Distillations magazine

Unexpected Stories from Science’s Past

Arts & Culture

Science connects with the arts and popular culture

Arts & Culture

The Third Sense

A Hollywood impresario tries to make his mark on the movie business.

Arts & Culture

The Art Detective

How do art historians know who painted a work of art and when it was painted?

Arts & Culture

Richard Hamilton’s Plastic Problem

Pop artists set themselves apart by addressing throwaway culture. But how could they make the disposable last?

stuffed dog
Arts & Culture

Death and Taxidermy

Step into the weird and wonderful world of stuffing animals.

Arts & Culture

Waning Interest

Two space-loving PR men consider the marketing of NASA’s Apollo program.

Arts & Culture

Graphic History

Comic books have been wrestling with the consequences of the atomic age for as long as their readers.

Arts & Culture

Rebel without a Chemistry Set

As child labor gave way to child education in the early 20th century, do-gooders sought a novel solution to juvenile delinquency.

Cottingley Fairy
Arts & Culture

The Magic of It All

How Victorians found a foolproof way to make science interesting for their children.

Arts & Culture

Man Made: A History of Synthetic Life

Science writer Philip Ball digs into myth, history, and science to untangle the roots of our fears of artificial life.

Arts & Culture

The Petroleum World

A government oilman maps a hidden realm.

Arts & Culture

Stranger Than Fiction

Is there any truth in truth serums?

Color print ad showing a row of men and women wearing sunglasses
Arts & Culture

Plastic Town

A small Massachusetts town of knickknack makers helps mold the material world.

Arts & Culture

The Science of Satisfaction

A Japanese gourmand discovers the fifth element of taste.

magazine ad showing a family in a kitchen
Arts & Culture

It’s a Mad, Mad World: Dow and the Age of Consumption

In the years following World War II, chemical companies sold not only products but a lifestyle.

Arts & Culture

Strange Things

In a time of rapid technological change and globalization, separating the fake from the real was not always easy. Sound familiar?

hand holding a pen and drawing
Arts & Culture

Comic Drama: Illustrating the Manhattan Project

Author and illustrator Jonathan Fetter-Vorm tells the stories of science through comics and graphic novels.

Arts & Culture

A Successful Failure

Silly Putty’s serious past.

Arts & Culture

The Artist in the Laboratory

Albert Edelfelt broke the rules when he painted his friend Louis Pasteur in the scientist’s natural element.