In 1938 and 1939, the Rockefeller Foundation organized two confidential conferences "On the Interpretation of the Natural Sciences for a General Public", commissioned an exhaustive survey of contemporary science popularization in the United States and actively participated in international efforts in this direction under the auspices of the Paris-based International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. The two confidential conferences gathered a significant part of the scientific, social scientific and mass media elites of the United States, and were conceived as an informal think tank in which the participants were asked to privately and frankly discuss over the political goals, strategies and techniques of science popularization.