Distillations magazine
Something Old, Something New
Humans owe a huge medical debt to horseshoe crabs. Now there’s an opportunity to pay it back.
Distillations articles reveal science’s powerful influence on our lives, past and present.
The Folly of the Martian Back-Up Plan
Why resources spent building a colony on the red planet would be a waste of money.
Probing the Mysteries of Human Digestion
The strange, sometimes sickening things we’ve done to understand what goes on inside our guts.
Opioids’ Devastating Return
The latest painkiller revival has left a trail of bodies, with no end in sight.
Water Fit for a King
Eleanor Roosevelt thanks a chemical engineering firm in Philadelphia for manufacturing water for the king and queen of England on their visit to America.
Gone to the Dogs
A long-running genetics project in Siberia helps us understand how we made man’s best friend.
Constructing Life
A historian of science goes searching for meaning in synthetic life.
If You Smell Something, Say Something
City dwellers of the 19th century were dogged by a foul terror: miasma.
Styrofoam, a Practical and Problematic Creation
The good and bad of an everlasting invention.
Old Brew, New Brew
Fermentation is the key to many of the lifesaving drugs we have today.
Sweating Blood
A misunderstanding of hippo physiology gave rise to one of the most widespread and pointless practices in medical history.
The Rise and Fall of Vannevar Bush
One war made him the most powerful man in science; the war that followed took that power away.
The Masters of Nature
The line between science and art was not always so stark.
It’s Nothing New: Sexism in the Lab
Why the recent findings of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine are enlightening, even if they aren’t surprising.
The Mystery of Yellow Rain
After the Vietnam War a mysterious yellow substance rained down from the skies of Southeast Asia. Was it a chemical weapon or something stranger?
Tummy Trouble
To slow global warming scientists have tried schemes both simple and bizarre to bottle up cow burps.
A Study In Scarlet
Warfarin started life as a rat poison, and for all its success the anticoagulant remains as dangerous as its origin suggests.
Hard Work and Happenstance
Where do new drugs come from? And why do so many fail?
Second Chances
Tattoos are more than decoration. But what do you do when the way you look no longer matches who you are?