Distillations magazine
The Comet Panic of 1910, Revisited
A recent discovery in a remote Puerto Rican cave sheds new light on the hysteria that greeted Halley’s Comet a century ago.
Distillations articles reveal science’s powerful influence on our lives, past and present.
The Cancer-Free Dwarfs of Ecuador
How one man’s youthful rebellion may unlock a cure for cancer.
Man Made: A History of Synthetic Life
Science writer Philip Ball digs into myth, history, and science to untangle the roots of our fears of artificial life.
Science, Protector of the Common Good
Using chemistry to put a lid on unsavory practices.
Young and Positive
Many young people living with HIV put themselves at risk by not taking their medication properly.
Magical Thinking
What happened to physics in Nazi Germany?
Making Sense of Making Meth
Anthropologist Jason Pine offers an up-close view of methamphetamine culture in small-town America.
Waste Not, Want Not
Is recycled wastewater too much to swallow?
The Petroleum World
A government oilman maps a hidden realm.
Sickening Sweet
Relics from a lab hint at centuries spent trying to solve diabetes.
The Gowanus Canal
The fight for Brooklyn’s coolest Superfund site.
Stranger Than Fiction
Is there any truth in truth serums?
The French Connection
Inventor Charles Babbage drew inspiration from an unusual source for his analytical engine.
Up, Up, and Away
The day a lead balloon flew.
Packed Full of Questions
The discovery of vitamins in the early 20th century opened the gates to the flood of dietary supplements we have today. The result has been the marketing of nutritional anxieties against a backdrop of minimal regulation.
Tryals and Tribulations
Doctors battle for supremacy in the 17th century.
Plastic Town
A small Massachusetts town of knickknack makers helps mold the material world.
The Science of Satisfaction
A Japanese gourmand discovers the fifth element of taste.
Turf Wars
In the 1960s chemists created artificial turf. But are synthetic fields better than natural grass?