Distillations | Science History Institute

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: Jonathan 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: Jonathan Pfeffer

This summer leave reality behind and join Distillations for an entire season about fantasy! We're talking vampires! Ghosts! Witches! And we promise, it all has to do with the history of science. Season launches on June 29.

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.

How an early 20th century doctor pitted one scourge (malaria) against another (syphilis). Credits Host: Sam Kean Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer Music: “Delamine” by Blue Dot Sessions. ​​​​​​​All other music composed by Jonathan Pfeffer.

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.