Distillations magazine

A lucky streak sends a meteorologist on the flight of a lifetime.

What a manuscript can tell us about an iconic scientist and the history we’ve built around him.

How searching for alchemy’s secrets helped create modern science.

What charlatans of the past can teach us about the COVID-19 crisis.

Gore-Tex changed the way Americans went outside.

In the waning days of World War II, a psychiatrist raced across Germany to uncover the harrowing abuses of Nazi doctors.

Wicked creatures and a defiant chemist make their mark on the periodic table.

After 150 years of scrutiny, scholars still misrepresent the British doctor’s life and gender.

Despite a lack of evidence, many have been captivated by the electrical whiz’s most mysterious project.

How the often-maligned genre was used to train soldiers, explain the weather, and describe the modern world.

A crusading doctor’s stomach-churning efforts to beat back pellagra in the American South.

Baking homemade bread anchors us to millennia-long traditions.

In the mid-20th century, colleagues-turned-rivals Maria Telkes and Hoyt Hottel engineered new ways of heating American homes.

Elia Kazan’s 1950 film noir finds new relevance in a moment gripped by pandemic and social unrest.

The clues that betray a book’s disreputable past.

A recent collection showcases the famous and not-so-famous women who have left their mark on the periodic table.

A wildlife painter who ran afoul of xenophobic authorities during World War II found refuge and renewed purpose in the lab.

Ainissa Ramirez tracks the (sometimes literal) ways technology can shape our lives.