Distillations magazine

In the 1980s workers in an English peat bog started unearthing bodies, the apparent victims of violence.

The biomedical researcher talks about her work using nanotechnology to detect and treat disease.

Movies and television shows like to portray scientists as lone geniuses. But scientists with disabilities know the reality is much more complex.

Humans have a masochistic love of capsaicin, a molecule responsible for the burn in hot peppers. That connection could be a key to pain relief.

Historian Ingrid Ockert makes a case for the spoken word.

Gene editing promises to revolutionize medicine. But how safe is safe enough for the patients testing these therapies?

Scientists William Vogt and Norman Borlaug took very different approaches to feeding the world.

Better photosynthesis, bomb-sniffing spinach, and that’s just the start of the ways plants are inspiring scientific innovation.

Distillations talks to the biochemist about the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9, the tool’s promise, and dangers of its misuse.

How did a Philadelphia chemist wind up a Soviet spy?

For centuries women have been looking at the stars despite earthly obstacles.

Before Bill Nye the Science Guy, there was Professor Harvey E. White of Continental Classroom.

Why emphasizing intellectual achievement and scientific “genius” harms scientists with intellectual disabilities—and the rest of us.

The silent movie Where Are My Children? is more than a century old, but its central question—who “deserves” access to reproductive rights—still resonates today.

Around the world a network of detectives searches for evidence of illicit nuclear activity. Is it enough to keep us safe from a nuclear catastrophe?

Lice can tell us a lot about who we are and where we came from.

Foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking eccentric Harry R. Truman became a folk hero for refusing to evacuate his home in the months before Mount St. Helens erupted. Where did he go once it did?

When crime and politics influenced American baking habits.