Clay Cansler

Clay Cansler is managing editor of Distillations. He previously worked as a journalist and book editor.

The good and bad of an everlasting invention.

Decay makes beauty in an ancient bottle.

It’s not often that art literally highlights pollution.

Comic-book characters have been wrestling with the consequences of the atomic age for nearly as long as we three-dimensional characters.

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

A government oilman maps a hidden world.

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

Mix a 19th-century chemist with a road builder in South America. Add cows and boil. (Bring a strong stomach to this story.)