Distillations magazine

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.

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

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.

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?

Author and illustrator Jonathan Fetter-Vorm tells the stories of science through comics and graphic novels.

Silly Putty’s serious past.

Watch historians re-create a recipe for imitation coral, a popular material in early modern jewelry and home décor.

Can a parasite in your cat’s litter box take control of your mind?

Before today’s cell-phone, laptop, and TV screens, there was a whiskey advertisement.

The origins and unintended consequences of U.S. forest-fighting policy.

Through attempts to weaponize Earth itself, Cold War researchers unintentionally created a new understanding of a fragile planet.

Nearly a century of asbestos manufacturing carried the borough of Ambler, Pennsylvania, from bust to boom and back to bust. In recent years Ambler has gotten back on its feet, but its industrial past remains very much present.