How the brilliant geek Nikola Tesla grew obsessed with an outlandish “death ray,” and the ray’s surprising connection to Donald Trump




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Star Wars, Death Rays, and Donald Trump

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.

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Ahead of the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, a look at the surprisingly important role science played in shaping—and remaking—an invasion that could have easily been a disaster...

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The Science of D-Day

One doctor’s controversial crusade to keep men and women out of prison through nose jobs, eye lifts, and other plastic surgery.

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Can Plastic Surgery Keep You out of Prison?

In 1959, nine Russian hikers mysteriously died on a trek through the snowy wilderness—fueling a half-century of hysterical conspiracies. Has science finally cracked the case?

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The Russian Roswell

After a tenure dispute, mechanical engineer Valery Fabrikant murdered four colleagues in cold blood at his university in Montreal. So why is he still allowed to publish scientific papers?

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When Tenure Means Life and Death

Chemist Justus von Liebig was perhaps the most famous scientist in the world in the mid-1800s—but quickly became infamous for his role in the killing of four starving infants.

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Star Wars, Death Rays, and Donald Trump

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