Distillations magazine

What happened to physics in Nazi Germany?

Anthropologist Jason Pine offers an up-close view of methamphetamine culture in small-town America.

Is recycled wastewater too much to swallow?

A government oilman maps a hidden realm.

Relics from a lab hint at centuries spent trying to solve diabetes.

The fight for Brooklyn’s coolest Superfund site.

Is there any truth in truth serums?

Inventor Charles Babbage drew inspiration from an unusual source for his analytical engine.

The day a lead balloon flew.

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.

Doctors battle for supremacy in the 17th century.

A small Massachusetts town of knickknack makers helps mold the material world.

A Japanese gourmand discovers the fifth element of taste.

Fleischmann’s Yeast for Health campaign turned unappetizing blocks of fresh yeast into one of the first health-food fads by using brazen, relentless advertising marked by unverifiable claims and “scientific” language.

In the 1960s chemists created artificial turf. But are synthetic fields better than natural grass?

The story of electricity, danger, nationalism, advertising, and pollution in the lighting of the United States.

In the years following World War II, chemical companies sold not only products but a lifestyle.

In a time of rapid technological change and globalization, separating the fake from the real was not always easy. Sound familiar?