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John B. Calhoun and his rats from a 1970 photograph.
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Rats Are as Bad as Human Beings in Some Ways

In which John B. Calhoun begins to study the lifestyles of rodents, and the public listens.
by Lee Alan Dugatkin via HNN on October 9, 2024
Advertisement promoting cocaine toothache drops, 1889.

An Undulating Thrill

Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What happened?
by Douglas Small via Aeon on October 4, 2024
John Mack speaking on the Oprah Winfrey Show, with a tagline that reads "John Mack, M.D., Harvard Psychiatrist Who Believes Patients Were Abducted By Aliens."

John E. Mack and the Unbelievable UFO Truth

The controversial career of John E. Mack, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Harvard psychiatrist who wrote best-selling books on UFO abduction.
by Michael J. Socolow via Los Angeles Review of Books on September 21, 2024
A collage of a Teflon pan frying an egg, surrounded by nuclear bombs and the molecular structure of Teflon.

The Long, Strange History of Teflon

First discovered in 1938, Teflon has been used for everything from helping to create the first atomic bomb to keeping your eggs from sticking to the pan.
by Rudy Molinek via Smithsonian on August 20, 2024
Ella Tyree from "Atom Scientists: Ten Negro Scientists at Argonne Lab Help in Race to Harness Atomic Materials”, Ebony magazine, September 1949, pp. 26-28. Copyright not renewed.
Exhibit

Scientific Americans

An exhibit about some of the ways that pursuits in the natural and physical sciences have helped Americans understand their world.
Collage art of Supreme Court Justices.

Science Historian Naomi Oreskes Schools the Supreme Court on Climate Change

Scientists and lawmakers in the 70s knew more than we think they did about climate change and the impacts of fossil fuel regulations.
by Naomi Oreskes, Jessica McKenzie via Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on August 15, 2024
Edmund Muskie with a concerned expression, next to a globe.

The Lost History of What Americans Knew About Climate Change in the 1960s

It wasn’t just scientists who were worried, but Congress, the White House, and even Sports Illustrated, newly unearthed documents show.
by Kate Yoder via Grist on August 5, 2024
Tornado near Turkey, Texas, in 2009.
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The Real History Behind 'Twisters'

For as long as scientists have studied tornadoes, researchers have dreamed of controlling them.
by Kate Carpenter via Made By History on July 19, 2024
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The Ravages and Operations of the Locusts

When it comes to cicadas, the silence of the historical record can be deafening.
by Al Dickenson via HNN on June 18, 2024
Charles Fort.

In Praise of the Paranormal Curiosity of Charles Fort, Patron Saint of Cranks

On the porous, ever-shifting boundaries between science and speculation.
by Ed Simon via Literary Hub on June 10, 2024
Man and woman testing buttons on machine at Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory

Tomorrow People

For the entire 20th century, it had felt like telepathy was just around the corner. Why is that especially true now?
by Roger Luckhurst via Aeon on June 3, 2024
A magnifying glass sitting on top of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn.

What Was the “Paradigm Shift”?

When Thomas Kuhn coined the term, he wasn’t referring simply to “out of the box” thinking.
by Audra J. Wolfe via The New Republic on May 22, 2024
Plastic kitchen containers in red liquid.

How 3M Discovered, Then Concealed, the Dangers of Forever Chemicals

The company found its own toxic compounds in human blood—and kept selling them.
by Sharon Lerner via The New Yorker on May 20, 2024
Horseshoe crab remains on the beach on Parsons Island.

Ancient Chesapeake Site Challenges Timeline of Humans in the Americas

An island eroding into the bay offers tantalizing clues about when and how humans first made their way into North America.
by Carolyn Y. Johnson via Washington Post on May 19, 2024
Nurses with babies

Legacies of Eugenics: An Introduction

Despite assumptions about its demise, it is still enmeshed in the foundations of how some professions think about the world.
by Osagie K Obasogie via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 17, 2024
Margaret Mead and Joe Rogan.

Turn on, Tune in, Write Code

How psychedelics went from counterculture to grind culture.
by Geoff Shullenberger via The New Atlantis on April 12, 2024
Colorful, psychedelic illustration of three dolphins in the center with a rainbow in the sky above them and a pool, ocean, palm trees, and sky below them

Tripping on LSD at the Dolphin Research Lab

How a 1960s interspecies communication experiment went haywire.
by Benjamin Breen via The Chronicle of Higher Education on February 27, 2024
Coral polyps.
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Will the Sun Ever Set on the Colony?

Tracking the history of a curious scientific term.
by Whitney Barlow Robles via HNN on February 13, 2024
Mead reading a book, against a psychedelic background.

One of Our Most Respected 20th-Century Scientists Was LSD-Curious. What Happened?

A document in her papers in the Library of Congress sheds new light on postwar research on psychedelics.
by Benjamin Breen via Slate on February 10, 2024
Photos and newspaper clippings connected with red string

How We Lost Our Minds About UFOs

No, aliens haven’t visited the Earth. Why are so many smart people insisting otherwise?
by Nicholson Baker via Intelligencer on January 31, 2024
Psychedelic images coming from a chemical flask.

When America First Dropped Acid

Well before the hippies arrived, LSD and other hallucinogens were poised to enter the American mainstream.
by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on January 22, 2024
Woman and man looking at the fiji mermaid

Nineteenth-Century Clickbait

The exhibition “Mermaids and Monsters” explores hoaxes of yore.
by Deb Lucke via The New Yorker on January 20, 2024
Margaretta Hare Morris.

The Mischievous Morris Sisters

Two gifted sisters in Philadelphia helped to transform early American science.
by Catherine McNeur via American Heritage on December 17, 2023
Operatives using air defense systems.

The Two Chomskys

The US military’s greatest enemy worked in an institution saturated with military funding. How did it shape his thought?
by Chris Knight via Aeon on December 8, 2023
Painting of a valley with storm clouds

Storm Patrol

Life as a Signal Corps weatherman was dangerous: besides inclement weather, they faced labor riots, conflicts with Native Americans, yellow fever outbreaks, fires, and more.
by Alyson Foster via Humanities on October 11, 2023
Hand facing palm up and holding three pills.

Unreasonable Terms

How American drug companies have exploited government contracts to pursue profit over public interest.
by Daniel J. Kevles via New York Review of Books on October 5, 2023
Fossilized footprints

North America's Oldest Known Footprints Point to Earlier Human Arrival to the Continent

New dating methods have added more evidence that these fossils date to 23,000 years ago, pushing back migration to the Americas by thousands of years.
by Brian Handwerk via Smithsonian on October 5, 2023
Smoke coming from Exxon Mobil plant

Inside Exxon's Strategy To Downplay Climate Change

Internal documents show what the oil giant said publicly was very different from how it approached the issue privately in the Tillerson era.
by Christopher Matthews, Collin Eaton via The Wall Street Journal on September 14, 2023
Scientists releasing weather balloons
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Healing the Ozone: First Steps Toward Success

A worldwide effort to heal damage to the ozone layer is showing early progress.
via Retro Report on September 12, 2023
Prehistoric mounds on the campus of Louisiana State University.

Googling for Oldest Structure in the Americas Leads to Heaps of Debate

The straightforward way in which Google answers this query is a case study in how new science becomes accepted as fact in the modern era of rapid communication.
by Jordan P. Hickey via Washington Post on August 28, 2023
Charles Henry Turner with spiders, butterflies, and various insects in the background

Charles Henry Turner’s Insights Into Animal Behavior Were a Century Ahead of Their Time

Researchers are rediscovering the forgotten legacy of a pioneering Black scientist who conducted trailblazing research on the cognitive traits of animals.
by Alla Katsnelson via Knowable Magazine on August 2, 2023
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