Distillations

A reclusive expert of 19th-century photography laid the foundation for green chemistry solutions emerging today.

How a feisty, suicidal Nobel laureate infuriated both Hitler and Stalin, and stalled cancer research for 50 years along the way.

The world’s first plastic made Hollywood possible—and killed thousands of people along the way.

Forensic science can be a powerful crime-fighting tool, but misdeeds, dubious methodologies, and bogus claims threaten its reputation—and the reputation of science as a whole.

Gore-Tex changed the way Americans spend time outdoors.

Despite a lack of evidence, many have been captivated by the electrical whiz’s most mysterious project.

Institute fellow, science historian, and author Lisa Ruth Rand talks about all the debris floating around in outer space.

When Latin America challenged a new era of colonization.

How a radio pioneer transformed life at sea.

 The rise, fall, and resurrection of the humble leech.

What happens when an earth-shattering discovery runs up against the scientifically impossible?

Dreams of turning a wax cylinder into a “talking book.”

In the 1960s RCA created the world’s first liquid-crystal displays. How did the company fail to cash in on one of the modern world’s most ubiquitous technologies?

New forensics techniques are allowing researchers to solve historical mysteries based on the small traces we leave on everyday objects.

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the Science History Institute Book Club reads two histories of the space race: T-Minus by Jim Ottaviani and Shoot for the Moon by James Donovan.

Better photosynthesis, bomb-sniffing spinach, and that’s just the start of the ways plants are inspiring scientific innovation.

The Science History Institute Book Club reads The 4% Universe by Richard Panek.

Around the world a network of detectives searches for evidence of illicit nuclear activity. Is it enough to keep us safe from a nuclear catastrophe?

Lice can tell us a lot about who we are and where we came from.

CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology is remaking the world. How do we manage its potential harms and benefits?

A tiny animal with a big story.  

Old films are fragile, flammable, and frequently lost.

This episode highlights a 17th-century edition of Johannes de Sacrobosco’s astronomy textbook, De sphaera mundi (On the Sphere of the World), complete with interactive diagrams.

This episode highlights an object from the 19th century that was a precursor to the View-Master and virtual reality: the stereoscope.

A misunderstanding of hippo physiology gave rise to one of the most widespread and pointless practices in medical history.

An early cervicouterine device—aka a pessary—that was a precursor to the IUD.

Mary Mark Ockerbloom, the Science History Institute’s expert on all things Wikipedia, discusses the ways in which the site has changed and improved.

Would you be able to walk, think, or react without a nervous system? University of Pennsylvania engineering student Sonia Roberts explores this question while building robots inspired by real animals.

The disputed origin story of one of the 20th century’s most important inventions.

The rise of synthetic fibers and the war on cotton.

Can artificial intelligence help us decipher smell?

Philadelphia’s 2017 Geek of the Year on using virtual reality in resuscitation science research.

Many tragic accidents have provided unexpectedly valuable information for scientists.

An animation drawn from a podcast episode titled “Is Space the Place?: Trying to Save Humanity by Mining Asteroids.”

Using oral history to write a historical narrative in an audio tour.

In the 1950s, a devious oil company created a television show to flatter industrialists and win their business.

How biohackers are using artificial perceptions to enhance reality.

Dissatisfied with the limitations of the human body, some people are modifying themselves with electronic compasses and magnetic implants. But are they adding anything that the average smartphone can’t already do?

A novel swimsuit reveals that faster isn’t necessarily better.

Has someone in your family led an interesting life? You can help them tell their story. Lee Sullivan Berry, the Institute’s curator of oral histories, explains how.

The unexpected origin of the sports bra.

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

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

CHF owns some of the most indestructible menswear ever made.

Bizarre chemical structures are helping us better understand how our planet formed and, perhaps, where to find life elsewhere in the universe.

Take a peek behind the scenes at Dogfish Head, a brewery in Milton, Delaware, to see how they make their signature brews and their “ancient ales.”

The Cold War is long gone, as are our fears of global nuclear annihilation. But many nuclear weapons remain. Daniel Gross looks at what happens when some weapons can’t be retired.

It might not be as easy as you think.

Society has long had strict ideas about sex and gender binaries, but even nature doesn’t always comply.

We try to untangle the great GMO debate with the help of an unlikely couple—a plant geneticist and an organic farmer. 

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

The spectacles of Sophie Blanchard and the scientific missions of James Glaisher.

Modern technology is producing views of the brain that call into question conventional ideas of maturity and free will.

We explore the rhymes and reasons behind the ebbs and flows of technological innovation and obsolescence.

Studying ancient DNA (aDNA) is a lot like playing Whac-A-Mole: stamp out one problem and another will pop up and take its place.

Winter’s coming, so wrap up and discover the history of home insulation.

In 1800 the American women had seven or eight children on average. Today 35% of American women have two. How did this happen?

Phil Allegretti’s collection of old DDT cans, sprayers, and diffusers tells the story of our contradictory approach to pesticides.

Poisoners have long made use of the periodic table of elements for their dirty work—think arsenic and mercury—but modern technology offers a new elemental option: a disappearing poison.

Can (and should) science bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction?

Sometimes scientific discovery requires an unusual tool.

Whale oil has been used as an ingredient in soap, explosives, and even margarine. Has it also been a vital ingredient in space exploration?

Phosphorus helps power cells and forms the backbone of DNA. It’s also a vital ingredient in fertilizer, and one that may run short in the not-too-distant future.

The early 20th century was a rich time for creating new ways to process food.

What do postage stamps say about the countries that produce them? Plenty.

Richard Holmes speaks about the highs and lows of ballooning in his latest book, Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air.

In the 1950s hearing aids shrank from the size of a cigarette packet to the size of a lighter. The secret behind this shrinkage? The mighty transistor.

On today’s show we look at the modern power grid, which is on the brink of important changes. 

In 1886 a bomb exploded during a labor protest in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. Eight anarchists were tried and found guilty; some were executed. In 2003 researchers reassessed the forensic evidence.

Innovative industrialist, camouflage artist, and art detective, Maximilian Toch was a quintessential Renaissance man. He also symbolized the changing place of chemistry and chemists in turn-of-the-20th-century America.

What happened before humans could produce fertilizer from the air itself, courtesy of the Haber-Bosch process?

Rocks in space! Yeah, we know space is filled with rocks, but until now no one had any plans to mine them for their metals.

Meet J. J. Thomson, who disproved Einstein’s dictum that the man “who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so.”

One of the centerpieces of the Making Modernity exhibition is the workhorse Beckman Model E analytical ultracentrifuge.

An exhibition highlights the art and science of X-rays.

Polaroid film embodied the pinnacle of the analog instant photo and the marvels of molecular chemistry. But when Polaroid announced the end of film manufacturing in 2008, the Impossible Project set out to continue production.

Treasure or toxin? Today we follow Teflon's rise from happy accident to indispensable tool at work, home, and even war. 

Today we welcome back author Sam Kean to discuss the secrets and surprises contained in our DNA.

Good science takes time... or not? On today’s show we explore the extremes. 

Modern chemistry can fill in some ancient gaps.

In 1905, in France, chemist Jacques Brandenberger spilled wine on a tablecloth and wished for a material that could be wiped clean with a wet cloth.

Minneapolis’s Washburn A Mill, once the largest flour producer in the world, exploded twice: first in 1878 and again in 1928. The Washburn A—or rather, what’s left of it—has entered its third life as the Mill City Museum.

Joseph E. Snodgrass’s poetry memorably reflected the public faith in bloodletting as medical treatment.

Vanadium was a rare metal, but for 100 years after its first discovery in 1801 no one cared—until a chemist discovered it strengthened steel.

Electricity and Enlightenment go together like Benjamin Franklin and 100-dollar bills.

One mother’s dogged search for the cause of her two healthy babies’ mental decline led to the discovery of a new disease, the first preventative screening program for a genetic condition, and the first medical food in the United States.

On today’s episode we look at the diverse history of mass spectrometry, starting with a single question: exactly what is it?

For the 19th-century chemist, life was never simple. Chemical names, symbols, and relationships were in constant flux.

By 1790 chemistry was the up-and-coming science. The products of chemistry—industrially useful salts, acids, and alkalis—would soon be measured not by the ounce (or the gram) but by the ton.

Michal Meyer reviews the Boerhaave Museum in the Netherlands.

When the EPA needed a way to identify and measure pollutants, Robert Finnigan, an ex–Cold War engineer, offered his computerized mass spectrometer for the job.

Tuesday, October 10, 2000, proved an especially busy day for Alan MacDiarmid’s answering machine.

At the end of World War I, many worried that within a few years the world’s oil supply would be depleted. In response, Eugene Jules Houdry, a French mechanical engineer with a passion for racing cars, decided to turn lignite, a low-rank, brownish-black coal, into gasoline.

A natural plastic found in tree sap allowed the expansion of the 19th century’s global communications network.

In the 19th century a young Italian outside the chemistry mainstream played a part in the creation of the first periodic table.

Michael D. Gordin reviews Image and Reality, Alan J. Rocke’s book on the changing 19th-century understanding of molecular structure.

At a time when chemists knew little of molecular structure, a Viennese high-school teacher self-published a book that contained some of the earliest structural formulas.

In this week’s episode we pay tribute to the periodic table.

Rudolph Pariser uses one of the earliest computers to calculate the molecular structure of Dacron.

Distillations marks our 100th episode this week!

A legislator, a showman, and an inventor together created the first practical way to catch the world and the people in it in the strange and beautiful chemistry of the photograph.

What happened when the Industrial Revolution met the middle classes? The silver plating of common household goods such as teapots provided luxury at little cost.