Distillations magazine

How do we think about a world that doesn’t yet exist?

In Silicon Valley’s renegade days, a hardheaded Texan chased dreams of a flying car.

A simple invention that saved lives and led to the discovery of a hidden form of life.

Synthetic fibers not only changed the fashion industry; they changed how women lived their lives.

Step into the weird and wonderful world of stuffing animals.

The story of Louis Pasteur and the development of the rabies vaccine.

Data overload is nothing new. How have people in the past managed their versions of big data?

Dive into the world of nixtamalization, and find out how you’re eating a small piece of ancient chemistry each time you bite into a taco.

Resurrecting radium’s role in early genetics research.

Two space-loving PR men consider the marketing of NASA’s Apollo program.

Was Svante Arrhenius the first climate change believer?

Does history explain why today’s smart machines can seem so dumb?

A manuscript reveals the mark a mysterious American alchemist made on Isaac Newton and other early chemists.

Some of the most indestructible menswear ever made.

Smallpox, polio, and the political and scientific haggling behind two medical triumphs.

Science’s centuries-long hunt for a common language.

Take a trip down Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal with cartographer and citizen scientist Eymund Diegel.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita displaced more than a million people in 2005, many of whom turned to trailers provided by FEMA. But it soon became apparent that these trailers were making people sick.