Distillations | Science History Institute

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 h...

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...

Tune in to our next episode on December 17th.

Come see Distillations LIVE for our Halloween Spooktacular! The show is Wednesday, October 30th at 7pm at the Science History Institute in Old City Philadelphia.

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. T...

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. T...

Listen to The Alzheimer's Copernicus Problem on October 22nd. 

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 fel...

We're in the thick of producing episodes for our fall season! Here's a taste of what's coming.

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 magne...

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 magne...

Rare earths power our modern world. They make the magic happen. But at what cost? Tune in to our next episode on June 25th.

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 mov...

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 s...

When Mexico and the United States resolved their beef. 

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 desalinatio...

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:...

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 wo...

Happy holidays from all of us here at Distillations . This holiday season our gift to you is a sneak peak at some of the stories we have in the works for 2019.

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....

Tune in to the next episode of Distillations  on November 20th!

"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 Kensi...

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 add...