The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean

The Johnny Appleseed of Disney fame was complete bunk. He brought not wholesome apples to people, but liquor—and lots of it, all thanks to the bizarre biology of this misunderstood fruit...

It fueled slavery, as well as the Nazi death machine. It kills millions of people every year through cancer and heart disease. And you almost certainly have some in your home. That’s the legacy of sugar...

Warfarin was the best rat poison in history. It’s also, now, one of the most important, life-saving—and freakishly unlikely—drugs in the history of medicine...

Dr. Walter Freeman blamed himself for the death of his favorite son. But instead of reflecting or growing personally, he used that death to become the most notorious lobotomist in the history of medicine...

A bonus excerpt from my book The Icepick Surgeon on the making of the Unabomber, through a cruel, unethical psychology experiment at Harvard University...

Like Leonardo and Albrecht Dürer before him, photographer Eadweard Muybridge was a legendary pioneer in both art and science. He was also a cold-blooded murderer.

Charles Byrne was an eight-foot Irish giant ️who loved a beer or 3 with the lads. His funeral became a legendary party—as well as one of biggest scandals in science history, when a famous anatomist named John Hunter stole his body for dissection.

The New York Times one credited biologist Edward Knipling with “the most original idea of the 20th century.” What was it? A way to fight the screwworm, the vilest parasite on earth—and maybe stop malaria, the deadliest disease in human history, too.

What a strange little sparrow can teach us about love, sex, human biology, and a whole lot more...

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...