The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean

Genetic genealogy can catch brutal killers. It can also unmask affairs, secret adoptions, and other dark secrets. As well as expose you—yes, you—to the unholy alliance of Big Tech and shady police work...

He coulda would shoulda been the next Einstein. Instead, Robert Oppenheimer fritted away his talents on trendy science and political gamesmanship—and it burned him deep in his soul...

Leonardo da Vinci was brilliant, groundbreaking—and especially with regard to his science—wildly overrated. All because he lacked one all-important quality: sitzfleisch...

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"

The “mouse utopia” experiment showed just how quickly animal heaven can turn into animal hell—and revealed how eager human beings are to interpret science through the lens of extremist politics...

Polar explorer Douglas Mawson made several mistakes on his harrowing journey across Antarctica. But the biggest blunder involved eating animal livers oversaturated with vitamin A, a sure death sentence...

Automobiles kill several million animals every single day. Scientists are still coming to grips with the carnage...

Thomas Schall was first blind member of Congress. There, he envisioned a better, smarter, more efficient world—brought about by his radical new calendar. Too bad the rest of us couldn’t see the future as clearly as he did...

The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Korea is a place of guns and heartache and anger—and also one of the most thriving natural wildlife habitats on Earth...

Naked mole-rats are medical marvels—impervious to cancer and immune to old age. Too bad they’re also vicious murderers...