The Disappearing Spoon: a science history podcast with Sam Kean

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Mass Psychosis in Food Science

Americans happily ate monosodium glutamate for decades. Then one (possibly fake) letter sparked mass hysteria over “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”, and the bogus MSG scare was born...

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  The Would-Be Saint's Battle over Down Syndrome

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  The Battle over Human Chromosomes

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  The Halley's Comet Panic

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  The Winter when People Ate Tulips

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  Why Keep a Diary of a Toxic Snakebite?

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  Machiavellian Microbes

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  The Woman Who “Turned Back a Plague of Old Testament Proportions”

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  The Doom Lurking inside Trees

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  The Mona Lisa of the Seine

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  Savant Idiots

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  When Mummymania Swept the World

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  The Sadder Side of the Nobel Prizes

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  The Scientific Way to Fool a Nazi

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  The Mysterious Mote

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  The Science of D-Day

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  Can Plastic Surgery Keep You out of Prison?