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Distillations

Using stories from science’s past to understand our world

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Fighting through the Fear
Health

Lessons from the Polio Pioneers in an era of misinformation.

Diagnosing the Dead
Health

Can scrutinizing the ailments of historical figures really teach us anything?

Georg Bredig: Scientist, Humanist, and Holocaust Survivor
People

Restoring the legacy of a physical chemistry pioneer.

Death Squared
People

This episode of The Disappearing Spoon explores scientist John Calhoun’s mouse utopia and what it can tell us about the ways we impose lessons for society onto lab experiments.

Death by Nutrition
Health

This episode of The Disappearing Spoon explores how an antarctic scientific expedition turned deadly thanks to an unlikely source: dog liver. 

Does Louis Pasteur Still Matter?
People

Or will the scientist’s 200th birthday be his last hurrah?

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Recommended
The Dark Stars of Marietta Blau
People
A scientist pitted hard work and ingenuity against the constraints she faced as a Jewish woman.
Searching for Isabel Morgan
People
Reconsidering the fate of an overlooked polio fighter.
Crowdfunding Radium
People
When American women bought Marie Curie a vital gram of the element.
The Sun Queen and the Skeptic: Building the World’s First Solar Houses
Environment
In the mid-20th century, colleagues-turned-rivals Maria Telkes and Hoyt Hottel engineered new ways of heating American homes.
The Nurse Who Introduced Gloves to the Operating Room
Pandemic Perspectives
 Caroline Hampton and the forgotten origins of the first personal protective equipment.
Dr. Butler and the Quest for the Philosophers’ Stone
Early Science & Alchemy
How searching for alchemy’s secrets helped create modern science.
Lou Henry Hoover, Lost in Translation
People
Though often celebrated, the adventurous First Lady never received full credit for her scientific accomplishments.
Ruth Patrick’s Lovely Creatures
Water
The groundbreaking ecologist showed that the biological diversity within a stream can be used to diagnose its health.
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