The Disappearing Spoon, a podcast collaboration between the Science History Institute and New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean, returns for its second season on October 5, 2021.
To celebrate, our producer, Rigoberto Hernandez, sat down with Kean to talk about his new book The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science. This interview is a great companion piece for The Disappearing Spoon series since some of the stories in the book relate directly to some of the stories in the upcoming season.
In this interview Kean talks about some of the case studies in his book, including how Thomas Edison shifted his ethics on the death penalty because of a grudge, how a part-time chemist from Philadelphia became an unlikely spy, and how an American doctor purposefully infected people in Guatemala with venereal diseases—all in the name of science.
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
Exploring 'Health Equity Tourism'
The Mothers of Gynecology
Correcting Race
"That Rotten Spot"
Black Pills
Bad Blood, Bad Science
The African Burial Ground
Return, Rebury, Repatriate
The Vampire Project
Keepers of the Flame
Calamity in Philadelphia
BONUS EPISODE: Cheddar Man
Origin Stories
New Season Trailer! Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race
Mechanochemistry
Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius as Written by Our Genetic Code
The Sinister Angel Singers of Rome
Disappearing Spoon: The Murderous Origins of the American Medical Association
The Big ‘What If’ of Cancer
Disappearing Spoon: The Harvard Medical School Janitor Who Solved a Murder
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