Distillations

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a new public interest in health inequities research. With this new focus, there also has come new funding with many researchers and institutions clamoring to receive lucrative funding and recognition in the field, but there are no official guidelines to distinguish a health equity expert.

In this episode we sit down with Dr. Elle Lett who coined the term "health equity tourism" to describe when privileged and previously unengaged scholars enter the health equity field without developing the necessary expertise.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producers: Padmini Raghunath & Sarah Kaplan
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions

Of all wealthy countries, the United States is the most dangerous place to have a baby. Our maternal mortality rate is abysmal, and over the past five years it’s only gotten worse. And there are huge racial disparities: Black women are three times more likely to die than white women. Despite some claims to the contrary, the problem isn’t race, it’s racism. In this episode we trace the origins of this harrowing statistic back to the dawn of American gynecology—a field that was built on the bodies of enslaved women. And we’ll meet eight women who have dedicated their lives to understanding and solving this complex problem.
Credits
Host: Alexis Pedrick
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions .

Certain medical instruments have built-in methods of correcting for race. They’re based on the premise that Black bodies are inherently different from White bodies. The tool that measures kidney function, for example, underestimates how severe some Black patients’ kidney disease is, and prevents them from getting transplants. Medical students and doctors have been trying to do away with race correction tools once and for all. And they’re starting to see some success.
About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race
“Correcting Race” is Episode 9 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race , a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations , the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom .
Credits | Resource List | Transcript

Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions .

Resource List
A Unifying Approach for GFR Estimation: Recommendations of the NKF-ASN Task Force on Reassessing the Inclusion of Race in Diagnosing Kidney Diseas e, by Cynthia Delgado, Mukta Baweja, Deidra C Crews, Nwamaka D Eneanya, Crystal A Gadegbeku, Lesley A Inker, Mallika L Mendu, W Greg Miller, Marva M Moxey-Mims, Glenda V Roberts, Wendy L St Peter, Curtis Warfield, Neil R Powe

A Yearslong Push to Remove Racist Bias From Kidney Testing Gains New Ground , by Theresa Gaffney

‘An entire system is changing’: UW Medicine stops using race-based equation to calculate kidney function , by Shannon Hong

Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics , by Lundy Braun

Expert Panel Recommends Against Use of Race in Assessment of Kidney Function , by Usha Lee McFarling

Hidden in Plain Sight – Reconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms , by Darshali A. Vyas, Leo G. Eisenstein, and David S. Jones

Medical student advocates to end racism in medicine , by Anh Nguyen

Precision in GFR Reporting Let’s Stop Playing the Race Card , by Vanessa Grubbs

Reconsidering the Consequences of Using Race to Estimate Kidney Function , by Nwamaka Denise Eneanya, Wei Yang, Peter Philip Reese

When the plague broke out in San Francisco in 1900 the public health department poured all of their energy into stopping its spread in Chinatown, as if Chinatown were the problem. This episode reveals why they did it, what it has to do with race science, and what it tells us about the history of public health.
Credits
Host: Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions .

In 2005 the FDA approved a pill to treat high blood preassure only in African Americans. This so-called miracle drug was named BiDil, and it became the first race-specific drug in the United States. It might sound like a good a good thing, but it had the unintended consequence of perpetuating the myth that race is a biological construct.

Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions .

Resource List
Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century , by Dorothy Roberts

Oprah’s Unhealthy Mistake , by Osagie K. Obasogie

Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in a Post-Genomic Age , by Jonathan Kahn

Saving Sam: Drugs, Race, and Discovering the Secrets of Heart Disease , by Jay Cohn

The Slavery Hypertension Hypothesis: Dissemination and Appeal of a Modern Race Theory , by Jay S Kaufman, Susan A Hall

Superior: The Return of Race Science , by Angela Saini

The word “Tuskegee” has come to symbolize the Black community’s mistrust of the medical establishment. It has become American lore. However, most people don’t know what actually happened in Macon County, Alabama, from 1932 to 1972. This episode unravels the myths of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Syphilis Study (the correct name of the study) through conversations with descendants and historians.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions .

Resource List
Black Journal; 301; The Tuskegee Study: A Human Experiment

Descendants of men from horrifying Tuskegee study want to calm virus vaccine fears , by David Montgomery

Examining Tuskegee: The infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy

Nova: The Deadly Deception

Susceptible to Kindness: Miss Evers’ Boys and the Tuskegee Syphis Study

Tuskegee Legacy Stories

Under the Shadow of Tuskegee: African Americans and Health Care , by Vanessa Northington Gamble

Voices For Our Fathers Legacy Foundation

In 1991, as crews broke ground on a new federal office building in lower Manhattan, they discovered human skeletons. It soon became clear that it was the oldest and largest African cemetery in the country. The federal government was ready to keep building, but people from all over the African diaspora were moved to treat this site with dignity, respect, and scientific excellence. When bioarchaeologist Michael Blakey took over, that's exactly what they got. But it wasn't easy.
Credits
Host: Alexis Pedrick
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions .

Resource List
Archaeology under the Blinding Light of Race , by Michael Blakey

African Burial Ground Project: Paradigm for Cooperation? by Michael Blakey

The African Burial Ground in New York City: Memory, Spirituality, and Space , by Andrea E. Frohne

The African Burial Ground: An American Discovery , documentary film by David Kutz

Reassessing the “Sankofa Symbol” in New York's African Burial Ground , by Erik R. Seeman

The New York African Burial Ground Final Reports , by multiple authors

In 2019, Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, a community organizer and journalist, learned that the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology had a collection of skulls that belonged to enslaved people. As Muhammad demanded that the university return these skulls, they discovered that claiming ownership over bodies of marginalized people is not just a relic of the past—it continues to this day.
Credits
Host: Alexis Pedrick
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions .

Resource List
It’s past time for Penn Museum to repatriate the Morton skull collection , by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

Penn Museum seeks to rebury stolen skulls of Black Philadelphians and ignites pushback , by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

Penn Museum owes reparations for previously holding remains of a MOVE bombing victim , by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

City of Philadelphia should thoroughly investigate the MOVE remains’ broken chain of custody , by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

Black Philadelphians in the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection , by Paul Wolff Mitchell

Some skulls in a Penn Museum collection may be the remains of enslaved people taken from a nearby burial ground , by Stephan Salisbury

Remains of children killed in MOVE bombing sat in a box at Penn Museum for decades , by Maya Kassutto

The fault in his seeds: Lost notes to the case of bias in Samuel George Morton's cranial race science , by Paul Wolff Mitchell

She Was Killed by the Police. Why Were Her Bones in a Museum? , by Bronwen Dickey

Corpse Selling and Stealing were Once Integral to Medical Training , by Christopher D.E. Willoughby

Medicine, Racism, and the Legacies of the Morton Skull Collection , by Christopher D.E. Willoughby

Final Report of the Independent Investigation into the City of Philadelphia’s Possession of Human Remains of Victims of the 1985 Bombing of the MOVE Organization , prepared by Dechert LLP and Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads LLP, for the city of Philadelphia

The Odyssey of the MOVE remains , prepared by the Tucker Law Group for the University of Pennsylvania

Move: Confrontation in Philadelphia , film by Jane Mancini and Karen Pomer

L et the Fire Burn , film by Jason Osder

Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (MOVE) Records , archival collection at Temple University's Urban Archives

In the 1990s a liberal population geneticist launched the Human Genome Diversity Project. The goal was to sequence the genomes of “isolated” and “disappearing” indigenous groups throughout the world. The project did not go as planned—indigenous groups protested it, and scientists and anthropologists criticized it. This episode examines what went wrong and asks the question: can anti-racist scientists create racist science?
About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race
“The Vampire Project” is Episode 4 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race , a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations , the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom .

Credits

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions .

In the 1970s Barry Mehler started tracking race scientists and he noticed something funny: they all had the same funding source. One wealthy man was using his incredible resources to prop up any scientist he could find who would validate his white supremacist ideology— and make it seem like it was backed by a legitimate scientific consensus.
About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race
“Keepers of the Flame” is Episode 3 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race , a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations , the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom .
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions .

Resource List
‘The American Breed’: Nazi eugenics and the origins of the Pioneer Fund , by Paul Lombardo

The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund , by William Tucker

The New Eugenics: Academic Racism in the U.S. Today , by Barry Mehler

The Phil Donahue Show

Superior: The Return of Race Science , by Angela Saini

In 1793 a yellow fever epidemic almost destroyed Philadelphia. The young city was saved by two Black preachers, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, who organized the free Black community in providing essential services and nursing the sick and dying. Allen and Jones were assured of two things: that stepping up would help them gain full equality and citizenship, and that they were immune to the disease. Neither promise turned out to be true.
About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race
“Calamity in Philadelphia” is Episode 2 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race , a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations , the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom .
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
Richard Allen voiceover by Jason Carr

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions .
Resource List
How the Politics of Race Played Out During the 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic , by Alicia Ault

A short account of the malignant fever, lately prevalent in Philadelphia: with a statement of the proceedings that took place on the subject in different parts of the United States , by Mathew Carey

Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840 , by Rana A. Hogarth

A narrative of the proceedings of the black people, during the late awful calamity in Philadelphia, in the year 1793 , by Absalom Jones and Richard Allen

Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers , by Richard Newman

Observations upon the origin of the malignant bilious, or yellow fever in Philadelphia, and upon the means of preventing it: addressed to the citizens of Philadelphia , by Benjamin Rush

Bishop Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom , produced by Dr. Mark Tyler
Transcript

It might seem as though the way we think about race now is how we’ve always thought about it—but it isn’t. Race was born out of the Enlightenment in Europe, along with the invention of modern western science. And it was tied to the politics of the age—imperialism and later slavery. This episode traces the origins of race science to the Enlightenment, examines how the Bible influenced racial theories, and considers how we still have a hard time letting go of the idea of race.
About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race
“Origin Stories” is Episode 1 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race , a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations , the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom .
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

"Innate Theme" composed by Jonathan Pfeffer . Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions .
Special thanks to our colleagues, Jacqueline Boytim and James Voelkel , for their help with this episode.
Resource List
Archaeology under the Blinding Light of Race , by Michael Blakey

Breathing Race into the Machine: the Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics , by Lundy Braun

Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science , by Terence Keel

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century , by Dorothy Roberts

"Jesus Loves the little Children ," song by Cedarmont Kids

Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Differences in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840 , by Rana Hogarth

The Nuremberg Chronicle , by Hartmann Schedel

Superior: The Return of Race Science , by Angela Saini

Find the full transcript here .

What comes to mind when you think of a chemistry lab? Maybe it’s smoke billowing out of glassware, or colorful test tubes, or vats of toxic substances. Chemistry and hazardous solvents just seem to go hand in hand. But chemists like James Mack think there’s a greener way: It’s called mechanochemistry, a kind of chemistry that uses physical force to grind materials instead of solvents. And it’s getting the attention of such huge corporations as Exxon Mobil. Still, some chemists are not ready to give up their traditional techniques. “I thought they were married to the molecules,” says Mack, who is pictured above placing vials into a machine that uses fast-spinning ball bearings to pulverize molecules. “Little did I know they were actually married to the flask.”

Credits
Host: Elisabeth Berry Drago
Reporter, Producer, and Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffe r
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath

The Disappearing Spoon , a podcast collaboration between the Science History Institute and New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean, returns for its third season on March 8, 2022.

To celebrate, our producer, Padmini Parthasarathy, sat down with Kean to talk about his book The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code. This interview is a great companion piece for the new season of The Disappearing Spoon , which tackles all sorts of strange and interesting stories about the geniuses we know well—from Einstein and his great scientific blunder that turned out to be correct, to Monet and the cataracts that almost made him put down his brush forever.

Listen as Kean talks about violin protégé Niccolo Paganini, whose genes were both a blessing and a curse, the scientific arms race that led to the mapping of the human genome, and the sometimes-murky lines between human and non-human.

Credits

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago

Senior Producer: Mariel Carr

Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez

Associate Producer: Padmini Parthasarathy

Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon , Sam Kean talks about Alessandro Moreschi, the so-called Angel of Rome. His voice earned him fame and money. So what's the secret behind the voice? What was his trick? It turns out that his trick can also make you taller and prevent baldness. The only catch: it requires castration.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon , Sam Kean talks about the strange origin story of the American Medical Association. The creation of this powerful medical society can be traced back to a duel between two doctors at Transylvania University in Kentucky.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon , Sam Kean talks about Hermann Muller, a geneticist who in the 1920s discovered that radiation causes genetic mutations. This discovery happened around the same time that other geneticists were starting to link cancer with genetic mutations. Had both of these parties communicated they would have gotten a 50-year head start in cancer research. So why didn't scientists make this realization sooner? It turns out that Muller was a real jerk.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

On this episode of The Disappearing Spoon , Sam Kean talks about a murder mystery that rocked Boston in 1849. Harvard University alum and physician George Parkman had gone missing. The last place he was seen alive was at the Harvard medical building, which had plenty of bodies, but police couldn't find Parkman’s there. That is until a janitor intervened and implicated a medical school professor. The ensuing murder trial was a media circus equivalent to the O. J. Simpson trial. And just like that trial, it also familiarized the layperson with forensic and anatomical sciences.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

Photo: Wellcome Collection

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon , Sam Kean breaks down the history of nitrocellulose. This thick, transparent liquid was the world’s first plastic and could be shaped into anything, including billiard balls and photography film. With nitrocellulose film, you could run reels of pictures together quickly, which gave birth to the first movies.

The only fatal flaw with this plastic is that it’s also extremely combustible—so much so that it can burn underwater once it gets going. This led to notable tragedies in movie theaters, as well as in hospitals that used nitrocellulose X-rays such as the Cleveland Clinic Hospital, where 122 people died in a fire in 1929.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon , Sam Kean talks about Mary Ward, a budding naturalist and astronomer from Ireland. She spent a lot of time observing plants and animals through a microscope and published a book of detailed sketches that dazzled readers and colleagues in the 1800s. However, her career was cut short by a strange curiosity of that time period: the automobile. They weren’t the same cars that are around today, but her death was the first car death recorded in history, and it foreshadowed the carnage the automobile continues to leave behind.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon , Sam Kean talks about memory fugues, a psychological disorder that wipes out biographical information from people’s brains. It is estimated that roughly 1 in 100,000 people seeking help for mental disorders have them. This disorder happens worldwide and it usually afflicts people in their 20s. Scientists have only recently started to piece together what is going on in the brains of those impaired by it.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

On this episode of The Disappearing Spoon , Sam Kean delves deep into the science behind the evolution of animal and human bodies. Like animals, human bodies have also evolved to adhere to the demands of ever-changing climates. This raises a question: how will human bodies respond to climate change?
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

In this episode of Disappearing Spoon , Sam Kean discusses the horrors of a particular genetic disease that was, literally, sweeping through London in the 1700s. In 1666, the Great Fire of London consumed about 13,000 homes and caused the modern equivalent about $1.3 billion in damage. After the Great Fire, London officials made chimneys mandatory in all homes and buildings. All these new chimneys meant there was a big demand for sweepers. Who did they employ to clean these narrow, soot-filled chimneys you ask? Very young boys.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

Animal trials have always been part of society, but we are not talking about the ones with lab mice. In medieval times dozens of animals were tried in human courts for committing human crimes. It sounds silly, but the practice raises an uncomfortable question that we are still grappling with today: if we hold animals accountable in court, doesn’t that mean that they deserve some sort of legal protection? We kill them for food and skin them for leather after all. What about medical and product trials that sacrifice thousands of animals despite the fact that they have had diminishing returns throughout the years?
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

The Disappearing Spoon , a podcast collaboration between the Science History Institute and New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean, returns for its second season on October 5, 2021.

To celebrate, our producer, Rigoberto Hernandez, sat down with Kean to talk about his new book The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science . This interview is a great companion piece for The Disappearing Spoon series since some of the stories in the book relate directly to some of the stories in the upcoming season.

In this interview Kean talks about some of the case studies in his book, including how Thomas Edison shifted his ethics on the death penalty because of a grudge, how a part-time chemist from Philadelphia became an unlikely spy, and how an American doctor purposefully infected people in Guatemala with venereal diseases—all in the name of science.

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

The human brain is mysterious and complicated. So much so, one might be tempted to argue that it only makes sense that we still don’t have a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, despite decades of research. But this isn’t the whole story. We’ve partnered with Vox’s Unexplainable science podcast to talk about how Alzheimer’s researchers have been stubbornly pursuing a single theory for decades. The Amyloid Hypothesis is the reigning champ amongst pharmaceutical companies and scientific scholars and it has pushed all other theories to the wayside. Over the years scientists have developed many drugs based on the Amyloid Hypothesis but the the clinical trials keep failing. Now some researchers are starting to wonder if the reason we still don’t have a cure is that we’ve put all of our scientific eggs in one faulty basket. You can hear more about the Alzheimer’s disease on the previous Distillations Podcast episodes: The Alzheimer’s Copernicus Problem Parts 1 and 2 .

Credits:

Distillations:

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

Unexplainable:

This episode was produced by Rigo Hernandez, Alexis Pedrick, Dylan Scott, and Byrd Pinkerton. It was edited by Noam Hassenfeld and Brian Resnick, with help from Meradith Hoddinott and Mandy Nguyen, who also did the fact checking. Noam Hassenfeld wrote the music, Cristian Ayala did the mixing and sound design.

Image courtesy of Vox Media Group.

Ever since the book A Discovery of Witches debuted in 2011, the All Souls franchise has taken on a life of its own with devoted fans all over the world. The TV show and annual All Souls Con —which the Science History Institute occasionally hosts—is based on the trilogy of books about witches, vampires, and demons by author Deborah Harkness.

Distillations sat down with Jen Daine and Cait Parnell, the hosts of the All Souls podcast, Chamomile and Clove ; art historian Stephenie McGucken ; and medievalist actor, journalist, and author Sarah Durn to talk about the series’ alchemical roots, the material culture in the TV show, and how the book’s found-family theme mirrors the fandom.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

Since humans have been living we’ve also been dying—best case scenario: after eight or nine decades and plenty of good times. But we’re not wholly content with that. Never have been, probably never will be.

In fact, working on how not to die is one of the most human things about us. It’s occupied the minds of everyone from ancient Chinese emperors and medieval European alchemists to now, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. They think it’s within sight and completely different from how this quest was approached in the past. Or is it?
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

Jeremiah McCall is a history teacher at Cincinnati Country Day School and the author of Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary School. He talked to Distillations about what it's like to use video games in his history classes, the criteria he uses in choosing games, and why he likes his students to question the media they are consuming.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

The pandemic made gamers out of many Americans, including our producer, Rigoberto Hernandez. He played a lot of historical video games and it got him thinking: can you learn history from video games even though they are obviously fiction?

Throughout history there have been many moral panics about people consuming historical fiction and taking what they read and watch as fact, so how do video games stack up? It turns out that they can empower players in better ways than TV shows, films, and books.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

Anna Reeser is a historian of technology and Laila McNeil is a historian of science. Together they co-founded and are editors-in-chief of Lady Science , an independent magazine about women, gender, history, and popular culture of science.

Now the duo has a new book titled Forces of Nature: The Women Who Changed Science . They talked to us about moving beyond biographies, how women who had knowledge about the natural world are suspect, and reintegrating women’s history into the mainstream.

For decades, the official fire policy of the Forest Service was to put out all fires as soon as they appeared. That might seem logical, but there is such a thing as a good fire, the kind that helps stabilize ecosystems and promotes biodiversity. Native American communities understood this and regularly practiced light burning. So why did the Forest Service ignore this in favor of unabated fire suppression?

In 1910 a massive fire known as “the big blow up” or “the big burn” devastated northern Idaho and Western Montana. It left a huge mark on the then five-year-old Forest Service and had consequences we still see today.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

Ghost hunters on television all seem to have a common goal: to prove that ghosts are real using sophisticated, yet inexact technology. Colin Dickey, the author of Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places , says this is not an accident. The relationship between technology and ghosthunters is as old as the telegraph. But Dickey is not interested in proving they are real; he is fascinated with what the ghost stories we tell reveal about our society.

Credits:

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

The 19th century was a time of rapid technological leaps: the telegraph, the steam boat, the radio were invented during this century. But this era was also the peak of spiritualism: the belief that ghosts and spirits were real and could be communicated with after death. Seances were all the rage. People tried to talk to their dead loved ones using Ouija boards and automatic writing. Although it might seem contradictory, it's not a coincidence that this was all happening at the same time.

There have always been questions about life after death, but in the 19th century people found new ways to investigate them using these new cutting-edge technological tools. And part of it was that some of these new tools felt supernatural in and of themselves. The radio, the telegraph, the phonograph: these allowed us to speak over inconceivable distances, communicate instantly from an ocean away, and even preserve human voices in time and after death. But something else was going on in the 19th century. The people who were trying to figure out if we could really talk to ghosts were not just on the fringes - many of them were scientists.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

Music:

"Lanterns Ascending" - Jerry Lacey

"Shapeshifter" - Martin Klem

"Behind that Door" - Farrell Wooten

"First Sign" - Mahlert

"Black Core" - Guy Copeland

"Maximum State" - Ethan Sloan

"String Quartet No. 3, Op. 41 Adagio Part 4" - Traditional

"Chronicles of a Mystic Dream" - Grant Newman

"Deep Cellar" - Experia

"Shapeless Inside" - Cobby Costa

"Aquamarine" - Mahlert

"Decomposed" - Philip Ayers

Special thanks to Charley Levin and Lena Kidd-Nicolella for their portrayal of Maggie and Kate Fox.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons .

In the 19th century a mysterious illness afflicted rural New England. Often called the Great White Plague for how pale it made its victims, it was also called “consumption” because of the way it literally consumed people from the inside out, gradually making them weaker, paler, and more lifeless until they were gone. Today we know it as tuberculosis, an infectious bacterial disease that attacks the lungs and causes a hacking cough, a wasting fever, and night sweats. But back then the main suspect was vampires.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: J onathan Pfeffer

Last year Distillations talked to people who have special insight into the coronavirus crisis —biomedical researchers, physicians, public health experts, and historians. In this episode we talk to Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, a biotech company that developed one of the three emergency-approved COVID-19 vaccines in the United States. The Moderna vaccine is unique in that it uses a new technology that has been decades in the making called messenger RNA, or mRNA.

Bancel reflects on the development timeline of the vaccine: from learning about the virus while reading the Wall Street Journal in 2019 to the moment he finally got his own shot at a Moderna facility. He talks about the promise of mRNA and what’s ahead for Moderna.
Credits
Host: Alexis Pedrick
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Researcher: Jessica Wade
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

In the 1700s human dissection was a big taboo—people feared that it would leave their bodies mangled on Judgment Day, when God would raise the dead. As a result, government officials banned most dissections. This led to some unintended consequences, most notably a shortage of bodies for anatomists to dissect. To meet the heightened demand, a new profession emerged: grave-robbers. These so-called resurrectionists dug up the bodies of poor people to sell to anatomists, which led to riots in the streets.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

Music:

"Trois Gnossiennes 3," "Stately Shadows," "Darklit Carpet," "Vernouillet," and "Tossed" by Blue Dot Sessions .

"Conjunto Sol del Peru," by Pockra (Vol. 2: Musica de los Andes Peruanos).

"Conjunto Sol del Peru," by Wuaylias Tusy (Vol. 2: Musica de los Andes Peruanos).

"Conjunto Sol del Peru," by Ckashampa (Vol. 2: Musica de los Andes Peruanos)

Image courtesy of the Wellcome Collection .

The ivory-billed woodpecker is sometimes called the Lord God bird, a nickname it earned because that’s what people cried out the first time they ever saw one: “Lord God, what a bird.” Even though the last confirmed sighting was in the 1930s, birders have been claiming they have seen the Lord God bird throughout the years, turning it into a myth. The sad part is it didn’t need to be this way. And it’s all Hitler’s fault. As crazy as it sounds, the ivory-billed woodpecker was one of last victims of the Nazi war machine.

Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

If Ted Talks were around in the early 1990s, Horace Fletcher would have given his fair share of them. Fletcher was a health reformer who thought people didn’t chew their food nearly enough. He believed that most swallowed food way too quickly. This had all sorts of detrimental health consequences, he said, including nasty bowel movements.​​ So he over-chewed his food. He once chewed a green onion 722 times before he let himself swallow it. His idea became such a sensation that it became a movement known as "Fletcherism." His ideas made it to the White House and could have even changed the tide of World War I.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

Music:

Photo: Science History Institute.

Shakespeare had a go at at the longest word in the English language with “honorific-abilitude-in-i-tat-i-bus.” If you play the game of stacking suffixes and prefixes together, you can get “antidisestablishmentarianism,” one letter longer for a total of 28 letters. But the longest word by far appeared in 1964 in Chemical Abstracts, a dictionary-like reference for chemists. The word describes a protein in what’s called the tobacco mosaic virus, and it runs 1,185 letters long. Besides being too long to write here, it tells us a lot about the unusual chemistry of carbon.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Delamine” by Blue Dot Sessions .
All other music composed by Jonathan Pfeffer .

The debut of the female birth control pill in 1960 was revolutionary. The combination of progesterone and estrogen allowed women to control their reproductive lives much more easily and effectively. But the pill had many unpleasant and even dangerous side effects. In fact, some doctors argue that it wouldn’t win government approval today. So why haven’t scientists tried to create a birth control pill for men? It turns out they have. In the 1950s scientists created a really good one. But it had one problem—you can’t drink alcohol when you take it.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

Music:

Jean-Claude Risset - Mutations
Peter B - The Growling Dog Hit
Perry & Kingsley - Cosmic Ballad
Charlie Hoistman - Ptpar(({|i|[i*8,Pbind(\scale,[0,2,4,7,9],\degree,Pseq(32.fib.fold(0,10),4)+(2*i+i)-10,\dur,1+2**i%2/6)]}!4).flat).play // #supercollider
Régis Renouard Larivière - Contrée
Raymond Scott - Lightworks
Deerhoof - Despareceré
Juk Suk Reet Meate - B3 (excerpt from Solo 1978/79)
Ben Vida - Ssseeeeiiiiii
Marmots - Sheath and Knife
Tim Walters - play{({|k|({|i|y=SinOsc;y.ar(i*k*k,y.ar(i*k**i/[4,5])*Decay.kr(Dust.kr(1/4**i),y.ar(0.1)+1*k+i,k*999))}!8).product}!16).sum}//#supercollider
Eva-Maria Houben - quatuor iv
Young Marble Giants - Zebra Trucks
All other music composed by Jonathan Pfeffer .

From the Disappearing Spoon, our new podcast!

Radium was once the trendiest element in the world. It glowed alluringly in the dark and was hailed it as a medical panacea. It was also the basis of Marie Curie’s research—for which she won her second Nobel Prize in 1911. But by 1920 radium was scarce and its cost was eye-popping: one hundred thousand dollars per gram. When Curie’s research ground to a halt because of the expense, thousands of American women stepped in to raise money for the precious chemical element.

From our new podcast, the Disappearing Spoon:

The so-called “Peking Man” fossils are some of the first ancient human remains discovered in mainland Asia. So when they disappeared during World War II, it was called one of the worst disasters in the history of archaeology. Now some archeologists claim to have tracked them down. The only problem is they’re underneath a parking lot.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
Original Music by Jonathan Pfeffer

Wang Fan - Zero (from An Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music 1992-2008)
Listening to the Pine-trees (from Chine / Musique Classique)
Sarah Hennies – Fleas
Wang Changcun - Through the Tide of Faces (from An Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music 1992-2008)
Zhegu Fei (The Partridge) (from Chine / Musique Classique)
All other music composed by Jonathan Pfeffer .

The Science History Institute has launched a second podcast! We've teamed up with New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean to bring you even more stories from our scientific past. Don’t worry, Distillations podcast isn’t going anywhere; we’re still producing the in-depth narrative-style episodes you know and love! We’ve just doubled your history of science listening pleasure.

For the next 10 weeks we’ll bring you stories from the footnotes of the history of science, from the saga of the male birth control pill to this inaugural episode: how the smallpox vaccine made its way around the world before refrigeration.

Amid all the logistical headaches of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, one huge challenge involves the cold chain. The cold chain is a network of freezers and refrigerators that keep vaccine doses at the consistently cold temperatures they need to stay viable. Though complicated, this is all doable in the 21st century. But how did the world’s very first vaccine, created for smallpox in 1796, make it around the world? Live carriers—specifically, orphan boys.
Credits
Host: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Delamine” by Blue Dot Sessions
"La Flecha Incaia" by El Conjunto Sol Del Peru .
All other music composed by Jonathan Pfeffer .

Did you know that Gandhi hated iodine? Or that Silicon Valley was almost called Germanium Valley? Our producer Rigoberto Hernandez talked about these stories and more with Sam Kean, author of The Disappearing Spoon , a book about the stories behind the periodic table. The New York Times best-selling author and regular Distillations magazine contributor described how Dmitri Mendeleev’s publisher accidentally shaped the periodic table, why gallium is a popular element for pranksters, and what inspired the title of his book.

Kean, Sam. The Disappearing Spoon . New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2010.
Credits
Host: Elisabeth Berry Drago & Alexis Pedrick
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
Original music by Jonathan Pfeffer

Distillations is hard at work on our next season. It’s not quite ready, but we have a treat for you in the meantime. We interviewed Wendy Zukerman, the host and executive producer of one of our favorite podcasts, Science Vs . In normal times the show pits facts against fads—they talk about everything from detox diets to the supposed benefits of Cannabidiol, or CBD. Since early 2020, however, they’ve been reporting about the Coronavirus pandemic. But they actually started even earlier than that—in the fall of 2019 they coincidentally produced an episode all about global pandemics . We talked with Wendy about whether or not she's psychic, the challenges of pivoting to news reporting, and why it's so important for Science Vs. to tell history of science stories. The latest season of Science Vs. (which is not about COVID-19) just launched on March 4!
Credits
Host: Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
Original music by Jonathan Pfeffer

As the pandemic began raging again this fall we talked with nurse Linda Ruggiero about what it's like to be on the front lines for a second wave. She talks about how treatment has changed, what we still don't know about the disease, and how every nurse she knows is suffering from PTSD.

Host: Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez

Music by Blue Dot Sessions .
Photograph of Linda Ruggiero by Kyle Cassidy .

We've collaborated with Philadelphia photographer Kyle Cassidy to tell the stories of our city's essential workers. This fall his large-scale portraits of nurses, sanitation workers, Instacart shoppers, mask-makers, and delivery drivers will be on display on the exterior of the Science History Institute, in Old City Philadelphia. Find out more at sciencehistory.org/pandemic.

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez

Music by Blue Dot Sessions : "Arlan Vale," "Alum Drum," "Setting Pace," "Kalstead," "Drone Pine," and "Raskt Landsby."

Outer space is crowded. Satellites, pieces of rocket, and stuff that astronauts left behind, such as cameras and poop, are just floating around. This space junk can pose a threat to our communication systems.

In this episode we talk with Lisa Ruth Rand, a fellow at the Science History Institute, about her upcoming book on space junk. She tells us how space weather—that’s right, there’s space weather—can have an effect on what falls on Earth. She also talks about how our views on space debris reveal our attitudes back on Earth and how space junk truly made the space age global.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison
Resource List
Interview with Marie Ruman. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, January 24, 1978.

Judd, Bridget. “NASA’s Skylab met its demise in Australia more than 40 years ago—but was it really an accident? ” Australian Broadcasting Corporation, May 30, 2020.

The MacNeil/Lehrer Report , “Cosmos 954 .” January 25, 1978, American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

Rand, Lisa Ruth. “Orbital Decay: Space Junk and the Environmental History of Earth’s Planetary Borderlands .” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2016.

Rand, Lisa Ruth. “Wasted Space: The History of Orbiting Junk .” Science History Institute, December 5, 2019.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott. Speech at the House of Commons of Canada, January 24, 1978.

Outer space belongs to everyone and no one, at least that’s what the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says. On its face, this seems like an uncontroversial statement. But in the 1970s a group of equatorial countries challenged this idea. Only the richest and most powerful countries can afford to reach outer space in the first place, they argued, so in principle these nations controlled it. The protesting countries were ignored at the time, but to some their warnings seem more urgent now that it isn’t just wealthy nations with space programs, but also individual billionaires.

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison
Music by Blue Dot Sessions

Worldwide nearly 3 million workers die on the job each year. U.S. workers experience roughly that same number of injuries and illnesses each year. Work is hard and dangerous, and we have the data to prove it. But who started collecting that data? The answer takes us back to Paracelsus, an early modern physician and alchemist who noticed that the miners he lived among often became very ill or died. His inquiries laid the foundation for occupational health and the workplace safety standards we have today.

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison

Earning a PhD can be grueling for the healthiest student. But what is it like for a student with widespread pain and fatigue? Is it even possible? Marine geologist and geophysicist Gabriela Serrato Marks tells us that academia was not set up for people like her, and she wants to change that.

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
Original Music by Zach Young

There’s a common assumption that to be a scientist you must also be a genius, someone who excelled at school and learns easily and quickly. But are these really the qualities necessary to produce new scientific knowledge? Collin Diedrich is a research scientist with a doctorate in molecular virology and microbiology. On paper he might seem to be the archetypal smart scientist, but the reality is more complicated. Collin has multiple learning disabilities, and he has struggled to overcome the stigma that comes with them for his entire life.

In this episode we explore how our narrow definition of intelligence not only holds back people such as Collin, but also prevents the creation of new scientific knowledge that benefits us all. This is the second of two episodes about science and disability and was produced in collaboration with the Science and Disability oral history project at the Science History Institute.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison
Resource List
Martucci, Jessica. “History Lab: Through the Lens of Disability.” Science History Institute, June 22, 2019.

Martucci, Jessica. “Through the Lens of Disability.” Distillations , November 8, 2018.

Martucci, Jessica. “Science and Disability.” Distillations , August 18, 2017.

Diedrich, Collin. Oral history conducted on 19 and 22 June 2017 by Jessica Martucci and Gregory S. Waters , Science and Disability project, Science History Institute.

July 26th, 2020 marked the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. But the history of disability in the United States goes back much further. Historian Kim Nielsen tells us that disability has always been part of American life, from precolonial times to today. Our producer Rigoberto Hernandez talked with Nielsen about her book A Disability History of the United States .

Everyone knows that observation is a key part of the scientific method, but what does that mean for scientists who can’t see? Judith Summers-Gates is a successful, visually impaired chemist who uses a telescope to read street signs. If the thought of a blind scientist gives you pause, you’re not alone. But stop and ask yourself why. What assumptions do we make about how knowledge is produced? And who gets to produce it? And who gets to participate in science?

In this episode we go deep into the history of how vision came to dominate scientific observation and how blind scientists challenge our assumptions. This is the first of two episodes about science and disability and was produced in collaboration with the Science and Disability oral history project at the Science History Institute.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison
Resource List
Lemonick, Sam. “Artificial intelligence tools could benefit chemists with disabilities. So why aren’t they?” C&EN, March 18, 2019.

Martucci, Jessica. “History Lab: Through the Lens of Disability.” Science History Institute, June 22, 2019.

Martucci, Jessica. “Through the Lens of Disability.” Distillations , November 8, 2018.

Martucci, Jessica. “Science and Disability.” Distillations , August 18, 2017.

Slaton, Amy. “Body? What Body? Considering Ability and Disability in STEM Disciplines.” 120th ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, January 23, 2013.

Summers-Gates, Judith. Oral history conducted on 20 January and 6 February 2017 by Jessica Martucci and Lee Sullivan Berry, Science and Disability project, Science History Institute.

We’ve long been fascinated by the mysteries of reproduction. But that curiosity is piqued most intensely when something unexpected happens. The study of such “monstrous births,” as scientists once called them, propelled forward our understanding of how embryos and fetuses develop. And the key to unlocking this knowledge was found gathering dust in the basement of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in a macabre collection assembled by Czar Peter the Great. The story behind this collection reveals a little-known corner of the history of the life sciences and raises some big questions, like how do bodies we see as abnormal inform and define what we see as normal? And how does this influence how we think about disability today?
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison

Music by Blue Dot Sessions: "When in the West," "Calisson," "Entwined Oddity," "Stately Shadows," "Louver," "Tuck and Point," "Our Only Lark."
Additional songs by the Audio Network .

Over the past few weeks Distillations has been talking to people who have special insight into the coronavirus crisis—biomedical researchers, physicians, public health experts, and historians.

In this episode we talk with Magda Marquet, a biochemical engineer and an entrepreneur. Marquet has spent decades working on DNA vaccines, one of the many techniques being used to create a vaccine for Covid-19. She also sits on the board of Arcturus Therapeutics, which is developing a vaccine for the disease. She tells us about how a company she cofounded, AltheaDx, is taking on the mental health crisis, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic. And she discusses her hopes that the lessons learned during the pandemic might change society for the better.
Credits | Transcript

Credits
Host: Lisa Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Researcher: Jessica Wade
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

Original music by Zach Young .

We talk about COVID-19 with Robert Langer, a chemical engineer and an entrepreneur, who runs the largest biomedical engineering research laboratory in the world at MIT. He has also started numerous biotech companies, including Moderna Therapeutics, a company that’s been making headlines for the COVID-19 vaccine they’re developing.

Langer told us about his work with the Gates Foundation to develop a way for vaccines to self-boost in the body, his work with the sneaker company New Balance to create masks, and his thoughts about how diagnostic testing could be better.
Credits
Host: Alexis Pedrick
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Researcher: Jessica Wade
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

Original music composed by Zach Young .

Over the next several weeks Distillations will be talking to people who have special insight into the coronavirus crisis—biomedical researchers, physicians, public health experts, and historians.

In this episode we talk to Mark Stevenson, the chief operating officer of Thermo Fisher Scientific, an instrumentation company that has designed a diagnostic test for the novel coronavirus. The company is also working on a serology test, which will determine who has already had the virus. He tells us how the company developed those tests and the role they play in managing this pandemic.
Credits
Host: Alexis Pedrick
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Researcher: Jessica Wade
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

Our senior producer, Mariel Carr, talks with John Maraganore, the CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, a company developing an antiviral medication for COVID-19.

When news broke in January about the new coronavirus, John Maraganore made the decision to pause other drugs in development and pivot to working on an antiviral medication for this new and alarmingly infectious virus.

He says it was a difficult decision, but this virus had all the ingredients to become a pandemic. “And when you have a public health crisis like this, that’s what you do.”

Over the next several weeks Distillations will be talking to people who have special insight into the coronavirus crisis—biomedical researchers, physicians, public health experts, and historians.

In this episode our producer Rigberto Hernandez talks with Katrine Bosley, who has worked in the biotech industry for more than 30 years. Until recently she was the CEO of Editas Medicine, a company that focuses on a gene-editing technology known as CRISPR. She’s now on the board of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Hospital and is advising the facility on its quest to create a COVID-19 vaccine. She tells us how CRISPR can be used to make faster diagnostic tests and how the hospital in Boston is creating a vaccine using a gene therapy method.

“One of the things that’s important for all of us competing against this virus is to have a lot of technologically different strategies to try to make a vaccine.”
Credits
Hosts: Elisabeth Berry Drago , Alexis Pedrick
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Researcher: Jessica Wade
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

We talk to William Haseltine, a scientist, entrepreneur, and author who has lived through three epidemics (polio, HIV/AIDS, and now COVID-19). He tells us how his lab in the 1980s was better prepared to deal with HIV/AIDS than we are now for COVID-19 and what he thinks lies ahead for us with this pandemic.

Over the next several weeks Distillations will be talking to people who have special insight into the coronavirus crisis—biomedical researchers, physicians, public health experts, and historians.
Credits
Hosts: Elisabeth Berry Drago , Alexis Pedrick
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Researcher: Jessica Wade
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer​​​​​​​

Over the next several weeks Distillations will be talking to people who have special insight into the coronavirus crisis—biomedical researchers, physicians, public health experts, and historians.

In this episode we speak with Susan Weiss, a microbiology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the director for the Penn Center for Research on Coronavirus and Emerging Pathogens. She’ll talk about her 40-years of experience researching coronaviruses, how her field reacted to the 2002 SARS and 2012 MERS outbreaks, and the importance of studying diseases that transfer from animals to humans.
Credits
Hosts: Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Researcher: Jessica Wade
Additional production: Dan Drago

Over the next several weeks Distillations will be talking to people who have special insight into the coronavirus crisis—biomedical researchers, physicians, public health experts, and historians.

In this episode we speak with Sue Desmond-Hellmann, an oncologist who worked with HIV patients in San Francisco in the 1980s during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She was also the CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation up until December 2019. Desmond-Hellmann tells us about her experiences working as a doctor during the HIV/AIDS epidemic and as a CEO of the Gates Foundation during the Ebola pandemic. She also discusses what we learned from HIV and Ebola that can help us in fighting COVID-19.

Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Researcher: Lisa Grissom
Image: by Krista Kennell/Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit.

Over the next several weeks Distillations will be talking to people with special insight into the coronavirus crisis—biomedical researchers, physicians, public health experts, and historians.

In this episode we speak with John C. Martin, a biomedical researcher and former CEO of Gilead Sciences. Gilead is a pharmaceutical giant best known for its antiviral therapies for HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, but it’s also the company behind remdesivir, an antiviral drug that has recently made headlines as a possible treatment for COVID-19.

Martin talked to senior producer Mariel Carr about remdesivir, antiviral treatments for HIV and other illnesses, and working with Anthony “Tony” Fauci.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Music: "Balti," "Tuck and Point," and "Slimheart" by Blue Dot Sessions .
Research Notes
"Fauci: New Drug Remdesivir Cuts Down Coronavirus Recovery Time ," NBC Nightly News. April 29, 2020.

The historical curator of a new exhibition at the Mütter Museum discusses the eerie parallels between the 1918-1919 flu pandemic and the coronavirus.

In the fall of 1918 the (misnomered) Spanish flu ravaged much of the world. Philadelphia was hit especially hard: it had the highest death rate of any major American city. Over the course of six weeks 12,000 people in the city died. Hospitals were overcrowded and bodies piled up.

When the Mütter Museum embarked on the multiyear exhibition and public art project Spit Spreads Death, the curators and researchers behind it had no idea how relevant it would become—or how quickly.

Over the past few years our producers have been saving all the raw tape from our tracking sessions (maybe to blackmail us at some point?)

But because we all need some levity these days, we dug it out for your listening pleasure. We hope these outtakes (improvised songs about the history of science, complaints about squeaky chairs, and musings about various forms of a dystopian future) amuse you as much as they amused us.

"Climbing the Mountain" by Podington Bear.

Philadelphia just had the wettest decade on record, and all that precipitation has wreaked havoc on the city’s waterways. Like most old cities, Philadelphia has a combined sewer system—that is, one pipe is used to carry both sewage and stormwater. When it rains a lot, the system gets overwhelmed, forcing the water department to send raw sewage into rivers and creeks. City officials and engineers target='_blank' rel='nofollow' knew this was going to be a problem when they built the sewer system in the 1800s. The reason why they used a combined system anyway can be best explained by two forces: knowledge ceilings and path dependency. In this episode we’re going to explore how the city got to this point and how, in an interesting twist, it led to Philadelphia having one of the most innovative water systems in the country.

Philadelphia is home of the Distillations podcast. For this episode we are going to break down three centuries of water-pollution history in our backyard. It is a special collaboration with the Philadelphia Inquirer as part of their series From the Source: Stories of the Delaware River.
Credits
Host: Elisabeth Berry Drago

Reporter: Rigoberto Hernandez , Sebastian Echeverri

Senior Producer: Mariel Carr

Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez

Audio Engineer: James Morrison

Additional production: Dan Drago

Special thanks to the Science History Institutes, oral history department, and the museum team for doing some of the research that went into this episode.

This includes Rebecca Ortenberg , Christy Schneider , Samantha Blatt , Zackary Biro , and Grey Pierce.
Resource List
Grabar, Henry. “Tunnel Vision .” Slate , January 2, 2019.

Handy, Jam. “Waters of the Commonwealth .” Pennsylvania Sanitary Water Board, 1951.

Henninger, Danya. “The Incredible Fairmount Water Works: Explosions, Mark Twain and the Long-Lost Philadelphia Aquarium .” Billy Penn , October 10, 2015.

Kummer, Frank. “The Secret Scourge of Climate Change? More Raw Sewage in Philadelphia’s Waterways .” Philadelphia Inquirer , September 13, 2019.

Levine, Adam. “Fairmount Water Works .” Philadelphia Water Department Water and Drainage History Course, 2015.

Nemiroff, Sydney P., dir. “Road Ahead: Milestone 3 .” Philadelphia Department of Records, ca. 1960.

Schulman, Alexis. “Sustainable Cities and Institutional Change: The Transformation of Urban Stormwater Management .” PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018.

Stutz, Bruce. “Philadelphia Is Tackling Its Stormwater Problem .” Yale Environment 360 (March 29, 2018).

In 1970 Jane Hodgson became the only person in the United States ever convicted for performing an abortion in a hospital.

A patient came to her St. Paul, Minnesota OB/GYN practice seeking an abortion. She had two kids, was pregnant with her third, and had rubella.

Minnesota's abortion law was one of the strictest in the country, but Jane Hodgson broke it. Then she called her local DA and turned herself in.

This is a bonus episode exploring one part of the story from our last episode: Roe v. Wade v. Rubella.

Special thanks to Physicians for Reproductive Health for giving us permission to use the 2000 oral history interview with Jane Hodgson.

The story of how abortion became legal in the United States isn’t as straightforward as many of us think. The common narrative is that feminist activism and the sexual liberation movement in the 1960s led to Roe v. Wade in 1973. But it turns out the path to Roe led over some unexpected and unsettling terrain, and involves a complicated story involving culture, society, disease, and our prejudices and fears about disability.

In the 1960s a rubella epidemic swept the United States and panicked every pregnant woman in the country. Rubella, also called German measles, is a disease we hardly remember anymore, but it’s the “R” in the MMR vaccine. Though the virus is relatively harmless for most people, when contracted during pregnancy, it can severely harm the developing fetus. During the epidemic many pregnant women who may have never identified as abortion-rights advocates suddenly found themselves seeking abortions and dismantling barriers to access.

Though not everyone agreed with these women, people listened. And this historical moment, sparked by a virus, helped pave the way for the legalization of abortion.

Almost six million people in the United States have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. And with baby boomers getting older, those numbers are only expected to rise. This disease, despite being studied by scientists for more than 100 years, has no cure. In our two-part series we first dive into the personal lives of the people at the heart of this disease: the patients and their caregivers. Then we uncover why effective treatments for Alzheimer’s lag so far behind those for cancer, heart disease, and HIV. It turns out that for all the decades researchers have been at war with the disease, they’ve also been at war with each other.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick
Reporter: Rigoberto Hernandez
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Audio Engineer: James Morrison

Music courtesy of the Audio Network.

These songs were used courtesy of Blue Dot Sessions :

"Kalsted,""Stretch of Lonely," "Thin Passage," "Waltz and Fury," "Dash and Slope," "Gilroy Solo," 'House of Grendel," "Uncertain Ground," and "Watercool-Quiet."
Research Notes
“2019 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figure s.” Alzheimer’s Association, 2019.

Begley, Sharon. “As Alzheimer’s Drug Developers Give Up on Today’s Patients, Where Is the Outrage? ” Stat News. August 15, 2018.

Begley, Sharon. “The Maddening Saga of How an Alzheimer’s ‘Cabal’ Thwarted Progress toward a Cure for Decades .” Stat News. June 25, 2019.

“Biogen Alzheimer’s Drug Shows Positive Results .” CNBC. July 25, 2018.

“The Clinical Trial Journey .” Mayo Clinic. Youtube video. June 5, 2019.

Garde, Damian. “Alzheimer’s Study Sparks a New Round of Debate over the Amyloid Hypothesis .” Stat News. July 30, 2018.

Hogan, Alex. “The Disappointing History of Alzheimer’s Research .” Stat News. May 21, 2019.

Itzhaki, Ruth. “Alzheimer’s Disease: Mounting Evidence That Herpes Virus Is a Cause .” The Conversation. October 19, 2018.

Keshavan, Meghana. “On Alzheimer’s, Scientists Head Back to the Drawing Board—and Once-Shunned Ideas Get an Audience .” Stat News. July 22, 2019.

Li, Yun. “Biogen Posts It ’s the Worst Day in 14 Years after Ending Trial for Blockbuster Alzheimer’s Drug .” CNBC. March 21, 2019.

“Lilly Alzheimer’s Drug Does Not Slow Memory Loss: Study .” CNBC. November 23, 2016.

“The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Living with Alzheimer’s .” 1983-04-12, National Records and Archives Administration, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston and Washington, DC, accessed October 16, 2019.

“The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour ,” 1991-08-16, NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed October 22, 2019.

Makin, Simon. “The Amyloid Hypothesis on Trial .” Nature . July 25, 2018.

Prusiner, Stanley. Madness and Memory: The Discovery of Prions—A New Biological Principle of Disease . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.

Robakis, Nikolaos, et al. “Alzheimer’s Disease: A Re-examination of the Amyloid Hypothesis .” ALZforum.org. March 26, 1998.

Shenk, David. “The Forgetting—Alzheimer’s: Portrait of an Epidemic .” New York: Anchor, 2013.

“Virginia Lee and John Trojanowski on the Protein Road Map to Alzheimer’s .” Science Watch. December 2011.

Almost six million people in the United States have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. And with baby boomers getting older, those numbers are only expected to rise. This disease, despite being studied by scientists for more than 100 years, has no cure. In our two-part series we first dive into the personal lives of the people at the heart of this disease: the patients and their caregivers. Then we uncover why effective treatments for Alzheimer’s lag so far behind those for cancer, heart disease, and HIV. It turns out that for all the decades researchers have been at war with the disease, they’ve also been at war with each other.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick
Reporter: Rigoberto Hernandez
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Audio Engineer: James Morrison

Music courtesy of the Audio Network.

These songs were used courtesy of Blue Dot Sessions :

"Kalsted,""Stretch of Lonely," "Thin Passage," "Waltz and Fury," "Dash and Slope," "Gilroy Solo," 'House of Grendel," "Uncertain Ground," and "Watercool-Quiet."
Research Notes
“2019 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figure s.” Alzheimer’s Association, 2019.

Begley, Sharon. “As Alzheimer’s Drug Developers Give Up on Today’s Patients, Where Is the Outrage? ” Stat News. August 15, 2018.

Begley, Sharon. “The Maddening Saga of How an Alzheimer’s ‘Cabal’ Thwarted Progress toward a Cure for Decades .” Stat News. June 25, 2019.

“Biogen Alzheimer’s Drug Shows Positive Results .” CNBC. July 25, 2018.

“The Clinical Trial Journey .” Mayo Clinic. Youtube video. June 5, 2019.

Garde, Damian. “Alzheimer’s Study Sparks a New Round of Debate over the Amyloid Hypothesis .” Stat News. July 30, 2018.

Hogan, Alex. “The Disappointing History of Alzheimer’s Research .” Stat News. May 21, 2019.

Itzhaki, Ruth. “Alzheimer’s Disease: Mounting Evidence That Herpes Virus Is a Cause .” The Conversation. October 19, 2018.

Keshavan, Meghana. “On Alzheimer’s, Scientists Head Back to the Drawing Board—and Once-Shunned Ideas Get an Audience .” Stat News. July 22, 2019.

Li, Yun. “Biogen Posts It ’s the Worst Day in 14 Years after Ending Trial for Blockbuster Alzheimer’s Drug .” CNBC. March 21, 2019.

“Lilly Alzheimer’s Drug Does Not Slow Memory Loss: Study .” CNBC. November 23, 2016.

“The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Living with Alzheimer’s .” 1983-04-12, National Records and Archives Administration, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston and Washington, DC, accessed October 16, 2019.

“The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour ,” 1991-08-16, NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed October 22, 2019.

Makin, Simon. “The Amyloid Hypothesis on Trial .” Nature . July 25, 2018.

Prusiner, Stanley. Madness and Memory: The Discovery of Prions—A New Biological Principle of Disease . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.

Robakis, Nikolaos, et al. “Alzheimer’s Disease: A Re-examination of the Amyloid Hypothesis .” ALZforum.org. March 26, 1998.

Shenk, David. “The Forgetting—Alzheimer’s: Portrait of an Epidemic .” New York: Anchor, 2013.

“Virginia Lee and John Trojanowski on the Protein Road Map to Alzheimer’s .” Science Watch. December 2011.

For almost as long as there have been television networks, science shows have been part of the TV landscape. But science programming didn’t begin by accident. At first it was a way for TV stations to build trust with their audiences; then it was used as a ploy to get families to buy more television sets. But as the world changed, so did science on TV. Distillations interviewed Ingrid Ockert, a fellow at the Science History Institute and a historian of science and media, about five key contributors to the science television landscape: the Johns Hopkins Science Review , Watch Mr. Wizard , NOVA , 3-2-1 Contact , and our favorite turtleneck-wearing celebrity scientist, Carl Sagan. Our conversation revealed that successful science shows have always had one thing in common: they don’t treat their audiences like dummies.

The 17 rare earth elements are often called the spices or vitamins of industry. While we don’t need much of them, they’re sprinkled in small amounts through our most powerful, futuristic, and dare we say it, magical tools. They power our iPhones and computers; they’re in wind turbines and hybrid cars. They’re in dental implants, X-ray machines, and life-saving cancer drugs. They have unusual magnetic and electrical properties that make our gadgets faster, stronger, and lighter. And we've all been coasting along enjoying their magic for a while now. In fact, we've come to expect magic. But magic comes at a cost, and in the case of mining and processing rare earths, that cost is environmental devastation. Most of us in the Western world aren’t aware of the destruction/ because most rare earths are mined elsewhere. But some scientists are trying to find a more environmentally sound way to get them.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Reporter: Rigoberto Hernandez
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison
Music courtesy of the Audio Network , Blue Dot Sessions , and the Free Music Archive .
Research Notes
Abraham, David. Elements of Power . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.

The Californian Rare Earths Mine Caught between Trump and China . Bloomberg News , September 26, 2018.

“China-Japan Boat Crash Video Posted .” Al Jazeera , November 5, 2010.

“China Threatens to Cut Off Rare Earth Minerals as Trade War Escalates .” MSNBC, May 30, 2019.

“Colorado Experience: Uranium Mania .” Rocky Mountain PBS, November 2, 2017.

“Critical Materials Strategy. ” U.S. Department of Energy, December 2010.

Desai, Pratima. “Tesla’s Electric Motor Shift to Spur Demand for Rare Earth Neodymium .”Reuters , March 12, 2018.

Gifford, Rob. “Yellow River Pollution Is Price of Economic Growth .” National Public Radio, All Things Considered , December 11, 2007.

Haxel, Gordon, Hedrick, James, Orris, Greta. “Rare Earth Elements—Critical Resources for High Technology .” U.S. Geological Survey, Fact Sheet 087-02, November 20, 2002.

Kalantzakos, Sophia. China and the Geopolitics of Rare Earths . New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Kean, Sam. “Ytterby: The Tiny Swedish Island That Gave the Periodic Table Four Different Elements .” Slate , July 16, 2010.

Kim, Meeri. “Exposing the Trail of Devastation .” Sarah Lawrence College Magazine ,” Fall 2018.

Klinger, Julie. Rare Earth Frontiers . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017.

Lovins, Amory. “Clean Energy and Rare Earths: Why Not to Worry .” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 23, 2017.

“Obama Denounces China on Rare Earth Elements .” AFP News Agency, March 13, 2012.

“PBS NewsHour; June 14, 2010 7:00 pm–8:00 pm EDT .” American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston and Washington, DC. Accessed June 24, 2019.

“Running from Rare Earth Metals .” Bloomberg , June 30, 2015.

Salomon, Charlotte Abney. “Finding Yttrium: Joan Gadolin and the Development of a ‘Discovery.’ ” CHF Brown Bag Lecture Series, March 10, 2015.

“Story of Color Television .” RCA, 1956.

Thomson, Gene. “Hot Canyon .” Ames Laboratory, June 18, 2012.

Turner, Roger. “Material Matters: The Past and Present of Rare Earth Elements Essential to Our Future .” Joseph Priestley Society Lecture, Science History Institute, Philadelphia, February 14, 2019.

The 17 rare earth elements are often called the spices or vitamins of industry. While we don’t need much of them, they’re sprinkled in small amounts through our most powerful, futuristic, and dare we say it, magical tools. They power our iPhones and computers; they’re in wind turbines and hybrid cars. They’re in dental implants, X-ray machines, and life-saving cancer drugs. They have unusual magnetic and electrical properties that make our gadgets faster, stronger, and lighter. And we've all been coasting along enjoying their magic for a while now. In fact, we've come to expect magic. But magic comes at a cost, and in the case of mining and processing rare earths, that cost is environmental devastation. Most of us in the Western world aren’t aware of the destruction/ because most rare earths are mined elsewhere. But some scientists are trying to find a more environmentally sound way to get them.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Reporter: Rigoberto Hernandez
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison
Music courtesy of the Audio Network , Blue Dot Sessions , and the Free Music Archive .
Research Notes
Abraham, David. Elements of Power . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.

The Californian Rare Earths Mine Caught between Trump and China . Bloomberg News , September 26, 2018.

“China-Japan Boat Crash Video Posted .” Al Jazeera , November 5, 2010.

“China Threatens to Cut Off Rare Earth Minerals as Trade War Escalates .” MSNBC, May 30, 2019.

“Colorado Experience: Uranium Mania .” Rocky Mountain PBS, November 2, 2017.

“Critical Materials Strategy. ” U.S. Department of Energy, December 2010.

Desai, Pratima. “Tesla’s Electric Motor Shift to Spur Demand for Rare Earth Neodymium .”Reuters , March 12, 2018.

Gifford, Rob. “Yellow River Pollution Is Price of Economic Growth .” National Public Radio, All Things Considered , December 11, 2007.

Haxel, Gordon, Hedrick, James, Orris, Greta. “Rare Earth Elements—Critical Resources for High Technology .” U.S. Geological Survey, Fact Sheet 087-02, November 20, 2002.

Kalantzakos, Sophia. China and the Geopolitics of Rare Earths . New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Kean, Sam. “Ytterby: The Tiny Swedish Island That Gave the Periodic Table Four Different Elements .” Slate , July 16, 2010.

Kim, Meeri. “Exposing the Trail of Devastation .” Sarah Lawrence College Magazine ,” Fall 2018.

Klinger, Julie. Rare Earth Frontiers . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017.

Lovins, Amory. “Clean Energy and Rare Earths: Why Not to Worry .” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 23, 2017.

“Obama Denounces China on Rare Earth Elements .” AFP News Agency, March 13, 2012.

“PBS NewsHour; June 14, 2010 7:00 pm–8:00 pm EDT .” American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston and Washington, DC. Accessed June 24, 2019.

“Running from Rare Earth Metals .” Bloomberg , June 30, 2015.

Salomon, Charlotte Abney. “Finding Yttrium: Joan Gadolin and the Development of a ‘Discovery.’ ” CHF Brown Bag Lecture Series, March 10, 2015.

“Story of Color Television .” RCA, 1956.

Thomson, Gene. “Hot Canyon .” Ames Laboratory, June 18, 2012.

Turner, Roger. “Material Matters: The Past and Present of Rare Earth Elements Essential to Our Future .” Joseph Priestley Society Lecture, Science History Institute, Philadelphia, February 14, 2019.

In the summer of 1969 the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, defied the laws of nature and caught fire. Time covered the event and cemented the fire’s place in national lore. The story that followed says this fire captured the country’s attention and brought to light the environmental hazards not only in Cleveland but in the country as a whole. And it went on to spark the modern environmental movement. This all sounds like such a nice, tidy story. But in reality things were much more complicated and involved politics, the space race, and just plain timing.
Credits
Hosts : Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Reporter : Larry Buhl
Senior Producer : Mariel Carr
Producer : Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer : James Morrison
Music courtesy of the Audio Network
Research Notes
“Carl Stokes and the River Fire .” National Park Service. Last updated May 2, 2019.

“The Cuyahoga River Fire: A New Mayor Tackles an Old Problem .” CSU Digital Humanities. YouTube video, 01:07, August 6, 2010.

“The Cuyahoga River Fire, Part 1: Don’t Fall in the River .” CSU Center for Public History and Digital Humanities. Video, 01:23, 2010.

“Cuyahoga River Pollution Ohio 1967 .” YouTube video, 04:45, March 20, 2010.

Cuyahoga River Restoration .

Doyle, Jack. “Burn On, Big River… ,” Cuyahoga River Fires, PopHistoryDig.com , May 12, 2014.

Heaton, Michael. “Burning River Fest Parties in the Name of the Environment.” Plain Dealer , July 19, 2012.

Holt, Lawrence R., and Diane Garey, dir. The Return of the Cuyahoga . 2008. Oley, PA: Bullfrog Films.

Rotman, Michael. “Cuyahoga River Fire .” Cleveland Historical Society, April 27, 2017.

Scott, Michael. “Scientists Monitor Cuyahoga River Quality to Adhere to Clean Water Act.” Plain Dealer , April 12, 2009.

Stradling, David, and Richard Stradling. Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015.

“Year of the River: A Look at the Cuyahoga River 40 Years after It Caught Fire.” Special series, Plain Dealer , 2011.

When we think about the U.S.-Mexico border, it’s hard not to think about the current immigration conflict and the contentious idea to build a wall. But the concept of a border wall isn’t new: proposals for walls have been made for more than 100 years. Our story starts in 1947, when a group of Texas ranchers demanded a fence along their state’s border with Mexico. Their motivation, though, was to stop an outbreak of a disease that struck farm animals. The response to the crisis was complicated and often messy. But in the end two countries came together to solve a complex predicament—instead of building a wall.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producers: Rigoberto Hernandez , Alexis Pedrick
Photo illustration by Jay Muhlin
Music
Music courtesy of the Audio Network .
Research Notes
Cervantes Sanchez, Juan, Roman Diaz, Ana Bertha Velazquez Camacho. “Una historia de vacunos y vacunas: Retrospectiva de la epizootia de Fiebre Aftosa en Mexico a 65 años de distancia .” Revista electronica de Veterinaria 11:B (May 2011).

Clements, Kendrick. “Managing a National Crisis: The 1924 Foot-an d-Mouth Disease Outbreak in California .” California History 84:3 ( Spring 2007) .

Domel, Jessica. “USDA Expands Fever Tick Fencing in South Texas .” Texas Agriculture Daily , January 2, 2019.

Dusenberry William. “Foot and Mouth Disease in Mexico, 1946-1951 .” Agricultural History 29: 2 ( April 1955) .

Fox, M. Kel. “The Campaign against Foot-and-Mouth Disease in Mexico, 1946-1951 .” Journal of Arizona History 38:1 ( Spring 1997) .

Ledbetter, John. “Fighting Foot-and-Mouth Disease in Mexico: Popular Protest against Diplomatic Decisions .” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly , 104:(3), (January 2001).

Machado, A. Manuel. “Aftosa and the Mexican-United States Sanitary Convention of 1928 .” Agricultural History 39:4. (October 1965).

Mendoza, Mary. "Battling Afotsa: North-to-South Migration Accross the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1947-1954 ." Journal of the West , 54:1 (Winter 2015).

Mendoza, Mary. “Treacherous Terrain: Racial Exclusion and Environmental Control at the U.S.-Mexico Border .” Environmental History 23 (January 2018).

Mulvey, Ruth. “Cattle Killing Turns Peon against Doctor.” The Washington Post , January 4, 1948.

Outbreak . Department of Agriculture, Office of Public Affairs. 1949.

Proctor, George. “An American Tragedy in Mexico: The Death of Robert Proctor . ” Journal of Arizona History 38:4 (1997).

Sill Wickware, Francis. “Crusade in Mexico .” Collier’s , August 20, 1949.

“Texas Cattle Fever .” U.S.Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library.

In the late 1950s a Texas town on the Gulf of Mexico was suffering from a devastating, decade-long drought. But while the wells ran dry, the ocean lapped at the town’s shore, taunting the thirsty residents with its endless supply of undrinkable water. Undrinkable, that is, until President John F. Kennedy stepped in to save the day with the promise of science. The evolving technology of desalination wouldn’t just end droughts: it would give us as much water as we wanted. It would allow us to inhabit otherwise uninhabitable places. It would let us make the deserts bloom. But at what cost?
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producers: Rigoberto Hernandez , Alexis Pedrick
Reporter: Rigoberto Hernandez
Photo illustration by Jay Muhlin
Music
Music courtesy of the Audio Network .
Research Notes
Barringer, Felicity. “As ‘Yuck Factor’ Subsides, Treated Wastewater Flows from Taps .” New York Times, February 9, 2012.

Burnett, John. “When the Sky Ran Dry .” Texas Monthly, July 2012.

“Countries Who Rely on Desalination .” World Atlas.

Gies, Erica. “Desalination Breakthrough: Saving the Sea from Salt .” Scientific American, June 6, 2016.

“Is Desalination the Future of Drought Relief in California? ” PBS NewsHour, October 30, 2015.

Jaehnig, Kenton, and Jacob Roberts. “Nor Any Drop to Drink .” Distillations, November 2018.

Leahy, Stephen, and Katherine Purvis. “Peak Salt: Is the Desalination Dream over for the Gulf States? ” Guardian, September 29, 2016.

Madrigal, Alexis. “The Many Failures and Few Successes of Zany Iceberg Towing Schemes .” Atlantic, August 10, 2011.

Miller, Joanna M. “Desalting Plant Opens Amid Surplus .” Los Angeles Times , February 23, 1992.

“President Hails Desalting Plant; He Flips Switch to Dedicate Water Project in Texas .” New York Times, June 22, 1961.

Pulwarty, Roger, John Wiener, and David Ware. “Bite without Bark: How the Socioeconomic Context of the 1950s U.S. Drought Minimized Responses to a Multiyear Extreme Climate Event .” Weather and Climate Extremes 11 (2016): 80–94.

Rivard, Ry. “The Desalination Plant Is Finished but the Debate over It Isn’t .” Voice of San Diego, August 30, 2016.

“San Diego’s Oversupply of Water Reaches a New, Absurd Level .” Voice of San Diego, February 2, 2016.

“With the Drought Waning, the Future of Desalination Is Murkier .” Voice of San Diego, June 5, 2017.

“The Year in San Diego Water Wars .” Voice of San Diego, December 29, 2015.

Simon, Matt. “Desalination Is Booming. But What about All That Toxic Brine .” Wired, January, 14, 2019.

“The 1976–1977 California Drought: A Review .” California Department of Water Resources, May 1978.

Voutchkov, Nikolay. “Desalination—Past, Present and Future .” International Water Association, August 17, 2016.

Video Archive

“The California Drought 1976–77: A Two Year History ” (video). California Department of Water Resources.

“The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Drought in the West .” Broadcast on February 11, 1977. National Records and Archives Administration, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA, and Washington, DC, accessed March 19, 2019.

“White House Today (1961) .” Lake Jackson Historical Museum, 1961. Texas Archive of the Moving Image.

This Valentine’s Day we could have just brought you some sappy love stories from science’s past. But instead we offer you three tales of lust, loneliness, betrayal, pettiness, and not one, but two beheadings.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Reporters: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Audio Engineer: James Morrison
Photo illustration by Jay Muhlin
Additional audio production by Dan Drago
Music
Music courtesy of the Audio Network
Research Notes
Martha Drinnan

“Is Laurel Hill Haunted?” Laurel Hill Cemetery Blog, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, April 30, 2018. https://laurelhillcemetery.blog/2018/04/30/is-laurel-hill-haunted/ .
Sherman, Conger. Guide to Laurel Hill Cemetery, Near Philadelphia, 1847. Philadelphia: C. Sherman, 1847. https://archive.org/details/guidetolaurelhi00shergoog .
Strauss, Robert. “Grave Sights.” Philadelphia Inquirer , October 29, 2010. https://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20101029_Grave_sights.html .

It's a Thin Line Between Love and Hate

Duveen, Denis. “Madame Lavoisier 1758–1836. Chymia 5 (1953): 13–29. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27757161.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents .

Everts, Sarah. “Acknowledging Madame Lavoisier.” Artful Science (blog), C&EN , June 1, 2011. http://cenblog.org/artful-science/2011/06/01/acknowledging-madame-lavoisier/ .
Hoffmann, Roald. “Mme. Lavoisier.” Scientific American 90 (2002): 22–24. http://www.roaldhoffmann.com/sites/all/files/mme_lavoisier.pdf .
“The Human Side of Science: Edison and Tesla, Watson and Crick, and Other Personal Stories behind Science’s Big Ideas (2016).” Schoolbag.info. https://schoolbag.info/science/human/6.html .
“Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier.” Wikipedia, accessed February 11, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marie-Anne_Paulze_Lavoisier&oldid=874565953 .

Touched by the Angels

Clucas, Stephen, ed. John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought . Dordrecht: Springer, 2006.

Dee, John. The Compendious Rehearsal. London: Thomas Hearne, 1726.
British Library (website), Collection Items. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/john-dee-is-accused-of-sorcery-after-staging-a-greek-play .
Harkness, Deborah. John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
In, Mystical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy and Renaissance Culture , edited by Stanton J. Linden, 35–79. New York: AMS, 2007.
Sherman, William Howard. John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance . Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997.

Egyptian scriptures from 1200 BCE describe painful, migraine-like headaches, so we know the disorder has afflicted people for at least three thousand years. Still, the condition continues to mystify us today.

Anne Hoffman is a reporter, a professor, and a chronic migraine sufferer. She spent the past year tracing the history of migraines, hoping to discover clues about a treatment that actually works for her. The journey took her in some interesting directions. One common theme she found? A whole lot of stigma.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Reporter: Anne Hoffman
Photo illustration by Jay Muhlin
Additional audio production by Dan Drago
Music
Theme music composed by Zach Young .

"Valantis" and "Valantis Vespers" by Blue Dot Sessions , courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Additional music courtesy of the Audio Network .
Research Notes
Interviews
Matthew Crawford , Doan Fellow, Science History Institute.
Margaret Heaney , professor of neurobiology, Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
Joanna Kempner , sociologist and author of Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health.
Anne MacGregor , medical researcher and clinician.
Brian McGeeney , assistant professor of neurology, Boston University School of Medicine.

Sources
Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. “Hildegarde of Bingen .”
McClory, Robert. “Hildegard of Bingen: No Ordinary Saint .” National Catholic Reporter, March 24, 2012.
Meares, Hadley. “The Medieval Prophetess Who Used Her Visions to Criticize the Church .” Atlas Obscura , July 13, 2016.
PBS Frontline. “Hildegard’s Scivias .”
Songfacts. Für Hildegard Von Bingen .
Wikipedia. “Scivias .” Last modified October 23, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scivias.

Cannabidiol (CBD):
Bazelot, Michaël, Chen Tong, Ibeas Bih, Dallas Mark, Clementino Nunn, Alistair V. W.
Whalley Benjamin. “Molecular Targets of Cannabidiol in Neurological Disorders .” Neurotherapeutics 12 (2015): 699–730.
Chen, Angus. “Some of the Parts: Is Marijuana’s ‘Entourage Effect’ Scientifically Valid? ” Scientific American , April 20, 2017.
Grinspoon, Peter. “Cannabidiol (CBD)—What We Know and What We Don’t .” Harvard Health Blog , Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School, August 24, 2018.
Science Vs. “CBD: Weed Wonder Drug? ” Podcast audio, November 15, 2018..

Migraine :
Kempner, Joanna. “The Birth of the Dreaded ‘Migraine Personality .’” Migraine Again , November 30, 2017.
Neighmond, Patti. “Why Women Suffer More Migraines Than Men .” Shots: Health News from NPR , National Public Radio, April 16, 2012.
Peterlin, B. Lee, Saurabh Gupta, Thomas N. Ward, and Anne MacGregor. “Sex Matters: Evaluating Sex and Gender in Migraine and Headache Research .” Headache 51(6) (2011): 839–842.
Sharkey, Lauren. “Why Don’t We Know More about Migraines? ” BBC Future, British Broadcasting Corporation, July 2, 2018.
Wikipedia. “Aretaeus of Cappadocia.” Last modified December 6, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aretaeus_of_Cappadocia.

Cannabis for Migraine :
Mandal, Ananya. “Migraine History .” News-Medical , August 23, 2018.
MDede. “Are Cannabinoids and Hallucinogens Viable Treatment Options for Headache Relief? ” Neurology Reviews 22(5) (2014): 22–23. Available at MDedge , Clinical Neurology News.

Archival :
Grass—The History of Marijuana . Directed by Ron Mann. Toronto: Sphinx Productions, 1999.
Hildegard of Bingen . Directed by James Runcie. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1994.
Reefer Madness . Directed by Louis J. Gasnier. Los Angeles: George A. Hirliman Productions, 1938.

In April 1988 Harvard University was awarded a patent that was the first of its kind. U.S. Patent Number 4,736,866 was small, white, and furry, with red beady eyes. His name was OncoMouse.

The mouse, genetically engineered to have a predisposition for cancer, allowed researchers to study the disease in an intact living organism. It promised to transform cancer research, but not everyone was happy. Most critics were wary of patenting life forms at all. But academic scientists were also worried about the collision of commercial and academic science. It forced them to face difficult questions: Who should pay for science? Who does scientific knowledge belong to? And should science be for the good of the public or for profit?
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago .
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Reporter: Jessie Wright-Mendoza
Photo illustration by Jay Muhlin .
Additional audio production by Dan Drago .
Music
Additional music courtesy of the Audio Network .
Research Notes
Interviews:

Elizabeth Popp Berman , Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Albany, and author of Creating the Market University: How Academic Science Became an Economic Engine .
David Einhorn , House Counsel, Jackson Laboratory .
Harold Varmus , Professor of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine.
Ken Paigen , Executive Research Fellow and Professor, Jackson Laboratory .

Sources:
Adler, Jerry. “The First Patented Animal Is Still Leading the Way on Cancer Research .” Smithsonian Magazine , December 2016.

Chakrabarty, Ananda. Microorganisms having multiple compatible degradative energy-generating plasmids and preparation thereof. U.S. Patent 4259444A , filed June 7, 1981, and issued March 31, 1981.

Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980).

“Fortune Names Its ’88 Products of the Year .” Associated Press , November 17, 1988.

Hanahan, Douglas, Erwin Wagner, and Richard Palmiter. “The Origins of Oncomice: A History of the First Transgenic Mice Genetically Engineered to Develop Cancer .” Genes and Development 21 (2007), 2258–2270.

Leder, Philip, and Timothy Stewart. Transgenic non-human mammals. U.S. Patent 4736866A , filed June 22, 1984, and issued April 12, 1988.

Leonelli, Sabina, and Rachel Ankeny. “Re-Thinking Organisms: The Impact of Databases on Model Organism Biology.” Working paper, University of Exeter, April 5, 2011. Published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C 43:1 (2012), 29–36.

Morse, Herbert C. III, ed. Origins of Inbred Mice . New York: Academic Press, 1978. Google Books.

Murray, Fiona. “The Oncomouse That Roared: Resistance and Accommodation to Patenting in Academic Science .” Working paper, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006. Published in American Journal of Sociology 116:2 (2010), 341–388.

National Association for Biomedical Research. “Mice and Rats.” Mice and Rats . Washington, DC, 2018. nabr.org.

National Museum of American History. “OncoMouse .” Washington, DC, 2018. americanhistory.si.edu.

Palmer, Brian. “Jonas Salk: Good at Virology, Bad at Economics. ” Slate , April 13, 2014.

Rader, Karen. “The Mouse People: Murine Genetics Work at the Bussey Institution, 1909–1936 .” Journal of the History of Biology 31:3 (Autumn 1998), 327–354.

Russell, Elizabeth. “Origins and History of Mouse Inbred Strains: Contributions of Clarence Cook Little.” Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine. informatics.jax.org.

Schneider, Keith. “New Animal Forms Will Be Patented.” New York Times , April 17, 1987.

Specter, Michael. “Can We Patent Life ?” New Yorker , April 1, 2013.

Archival Sources:

Achbar, Mark, and Jennifer Abbott, dir. The Corporation . Canada: Big Picture Media Corporation, 2003.

Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. “Lasker Archives: Passion and Optimism in Scientific Research.” April 9, 2017, laskerfoundation.org. On the 1987 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.

Murrow, Edward. See It Now (Jonas Salk). CBS, April 12, 1955. paleycenter.org

Potter, Deborah, and Dan Rather. “Animal Patents.” CBS Evening News , April 12, 1988.

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. “Candidacy for Presidency: Ronald Reagan’s Announcement for President of U.S. ” November 13, 1979. youtube.com.

“We should never, ever forget that addiction treatment is a search for meaning in a place other than using drugs.”

—Nancy Campbell, historian of drug addiction

(This is the third and final chapter of a three-part series. See Part 1 and Part 2 .)

In the final chapter of this series we travel to the heart of our modern opioid crisis. In what is now a notorious Philadelphia neighborhood called Kensington, we meet two victims of the epidemic and follow them on two distinct paths toward recovery.

Our current devastating opioid crisis is unprecedented in its reach and deadliness, but it’s not the first such epidemic the United States has experienced or tried to treat. In fact, it’s the third.

Treating America’s Opioid Addiction is a three-part series that investigates how we’ve understood and treated opioid addiction over more than a century. Through the years we’ve categorized opioid addiction as some combination of a moral failure, a mental illness, a biological disease, or a crime. And though we’ve desperately wanted the problem to be something science alone can solve, the more we look, the more complicated we learn it is.
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Reporters: Mariel Carr and Rigoberto Hernandez , with additional reporting by Meir Rinde
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison
Photo illustration by Jay Muhlin
Additional audio production by Dan Drago
Music
Music courtesy of the Audio Network .
Research Notes
Interviews:

Claire Clark, author of The Recovery Revolution: The Battle over Addiction Treatment in the United States .
Nancy Campbell , historian and director of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute .
Chris Marshall, former member and director of the Last Stop.
Miranda Thomas, Kensington resident.
Joseph Garbely , vice president of medical services and medical director of the Caron Treatment Centers .
Lara Weinstein , primary care physician, Project HOME and Pathways to Housing PA
Special thanks to Jennifer Reardon of Temple Health Communications and to Joseph D’Orazio and David O’Gurek.

Sources:

American Addiction Centers. “Can Suboxone Get You High ?” Brentwood, TN: American Addiction Centers, 2018.
American Addiction Centers. “Pros and Cons of Methadone .” Brentwood, TN: American Addiction Centers, 2018.
Campbell, Nancy, and Anne Lovell. “The History of the Development of Buprenorphine as an Addiction Therapeutic .” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1248 (Feb. 2012): 124–39.
Clark, Claire. The Recovery Revolution: The Battle over Addiction Treatment in the United States . New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.
Giordano, Rita. “Opioid Addiction Treatment with Medicine Works Best. Why Don’t More Young People Get It?” Philadelphia Inquirer , April 10, 2018.
Oransky, Ivan. “Vincent Dole ” [obituary]. Lancet 368 (Sept. 16, 2006): 984.
Rockefeller University. “The First Pharmacological Treatment for Narcotic Addiction: Methadone Maintenance .” Rockefeller University Hospital: 100 Years of Bridging Science and Medicine website. New York, 2010.
Shuster, Alvin M. “G.I. Heroin Addiction Epidemic in Vietnam.” New York Times , May 16, 1971.
Thompson-Gargano, Kathleen. “What Is Buprenorphine Treatment Like?” Farmington, CT: National Alliance of Advocates for Buprenorphine Treatment.
Villa, Lauren. “Methadone and Suboxone: What’s the Difference Anyway ?” Drugabuse.com.
Waldorf, Dan, et al. Morphine Maintenance: The Shreveport Clinic 1919–1923—Special Studies No. 1 . Washington, DC: Drug Abuse Council, April 1974.
Whelan, Aubrey. “She Was Just out of Rehab. She Was Excited about the Future. Three Hours Later, She Was Dead .” Philadelphia Inquirer , June 26, 2018.
Winberg, Michaela. “Kensington’s Famous Last Stop Addiction Recovery Center Prepares to Move .” Billypenn.com, March 26, 2018.

Archival Sources:

Efootage.com. Richard Nixon “Law & Order” Speech —1968. Video.
John Chancellor. “Washington, DC Heroin Addiction.” NBC Evening News . February 4, 1971.
Columbia Center for Oral History. Marie Nyswander, oral history. New York: Columbia University Libraries, Oral History Archives, 1981.

Our current devastating opioid crisis is unprecedented in its reach and deadliness, but it’s not the first such epidemic the United States has experienced or tried to treat. In fact, it’s the third.

Treating America’s Opioid Addiction is a three-part series that investigates how we’ve understood and treated opioid addiction over more than a century. Through the years we’ve categorized opioid addiction as some combination of a moral failure, a mental illness, a biological disease, or a crime. And though we’ve desperately wanted the problem to be something science alone can solve, the more we look, the more complicated we learn it is.

Part 2 focuses on a controversial rehabilitation program called Synanon, which became the first significant therapeutic community for opioid addiction. From the time it opened its doors in 1958, it seemed to do what no other hospital, prison, or sanitarium had done before: cure the supposedly incurable heroin addict. But over the years its changing methods became increasingly questionable, and the controversy would ultimately lead to its demise. Despite its faults Synanon had a profound influence on subsequent generations of drug treatment programs—many of which still exist today.

CORRECTIONS : In the original episode we said that by the time John Stallone joined Synanon in 1965, stages two and three had been eliminated—meaning that there was no timeline for him to ever leave. In fact, the phasing out of those stages took longer to implement, and they were still in place when he arrived. This statement has been edited out of the updated audio version.

In the original episode David Deitch says that he found his dog hanging by a noose outside his house, and he believed that a member of Synanon was responsible. However, this story did not happen to David Deitch but to another former Synanon member named Jack Hurst. This story has been edited out of the updated audio version. All other statements made by David Deitch have been corroborated by other sources.

The original episode suggested that John Stallone left Synanon after the group's leaders started endorsing violence against children, but he left before years before the violence started. The original script read, "John left in 1972 because Dederich was asking parents to live separately from their children, to essentially turn them over to Synanon, and John and his wife didn’t want to do that to their son. And they made the right decision." John Stallone: They started physically abusing the kids. They started using corporal punishment with the kids. They started hitting them and whatnot. It didn't turn out good at all." The audio version has been edited to replace "And they made the right decision" with "And years later something happened that made it clear they had made the right decision."
Credits
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Reporter: Mariel Carr with additional reporting by Meir Rinde
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison
Photo illustration by Jay Muhlin
Music
Our theme music was composed by Zach Young.
Additional music courtesy of the Audio Network .
Research Notes
Interviews:

Claire Clark, author of The Recovery Revolution: The Battle over Addiction Treatment in the United States .
Nancy Campbell , historian and director of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute .
John Stallone, former Synanon member.
David Deitch, former Synanon member, clinical and social psychologist, and emeritus professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.

Sources:

Claire Clark. The Recovery Revolution: The Battle over Addiction Treatment in the United States . New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.
Synanon Foundation records, Online Archive of California , oac.cdlib.org/.
Synanon Foundation Oral Histories, UCLA Library, Center for Oral History Research, Los Angeles.
David Deitch. “Conversation with David Deitch.” Addiction X (May 3, 2002), 791-800.
Hillel Aron. “The Story of This Drug-Rehab-Turned-Violent Cult Is Wild, Wild, Country-Caliber Bizarre.” Los Angeles Magazine , April 23, 2018.
Matt Novak. “Synanon’s Sober Utopia: How a Drug Rehab Program Became a Violent Cult.” Gizmodo, Paleofuture, April 15, 2014.

Film excerpts from:

The Distant Drummer: Flower of Darkness . Washington, DC: Airlie Foundation and George Washington University Department of Medical and Public Affairs, 1972.
David , 1961, Drew Associates .
Instant Guide to Synanon: A Compilation of the Most Frequently Asked Questions about Our Foundation . Synanon, 1973.
The House on the Beach . Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1965. YouTube, posted on February 29, 2008.
Synanon . Richard Quine, director. Columbia Pictures, 1965.

In our next episode we’re continuing our three-part series on the history of opioid addiction treatment in the United States. And we’re going back to the early 1960s, when the foundations for our modern opioid addiction treatment system were being built--starting with a controversial drug rehabilitation program called Synanon.

Tune in to our next episode, Synanon and the Tunnel Back to the Human Race, on September 18.

Our current devastating opioid crisis is unprecedented in its reach and deadliness, but it’s not the first such epidemic the United States has experienced or tried to treat. In fact, it’s the third.

Treating America’s Opioid Addiction is a three-part series that investigates how we’ve understood and treated opioid addiction over more than a century. Through the years we’ve categorized opioid addiction as some combination of a moral failure, a mental illness, a biological disease, or a crime. And though we’ve desperately wanted the problem to be something science alone can solve, the more we look, the more complicated we learn it is.

Part 1 focuses on a government-run prison-hospital, the Narcotic Farm, just for people addicted to opioids. When it opened in 1935, it promised to find a cure for drug addiction.
Credits
Hosts : Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Reporter: Mariel Carr with additional reporting by Meir Rinde
Senior Producer : Mariel Carr
Producer : Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison
Music
Our theme music was composed by Zach Young.
Additional music courtesy of the Audio Network .
Research Notes
Interviews:

Claire Clark, author of The Recovery Revolution: The Battle Over Addiction Treatment in the United States .

Nancy Campbell , historian and the head of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute .

John Stallone, former Narcotic Farm patient.

Sources:

Claire Clark, The Recovery Revolution: The Battle Over Addiction Treatment in the United States .

The Habit, Opioid Addiction in America , Backstory .

Inside the Story of America’s 19th-Century Opiate Addiction , Smithsonian Magazine .

Films:

The Distant Drummer: Flower of Darkness
The Distant Drummer: Bridge From No Place
The Narcotic Farm

If you live in Los Angeles, or even if you’ve just visited, you know about smog. But what might surprise you is that a half-century ago the city’s air quality was more unbearable, even though the city had far fewer cars.

In the final installment of our three-part series on environmental success stories, we tell you about Los Angeles’s caveat-filled triumph over smog. The battle started in the 1940s and continues today, but along the way crucial pieces of technology and legislation helped clear the air—and forced the whole country to follow.

Credits
Hosts : Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer : Mariel Carr
Producer : Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison

Music
Our theme music was composed by Zach Young.
Additional music courtesy of the Audio Network .
Research Notes
To research this episode we read Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles and interviewed its author, Chip Jacobs . We also interviewed Roger Turner , research fellow for the Beckman Legacy Project at the Science History Institute.

Remember acid rain? If you were a kid in the 1980s like our hosts were, the threat of poison falling from the sky probably made some kind of impression on your consciousness. But thanks to the work of scientists, government, the media, and the pope—that’s right, the pope—the problem was fixed! Well, mostly fixed is probably more accurate.

This complicated story spans 27 years, six U.S. presidents, and ecologist Gene Likens's entire career. Discover the insidious details in the second chapter of our three-part series on environmental success stories.
Credits
Hosts : Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer : Mariel Carr
Producer : Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: James Morrison
Additional audio was recorded by David G. Rainey .

Image of Gene Likens by Phil Bradshaw of FreshFly .

We interviewed Rachel Rothschild, a former Science History Institute research fellow and Rumford Scholar, about her book, “Poisonous Skies: Acid Rain and the Globalization of Pollution.” To research this episode we read her 2015 dissertation, A Poisonous Sky: Scientific Research and International Diplomacy on Acid Rain . We also read Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway (Bloomsbury, 2010).

We interviewed Gene Likens at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire in 2015 with Glenn Holsten and FreshFly . We interviewed him again in May 2018.

The following are the archival news clips we used as they appear in the episode:

Bettina Gregory, Tom Jarriel, and Bill Zimmerman. ABC Evening News , December 14, 1978.

Walter Cronkite and Jim Kilpatrick. “Environment: The Earth Revisited/Acid Rain.” CBS Evening News , September 11, 1979.

Robert Bazell and John Chancellor. “Special Segment: Acid Rain.” NBC Evening News , May 9, 1980.

“The MacNeil/Lehrer Report: Acid Rain,” NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (Boston: WGBH; Washington, DC: Library of Congress), aired May 26, 1980, on PBS, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_507-pk06w9754b .

“The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (Boston: WGBH; Washington, DC: Library of Congress), aired on June 30, 1988, on PBS, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_507-b56d21s53c.

Tom Brokaw and Robert Hager. “Air Pollution: George Bush.” NBC Evening News , November 15, 1990.
Music
Our theme music was composed by Zach Young.

Additional music courtesy of the Audio Network .

If you were around in the 1980s, you probably remember the lurking fear of an ominous hole in the sky. In the middle of the decade scientists discovered that a giant piece of the ozone layer was disappearing over Antarctica, and the situation threatened us all. The news media jumped on the story. The ozone layer is like the earth’s sunscreen: without it ultraviolet rays from the sun would cause alarming rates of skin cancer and could even damage marine food chains. And it turns out we were causing the problem.

Today, more than three decades after the initial discovery, the ozone hole in Antarctica is finally on the road to recovery. How did we do it? This environmental success story gives us a glimpse into what happens when scientists, industry, the public, and the government all work together to manage a problem that threatens all of us. Happy Earth Day!
Credits
Hosts : Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer : Mariel Carr
Producer : Rigoberto Hernandez

To research this episode we read Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. We read, listened to, and used excerpts from an oral history with chemist Mario Molina that was conducted by the Science History Institute’s Center for Oral History . We also interviewed atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon at MIT in 2016.

These are the archival news clips we used as they appear in the episode:

Dow, David; Quinn, Jane Bryant; Rather, Dan. “Ozone Layer,” CBS Evening News. Aug 15, 1986.
Hager, Robert; Seigenthaler, John. “Ozone Layer,” NBC Evening News. Dec 3, 2000.
Gibson, Charles; Blakemore, Bill. “Environment/Ozone Layer,” ABC Evening News. Aug 22, 2006.
Reasoner, Harry; Stout, Bill. “Supersonic Transport Vs. Concorde,” CBS Evening News. Jan 1, 1969.
Quinn, Jane Bryant; Rather, Dan. “Ozone Layer Depletion,” CBS Evening News. Oct 20, 1986
Chancellor, John; Neal, Roy. “Special Report (Ozone),” NBC Evening News. Sep 24, 1975. Benton, Nelson; Cronkite, Walter. “Ozone/Fluorocarbons/ National Academy of Sciences Study,” CBS Evening News. Sept 14, 1976.
Brokaw, Tom; Hager, Robert. “Assignment Earth (Ozone Layer),” NBC Evening News. Feb 3, 1992.
Music
Our theme music was composed by Zach Young.

Additional music courtesy of the Audio Network .

They’re at the grocery checkout. They kill cancer cells. They’re in pointers that drive cats crazy and in the fiber networks that connect us to the internet. Lasers are so ubiquitous it’s hard to imagine a world without them. So you’d think we would know who the inventor was, right? Turns out it’s not so easy. There’s the guy who wrote down the initial idea, two other guys who got a patent for it, and then another guy who actually built the first laser. We spoke to Nick Taylor , author of Laser: The Inventor, the Noble Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War about this story and what it tells us about how inventions happen.
Credits
Hosts : Alexis Pedrick and Elizabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer : Mariel Carr
Producer and Reporter : Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Catherine Girardeau
Music
Our theme music was composed by Zach Young.

Additional music courtesy of the Audio Network .

Yoga pants are having a moment. And while they’re not new, they’ve moved beyond the gym and yoga studio into nearly every corner of our lives.

This so-called athleisure wear trend has made a lot of people happy. “Once I wore [yoga pants], I never wore jeans again if I could help it,” says Sage Roundtree, a yoga instructor from North Carolina. But as comfy as the trend is, it has made a lot of people very unhappy—including the entire cotton industry. That’s because performance athletic wear isn’t made out of cotton. It’s made of synthetic fibers such as Lycra, polyester, and spandex. As demand for athleisure wear grows, demand for cotton shrinks.

Luckily, cotton has a few tricks up its sleeve to keep consumers interested—because this is only the latest episode in a decades-long rivalry between cotton and synthetic fibers.
Credits
Hosts : Alexis Pedrick and Elizabeth Berry Drago
Reporter and producer: > Facebook | Blog"> James Morrison
Senior Producer : Mariel Carr
Producer : Rigoberto Hernandez
Music
Our theme music was composed by Zach Young.

Additional music courtesy of the Audio Network .