Search Results
Anthropological museums were built on the bodies of marginalized, non-consenting people. Can they ever exist ethically?
The population geneticists who led the Human Genome Diversity Project wanted to “hammer the final nail in the coffin of race,” but instead they wound up reaffirming it.
For decades, nearly all race science was funded by one man. His goal? To ensure the intellectual continuity of a dubious field.
When yellow fever struck the city in 1793, faulty race logic almost destroyed it.
The surprising scientific and religious origins of the myth of race.
A podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine.
Explore scientist John Calhoun’s mouse utopia and what it can tell us about the ways we impose lessons for society onto lab experiments.
How an antarctic scientific expedition turned deadly thanks to an unlikely source: dog liver.
We all know how much the automobile changed the world for people. This episode explores how drastically it changed—and harmed—wildlife.
The story of Thomas Schall, a U.S. Congressman dedicated to reforming our messy, lopsided, archaic, and maddingly inconsistent monthly calendar.
Explore the contradictions of Korea’s biggest natural wildlife refuge: the war-ravaged border between the North and South known as the DMZ.
Naked mole-rats are blind, yet they can still recognize—and kill—outsiders. How? And what does it have to do with the Old Testament?
Sam Kean explores how the legendary gardener’s reputation as the patron saint of the American wilderness ignores his boozy origins.
Trace how such a sweet treat has caused so much harm—from slavery to the Nazi death machine.
Follow blood thinner warfarin’s unlikely journey from moldy clover and cow killer to lifesaving drug.
The story behind notorious surgeon Walter Freeman’s contempt for his father, failures with his sons, and obsession with lobotomies.
Deciphering Old German Script in the Bredig Archives.
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.
Encountering rare earths in art, environments, and the phone in my pocket.
Digitized 16mm film and VHS tapes include promotional videos, science education series, and a silent recording from the 1920s featuring Marie Curie.
A brief history of flea medicine.
Crushing, smashing, and grinding for the sake of greener science.
The pirate-turned-naturalist-turned-pirate-again inspired generations of British writers and scientists.
When horses gallop, do all four hooves ever leave the ground at once? This episode recounts the saga that led to the answer.
IRLA membership places Institute on prestigious list of some of the nation’s oldest and most distinguished historical societies.
Learn how the daring heist of an anatomical wonder forever sullied the reputation of a great scientist.
An entomologist from Texas supposedly came up with ‘the single most original idea’ to eradicate screwworms.
Find out what a strange little sparrow can teach us about love, sex, and human biology.
Nuclear waste remains dangerous for millennia, so how do we keep people in the distant future away from it?
The Gordon Cain Conference is a gathering of scholars in the history of science and related fields.