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

Distillations Podcast
archival photo of explorer Douglas Mawson.

Death by Nutrition

Distillations Podcast
Black bear crossing road with cars

The Roadside Apocalypse

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

The Blind Visionary

Distillations Podcast
Illustration of a naked mole rat

The Naked Shibboleth

Distillations Podcast
Photo of Karl Link in a lab

The Lifesaving Rat Poison

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

The Making of a Lobotomist

Distillations Podcast
Illustration of white-throated sparrow

The Bird with Four Sexes

Distillations Podcast
Color abstract landscape painting

Claude Monet and Bee Purple

Distillations Podcast
Archival photo of cleveland fire of 1929

Burn After Watching

Distillations Podcast
Photo of a brain

Real-Life Zombies

Distillations Podcast
Cartoon of group of men dissecting bodies in an attic

The Anatomy Riots

Distillations Podcast
Marie Curie in her lab

Crowdfunding Radium

Distillations Podcast
Bust of pekin man

Parking Lot or Peking Lot?

Distillations Podcast
Physician inoculates boy with smallpox vaccine aboard ship

Orphan Vaccines

Distillations Podcast