The Smyth Report is the strangest book ever written on atomic bombs—as well as highly effective science propaganda, warping our view of everything from the Manhattan Project to Robert Oppenheimer.

When a British sub sank with all hands, JBS Haldane volunteered to investigate by experimenting on himself—even if it meant losing his own life in the process. (Part 2 of 2.)

There’s only one thing Dr. John Haldane loved more than running dangerous experiments on himself—running them on his son Jack. But the duo would revolutionize our understanding of the human body.

When Charles Lindbergh's sister-in-law developed heart trouble, he teamed up with a Nobel-Prize-winning doctor to save her. He had no idea the dark paths his work would lead him down, including Nazi politics and eugenics...

Exactly a century ago, teacher John Scopes was charged with the “crime” of teaching evolution. But Scopes was hardly a defiant Galileo, nobly standing up for truth. In fact, he never even taught evolution. (Really.) But despite the unseemly origins of the Monkey Trial, Scopes proved himself a genuine hero...

Astronomer Jules Janssen was desperate to escape the siege of Paris in 1870 and observe an eclipse in Africa—work that he hoped would confirm his discovery of a brand new element in the Sun, helium. So he devised a plan to escape the city in a hot-air balloon, despite promises by the German army to shoot him as a spy if he dared try...

In the 1970s, paramedic units were illegal in the United States. One (very bad) television show, Emergency!, set out to change that—and saved tens of thousands of lives in the process.

The work of Richard Meinertzhagen helped convince biologists that the Forest Owlet of India had gone extinct. But after Meinertzhagen’s frauds were exposed, one biologist grew obsessed with finding out whether it just might be alive still. (Part 2 of 2)