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.
From the Front Line to the Freezer Aisle
How World War II changed the way we eat.
Picric Acid’s Volatile History
A mutable chemical and our collective choices.
What Doomed Central Park’s Dinosaurs?
Historians unmask the villain who killed off New York’s Paleozoic Museum.
Water and Power
Could a century-old aqueduct point the way to Los Angeles’s clean energy future?
We’re Going to Work Miracles
The failed promises of Project Plowshare.
A Tragedy with No End
Why does Garrett Hardin’s pessimistic fable haunt our collective imagination?
That Time Demons Possessed the Telegraph
Solar storms from long ago have become the delight of some scientists—and the dread of others.
21 Years, 7,600 Tests
Mary Papanicolaou, the woman behind the man behind the Pap smear.
Controversy, Control, and Cosmetics in Early Modern Italy
In a society that damned women for both plainness and adornment, wearing makeup became a defiant act of survival.
Joe Hin Tjio Counts Chromosomes
A basic scientific error hid in plain sight for decades until an Indonesian geneticist spent Christmas break on a lab bender.
Everyday Monsoons
Washes and other gaps in the Sonoran Desert.
The Dinosaurs Died in Spring
Science that ushered in a new epoch also revealed stunning details from Earth’s distant past.
Sylvia Earle and the Call of the Deep
Adventure and tangled interests under the sea.
Matchmaking in Colonial India
An inconspicuous technology sparks revolution on the subcontinent.
The Eclipse That Killed a King (and May Have Saved a Kingdom)
How the scientific prowess of King Mongkut of Siam helped stave off European incursion.
Dreams and Nightmares
Oxycodone’s early years.
Rings of Fire
Arsenic cycles through racism and empire in the Americas.
Valery Fabrikant and Science’s Ethical Limits
Is it right to publish research from an unrepentant murderer?