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Why is the p in pot aspirated while the p in spot is not?

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Diagram of a human head in profile showing the location of vocal organs and possible places of articulation for speech sounds, with labels for lips, teeth, tongue, palate, uvula, pharynx, and vocal cords, and numbered regions corresponding to types of articulation such as bilabial, alveolar, and velar.
pronunciation Diagram depicting the location of human vocal organs and possible places of articulation used for speech.

In English, the difference in the pronunciation of the letter p in "pot" and "spot" is determined by phonological rules regarding aspiration.

Aspiration refers to a forceful expulsion of air that accompanies the release of certain consonant sounds. In English, voiceless stops like /p/, /t/, and /k/ are aspirated when they occur at the beginning of a word, such as in "pot".12

However, these same sounds are unaspirated when they follow a voiceless alveolar fricative, such as the /s/ in "spot". This occurs because of variations in the timing of the glottis: in "pot," the glottis remains in a voiceless position for a short time after the lips release the stop, creating the aspirated sound. In "spot," the voicing begins as soon as the lips come apart, resulting in an unaspirated stop. These variations are known as allophones, which are different phonetic realizations of the same underlying phoneme.123