In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about Mary Ward, a budding naturalist and astronomer from Ireland. She spent a lot of time observing plants and animals through a microscope and published a book of detailed sketches that dazzled readers and colleagues in the 1800s. However, her career was cut short by a strange curiosity of that time period: the automobile. They weren’t the same cars that are around today, but her death was the first car death recorded in history, and it foreshadowed the carnage the automobile continues to leave behind.
CreditsHost: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
Atomic Power and Promise: What's Become of Our Nuclear Golden Age?
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
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