Distillations magazine

How one doctor’s letter and a string of dodgy studies spurred a public health panic.

By monitoring sewage, scientists can track disease outbreaks in near real time. But will the technology leave long-term privacy risks in its wake?

Lessons from the Polio Pioneers in an era of misinformation.

Can scrutinizing the ailments of historical figures really teach us anything?

Restoring the legacy of a physical chemistry pioneer.

Or will the scientist’s 200th birthday be his last hurrah?

Dow’s gamble on magnesium helped push the boundaries of human exploration and launched an ocean of consumer products.

How yellow fever outbreaks in the early United States anticipated much of what we lament about the COVID-19 era.

Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov led an ideologically perilous campaign to rid the world of famine.

Can a White House conference muster the political will to address the nation’s food insecurity and obesity crises? A summit from 1969 offers clues.

The pirate-turned-naturalist-turned-pirate-again inspired generations of British writers and scientists.

Biologist John Calhoun’s rodent experiments gripped a society consumed by fears of overpopulation.

Alternative currencies flourish in desperate times and situations.

Nuclear waste remains dangerous for millennia, so how do we keep people in the distant future away from it?

A centuries-old sailor’s hack enters the ecologist’s toolkit.

Calculating the automobile’s grisly impact on wildlife.

In showing that cholera spreads through tainted water, an English doctor helped lay epidemiology’s foundations.

Space toilets and the lessons of living in closed environments.