Of all wealthy countries, the United States is the most dangerous place to have a baby. Our maternal mortality rate... more

Certain medical instruments have built-in methods of correcting for race. They’re based on the premise that Black bodies are inherently... more

When the plague broke out in San Francisco in 1900 the public health department poured all of their energy into... more

In 2005 the FDA approved a pill to treat high blood preassure only in African Americans. This so-called miracle drug... more

The word “Tuskegee” has come to symbolize the Black community’s mistrust of the medical establishment. It has become American lore. However, most people... more

In 1991, as crews broke ground on a new federal office building in lower Manhattan, they discovered human skeletons. It... more

In 2019, Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, a community organizer and journalist, learned that the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology had a... more

In the 1990s a liberal population geneticist launched the Human Genome Diversity Project. The goal was to sequence the genomes... more

In the 1970s Barry Mehler started tracking race scientists and he noticed something funny: they all had the same funding... more

In 1793 a yellow fever epidemic almost destroyed Philadelphia. The young city was saved by two Black preachers, Richard Allen... more

In 2018 ancient DNA researchers revealed their analysis of a 10,000 year old skeleton called Cheddar Man. He was the... more

It might seem as though the way we think about race now is how we’ve always thought about it—but it... more

Our new season, Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, drops on February 7th.

What comes to mind when you think of a chemistry lab? Maybe it’s smoke billowing out of glassware, or colorful... more

The Disappearing Spoon, a podcast collaboration between the Science History Institute and New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean, returns... more

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about Alessandro Moreschi, the so-called Angel of Rome. His voice... more

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about the strange origin story of the American Medical Association.... more

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about Hermann Muller, a geneticist who in the 1920s discovered... more

On this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about a murder mystery that rocked Boston in 1849. Harvard... more

In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean breaks down the history of nitrocellulose. This thick, transparent liquid was... more