Sam Kean, Bleav
129 episodes listed below
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A topsy-turvy science-y history podcast by Sam Kean. I examine overlooked stories from our past: the dental superiority of hunter-gatherers, the crooked Nazis who saved thousands of American lives, the American immigrants who developed the most successful cancer screening tool in history, the sex lives of dinosaurs, and much, much more. These are charming little tales that never made the history books, but these small moments can be surprisingly powerful. These are the cases where history gets inverted, where the footnote becomes the real story.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Science history becomes a record of contested credit, practical ingenuity, and the people who held their ground when evidence met power.
Sam Kean turns science history into tightly staged narrative, often beginning at the moment a dispute, escape, or act of professional courage becomes unavoidable.
Egyptian beer ferments in a bathroom; your next science history detour heads for besieged Paris.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A 1919 hometown speech becomes a layered look at the Scopes case, where evolution, religion, and legal strategy collide.
The episode is strongest when it ties William Jennings Bryan's 1919 hometown commencement speech in Salem, Illinois to the later Scopes fight.
A siege tale that becomes a balloon escape and a helium rivalry.
A siege, an eclipse, and a hot air balloon give this episode a sharp historical frame. It moves from a trapped astronomer to the politics around a disputed element, keeping the stakes concrete as travel closes off and a scientist refuses the easy way out.
A cheesy TV show helped make modern paramedics feel normal.
The episode shows that modern paramedic care did not start as a given. It follows how a public-safety problem became a narrow California law, then moved into Hollywood, where a cheesy TV show helped turn paramedics into something ordinary for the rest of the country and, in…
A bird-guide mystery turns into fraud, espionage, and a legend that keeps getting harder to trust.
The episode starts with Pamela Rasmussen at the Smithsonian, working through a field guide to the birds of India, then follows the charge that Richard Meinertshagen was never quite the authority he presented himself as.
A poached cave beetle reveals the scientific, ethical, and historical trouble inside a species name.
A blind amber cave beetle sits at the center of a tangled story about scientific naming, political memory, and the cost of leaving an offensive label untouched.
A steady account of Audubon's rise, and of how the Bird of Washington story came apart under closer looking.
This episode follows the Bird of Washington story as Audubon moves from disputed figure to accepted name inside the Academy's circle. The September 1831 vote and the subscription to Birds of America give the piece its arc, and there is a quiet sting in how quickly reputation can…
A roadside eagle becomes a study in ambition and scientific fame.
An eagle on a Kentucky road opens into a bigger account of how John James Audubon made himself impossible to ignore. It begins with the bird, the hog pen, the rifle, and the good luck of finding the rarer species after two empty years, then uses that scene to frame ambition and…
A strange prize ceremony makes the case for taking ridiculous science seriously.
An absurd prize ceremony gives the episode a clean question: when scientific work looks ridiculous, what can it still reveal? It opens with Eleanor McGuire's study of London cab drivers, whose hippocampi grew far larger after mastering 25,000 streets, then follows a trail…
Fast histories of familiar things.
Human origins, told from the field.
The deep past, argued into the present.
London Zoo keeps losing lion cubs in the 1880s.
Sam Kean examines why German doctors, engineers, and other technical professionals supported Nazism during the economic crisis of the early 1930s, when bread prices rose from about 250 Deutschmarks to 200 billion.
This episode investigates the mysterious deaths aboard the submarine Thetis and J.B.S.
This episode recounts Charles Lindbergh's spiritual crisis and his quest to build a mechanical heart for his sister-in-law.
This episode reveals the surprising, manufactured origins of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, showing how a local publicity stunt in Dayton, Tennessee, turned a reluctant teacher into a national symbol.
This episode tells the thrilling story of French astronomer Jules Janssen, who, during the 1870 Prussian siege of Paris, refused a safe passage offer and instead attempted a daring hot-air balloon escape to reach Algeria and observe a solar eclipse.
This episode reveals the shocking history that paramedics were once illegal in most of the U.S., leading to thousands of preventable deaths.
This episode investigates the double life of Richard Meinertshagen, a celebrated British ornithologist and World War I spy.
This episode explores the controversial practice of naming species after people, focusing on the Hitler beetle that's being poached to near extinction by neo-Nazi collectors.
This episode investigates the scientific fraud behind John James Audubon's legendary 'Birds of America,' focusing on his fabricated 'Bird of Washington.' It reveals how Audubon plagiarized artwork, violated scientific standards, and deceived subscribers, while exploring why his rival George Ord failed to expose him and how modern institutions are now reevaluating his legacy.
This episode explores the complex legacy of John James Audubon, revealing how the famous naturalist's career was built on a combination of artistic genius, relentless self-promotion, and potentially fraudulent scientific claims.
Host Sam Kean explores the history and impact of the Ig Nobel Prizes, which honor scientific achievements that "first make you laugh, then make you think." Through stories of levitating frogs, duck necrophilia, and rectal breathing research, the episode reveals how these seemingly silly awards have led to serious scientific benefits, public engagement, and even helped some researchers' careers.
This episode explores the unexpected downsides of winning a Nobel Prize, focusing on the psychological phenomenon known as the 'Nobel disease.' Through stories of scientists like Walter Brattain, Richard Feynman, and Linus Pauling, host Sam Kean examines how the prestige, pressure, and ego inflation that come with the award can lead to career stagnation and the embrace of pseudoscientific beliefs.
Sam Kean presents excerpts from his new book 'Dinner with King Tut,' exploring how experimental archaeologists recreate ancient Egyptian life.
This episode explores the bizarre 19th-century literary feud that erupted after Charles Dickens wrote a scene depicting spontaneous human combustion in his novel 'Bleak House'.
This episode traces the dramatic story of asbestos, from its ancient use as a fireproof marvel to its role in preventing urban infernos during the Industrial Revolution, and finally to its exposure as a deadly carcinogen through the tragic case of factory worker Nellie Kershaw and the crusading work of Dr.
This episode tells the tragic story of Leonard Darwin, the least accomplished son of Charles Darwin, who spent his life feeling inadequate in his brilliant family.
This episode explores how Lancelot Hogben discovered that African clawed frogs could detect pregnancy through urine, creating the first affordable, non-lethal pregnancy test that revolutionized women's healthcare.
This episode tells the story of French scientist Marta Gauthier's discovery that Down syndrome is caused by an extra chromosome, and how her colleague Jérôme Lejeune took credit for identifying it as chromosome 21.
This episode tells the dramatic story of biologist Joe Chio's discovery that humans have 46 chromosomes, not 48 as had been believed for decades.
This episode explores the medical mystery of why children with celiac disease—a disorder that causes malnutrition—actually improved during the Dutch Hunger Winter famine of 1944-45.
This episode tells the story of Carl Schmidt, a world-renowned herpetologist who, in 1957, was bitten by a highly venomous boomslang snake.
This episode explores the bizarre case of Jack and Donna Wright, who hoarded a world record 689 cats, and investigates the shocking scientific hypothesis that their behavior might have been influenced by a brain-altering parasite, Toxoplasma gondii.
This episode tells the story of Frances Oldham Kelsey, the FDA pharmacologist who in 1960 single-handedly blocked the approval of the dangerous drug thalidomide in the United States, preventing a birth-defect disaster that affected 100,000 babies in Europe.
This episode explores the history and science of solar storms, from the 1859 Carrington Event that caused telegraph systems to fail and auroras to appear in Venezuela, to the 1989 storm that knocked out Quebec's power grid.
This episode uncovers the mysterious origin of the face used on CPR training mannequins, known as Rescue Annie.
This episode explores the bitter 19th-century feud between biologists Georges Cuvier and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck over evolution.
This episode explores the bizarre 19th-century craze of 'mummy mania,' when Egyptian mummies were imported to Europe by the ton.
This episode tells the story of Douglas Prasher, the molecular biologist who discovered the gene for Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) but ended up driving a shuttle van while other scientists won the Nobel Prize using his work.
George Hevesi's radioactive-meat prank began as a test of whether his English landlady recycled leftovers and became an early demonstration of radioactive tracers.
A bonus episode adapted from a book about how plants influence Earth's climate, focusing on a scientist's accidental discovery of plants' role in hail formation.
A narrative about geologists scouting Normandy beaches before D-Day, highlighting the role of science in the invasion.
The episode recounts the story of entomologist Edward Nippling, who as a child picked screwworm maggots from cow wounds and later studied them to find a weakness.
This episode explores Stephen Hawking's most famous discovery about black holes and the blunder that accompanied it, as part of a series on legendary physicists' mistakes.
This episode explores the surprising animal that most influenced Charles Darwin's theory of evolution: the barnacle, not the finches or tortoises.
A coin-flip duel between doctors in 1818 leads to the formation of the American Medical Association.
The episode recounts the 1932 suicide attempt of geneticist Herman Muller and the subsequent crises in his life.