The Disappearing Spoon

New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean brings you little-known stories from our scientific past.

Bagley, Hill, and Calhoun look over the mouse enclosure,

Death Squared

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archival photo of explorer Douglas Mawson.

Death by Nutrition

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Black bear crossing road with cars

The Roadside Apocalypse

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The front page of a newspaper from 1928 proposing a 13-month calendar

The Blind Visionary

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An image of Korea's DMZ, both the natural landscape and the fence surrounding it

The Scariest Paradise on Earth

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Illustration of a naked mole rat

The Naked Shibboleth

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illustration of Johnny Appleseed

The Debaucherous Legacy of Johnny Appleseed

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Women cultivate sugarcane in Jamaica

Sugar: The Most Evil Molecule

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Photo of Karl Link in a lab

The Lifesaving Rat Poison

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"Dr. Walter Freeman, left, and Dr. James W. Watts study an X ray before a psychosurgical operation.

The Making of a Lobotomist

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A horse trotting. Photogravure after Eadweard Muybridge.

The Murderer Who Made Movies Possible

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Cartoon of grave robbers

Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and the Irish Giant

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illustration of a screwworm fly dumping eggs on a wound

The Screwiest—and Perhaps Most Original—Idea of the 20th Century

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Illustration of white-throated sparrow

The Bird with Four Sexes

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Three-dimensional anatomical diagram of the brain

When the Brain Deceives Itself

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Photo of Stephen Hawkin floating in zero gravity

Stephen Hawking and the Mistake That Made His Career

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Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein and the Worst Prediction in the History of Science 

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Portrait of Issac Newton

How To Be Smarter Than Isaac Newton

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Color abstract landscape painting

Claude Monet and Bee Purple

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Ivory barnacles

The Unsung Heroes of Darwin’s Evolution

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A portrait of Niccolo Paganini on his deathbed.

Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius as Written by Our Genetic Code

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Portrait of Alessadro Moreschi

The Sinister Angel Singers of Rome

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Archival photo of the transylvania university

The Murderous Origins of the American Medical Association

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muller portrait

The Big ‘What If’ of Cancer

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drawing of trial

The Harvard Medical School Janitor Who Solved a Murder

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Archival photo of cleveland fire of 1929

Burn After Watching

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portrait of Mary Ward

History’s First Car Crash Victim

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Photo of a brain

Real-Life Zombies

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picture of a fox

How Climate Change Will Remake the Human Body

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illustrations of chimney sweeps

The ‘Mary Poppins’ Cancer

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Cartoon of a pig in a courtroom

Kangaroo (and Pig and Monkey and Dog and Donkey) Courts

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Cartoon of group of men dissecting bodies in an attic

The Anatomy Riots

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Doctors perform ancient neurosurgery

When a Hole in the Head Is a Good Thing

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Drawing of an anopheles mosquito

When Mosquitoes Cured Insanity

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Black and white photo of Sonny Boy the Woodpecker

The Death of the Lord God Bird

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Advertisement of a child eating

Chewing It Over—and Over and Over and Over

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Two tobacco plants, one with tobacco mosaic virus

What's the Longest Word in the English Language?

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Close up photo of contraceptive pill

Why Don’t We Have a Male Birth Control Pill Yet?

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Marie Curie in her lab

Crowdfunding Radium

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Bust of pekin man

Parking Lot or Peking Lot?

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Physician inoculates boy with smallpox vaccine aboard ship

Orphan Vaccines

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Image of sam Kean

Tales of Love and Madness from the Periodic Table

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