The Disappearing Spoon podcast

Comets were long seen as portents of doom, but the spectrograph changed all of that. So why did everyone panic when Halley’s Comet returned in 1910?

It’s the 80th anniversary of the Dutch Hongerwinter during World War II, which led to widespread starvation and an inadvertent breakthrough in treating deadly celiac disease.

After 40 years of studying snakes, Karl Schmidt suffered his first bite. And when he did, he kept a gruesome diary to document the danger—right to the edge of death.

Parasites can force animals to do nefarious things by manipulating their minds—including, uncomfortably, the minds of human beings.

FDA scientist Frances Oldham Kelsey spared thousands of babies from deadly birth defects and revolutionized drug research. But was her legacy all good? It’s a complicated story.

Japanese physicist Fusa Miyake has sparked a revolution in archaeology by studying radioactive tree rings—work that also terrifies astronomers, who fear it foretells doom for our civilization.

A woman who drowned in Paris became one of the most famous faces in the world as the model for CPR dummies, saving millions of lives while remaining completely unknown.

In the early 1800s, the first Egyptian mummies in Europe served as a crucial test for evolution—a test that, according to people then, evolution flunked.

In the 1800s, mummies found their way into everything from fertilizer to food, and were especially prized as medicine. Mummy mania was a strange time.

How did a scientist who developed a Nobel Prize–worthy idea end up driving a shuttle van for a living and miss the award completely?

Physicist György Hevesy had a talent for tricks and stunts—including one that prevented Nazi storm troopers from stealing a Nobel Prize.

This bonus episode highlights an excerpt from Ferris Jabr’s book Becoming Earth.

To mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings during WWII, we look at the surprisingly important role science played.

One doctor’s controversial crusade to keep people out of prison through nose jobs, eye lifts, and other plastic surgery.

In 1959, nine Russian hikers mysteriously died on a snowy trek known as the Dyatlov Pass incident. Has science finally cracked the case?

After a tenure dispute, engineer Valery Fabrikant murdered four colleagues. So why is he still allowed to publish scientific papers?

World famous 19th-century chemist Justus von Liebig quickly became infamous for his role in the killing of four starving infants.

Patient after patient died under the care of a single nurse. Why did so many statisticians think she was innocent?