th Century 2022-Apr-26 20 minutes

The Bird with Four Sexes 2022-Apr-19 19 minutes

When the Brain Deceives Itself 2022-Apr-12 18 minutes

Stephen Hawking and the Black Hole Mistake that Made His Career 2022-Apr-05 20 minutes

Albert Einstein and the Worst Prediction in the History of Science 2022-Mar-29 18 minutes

How to Be Smarter than Isaac Newton 2022-Mar-22 17 minutes

Claude Monet and Bee Purple 2022-Mar-15 19 minutes

The Unsung Heroes of Darwin’s Evolution 2022-Mar-08 20 minutes

The Sinister Angel Singers of Rome 2021-Dec-07 18 minutes

The Murderous Origins of the American Medical Association 2021-Nov-30 20 minutes

The Big ‘What If’ of Cancer 2021-Nov-23 20 minutes

The Harvard Medical School Janitor Who Solved a Murder 2021-Nov-16 21 minutes

Burn After Watching 2021-Nov-09 20 minutes

History’s First Car Crash Victim 2021-Nov-02 14 minutes

Real Life Zombies 2021-Oct-26 17 minutes

How Climate Change Will Remake the Human Body 2021-Oct-19 19 minutes

The ‘Mary Poppins’ Cancer 2021-Oct-12 18 minutes

Kangaroo (and Pig and Monkey and Dog and Donkey) Courts 2021-Oct-05 19 minutes

Icepick Surgeon audiobook excerpt 2021-Jul-13 22 minutes

The Anatomy Riots 2021-Jun-01 17 minutes

When a Hole in the Head Is Good for You 2021-May-25 16 minutes

When Mosquitos Cured Insanity 2021-May-18 17 minutes

The Death of the Lord God Bird 2021-May-11 19 minutes

Chewing it Over—and Over and Over and Over 2021-May-04 17 minutes

What's the Longest Word in the English Language? 2021-Apr-27 18 minutes

Why Don't We Have a Male Birth Control Pill Yet? 2021-Apr-20 18 minutes

Bonus interview with WNYC's Science Diction 2021-Apr-16 14 minutes

Marie Curie's (Nearly Disastrous) Trip to America 2021-Apr-13 17 minutes

The Most Important Lost Fossils in History 2021-Apr-06 19 minutes

The World’s First Global Vaccine Supply Chain Was Orphan Children 2021-Mar-30 20 minutes

The Joys, and Pains, of Operating on Yourself 2020-Nov-30 16 minutes

A School Shooting for Science 2020-Nov-13 19 minutes

Star Wars, Death Rays, and Donald Trump 2020-Oct-15 19 minutes

Vitamin G 2020-Oct-01 19 minutes

The CIA’s Drug-Fueled Orgies and You 2020-Sep-15 17 minutes

From Siberia with (Manipulative) Love 2020-Sep-01 19 minutes

The Man Who Couldn’t Read Numbers 2020-Aug-17 14 minutes

The Teflon Bomb 2020-Aug-06 19 minutes

Chocolate Cake & Atomic Bombs 2020-Aug-01 19 minutes

The Ice Island Murder 2020-Jul-14 19 minutes

Our Slimy Nazi Saviors 2020-Jul-07 16 minutes

Are Braces a Health Disaster? 2020-Jun-23 19 minutes

The Science Immigrants Who Saved Millions 2020-Jun-09 19 minutes

Tyrannosaurus Sex 2020-Jun-02 17 minutes

The Lost Dinosaurs of Central Park 2020-May-22 18 minutes

Exposing Nazi Medical Atrocities 2020-May-11 19 minutes

Glove at First Sight 2020-Apr-27 18 minutes

Galileo and Art, part 2 2020-Apr-20 17 minutes

Galileo and Art, part 1 2020-Apr-20 19 minutes

Tea Test Tempest 2019-Oct-26 14 minutes