Distillations: Science + Culture + History

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:

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.

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 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, J

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_sig

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

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. 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 Not

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 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

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 qu

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 Mo

We're hard at work on our next season. Listen to the first episode on August 21st!

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 P

Tune in to the next episode of Distillations on June 26!

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

Tune in to the next episode of Distillations on May 22!