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
Episode 181: Chemotherapy
Episode 180: Best of Distillations #12
Episode 179: Best of Distillations #11
Episode 178: In the Air
Episode 177:The Old Show
Episode 176: The Adult Show
Episode 175: The Kid Show
Episode 174: Water Webs
Episode 173: Power Up
Episode 172: On Beauty
Episode 171: Underground Worlds
Episode 170: Urban Agriculture
Episode 169: Neighborhood Preservation
Episode 168: So Argon Walks Into a Bar...
Episode 167: Cold War Chemistry
Episode 166: Alchemy After Dark
Episode 165: In Good Taste
Episode 164: Bones
Episode 163: A Day in the Life - Night
Episode 162: A Day in the Life - Noon
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