A brief dip into the GameStop Wall Street mayhem. A new water-is-wet kind of study proving that money indeed can buy you happiness. And the story of some students who just found out their new professor this semester has been…
New DNA analysis upends some long held assumptions about the evolutionary background of dire wolves. How Adobe Flash broke an entire railway system. Astronomers have discovered a sextuply-eclipsing sextuple star system. Say …
The word “robot” was coined one hundred years ago today in a play about robots taking over the world. Good thing that hasn’t happened yet! ...right? The story behind the moon rock in President Biden’s newly redesigned Oval O…
NASA trained an AI to detect craters on Mars. A possible discovery of giant prehistoric carnivorous worms. A new Swedish practice to adopt. And a mobile site that will match you with your film critic soulmate. Sponsors: Nord…
Recharge Rooms are helping frontline healthcare workers cope with the continued toll the pandemic is taking on their well-being. How bats are helping scientists create better biologging instruments and the discoveries being …
New findings into the cannibalism and sheer size of baby megalodons. Teaching AIs to become our teachers. And The Great Gatsby has only been in the public domain for twenty days and things are already getting weird. Sponsor:…
A synthetic cornea implant has successfully helped a legally blind man regain his sight. Team USA and Team Canada women’s hockey players can’t stop falling in love and living happily ever after together. And a deep dive into…
Several of the women who influenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and left their own marks on the civil rights movement. A new documentary tracking the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. and other prominent Black acti…
A couple of stories for the birds today. First, ravens at the Tower of London are living up to their collective name of a conspiracy of ravens by possibly foretelling the fall of Britain. And a pigeon in Australia who was al…
The workaround the Unicode Consortium used to make sure we still get new emojis in 2021, pandemic or not. Facial hair is biologically useless. So why do some humans have it? And the SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule returning this…
Pablo Escobar’s pet hippos have multiplied and are ravaging part of Colombia’s capital. An AI that can create very impressive and artistic images from text commands. Maybe a little too impressive. And a discovery in England …
The sixteenth-century manual on containing the spread of disease that is eerily reminiscent of current COVID guidelines. Bitcoin millionaires who can’t access their digital wallets due to forgotten passwords. And the guy who…
It’s time for two writers to pay up on a 25-year-old bet about whether tech would destroy civilization. Tim Berners-Lee’s new quest to transform the web into the one he envisioned when he created it. How the most recent COVI…
What folklorists can teach us about the structure and resilience of conspiracy theories. The genome of the platypus has been sequenced, and it’s just as weird as you’d expect. And a Swedish film festival that’s sending one p…
A prototype for self-repairing planetary exploration robots made of ice. The surprising history of the word “dude.” And a new Danish children’s cartoon about the misadventures of a man with a huge dong. Yep. Sponsors: NordVP…
Space missions to keep your eye on in 2021. How satellites built to spy on the Soviets have helped unravel environmental mysteries. Why the dark ages aren’t considered so dark anymore. And a completely perplexing auction fro…
People who are choosing to be surveilled by strangers and productivity nannies in order to stay on task while remote working. A 3D-printed hydrogel inspired by cephalopods that changes shape when exposed to light. And UK off…
What “time confetti” is and how to stop spreading it everywhere. A new development in the teleportation of information that means good things for the possibility of quantum internet. And how TikTokers raised a million dollar…
Why talking out loud to yourself is actually an important cognitive skill, or so I’m telling myself. A new population of blue whales with a distinct song was recently discovered in the Indian Ocean. And a new AI that will hi…
How is it that humans figured out how to read? New cosmological findings that may finally solve the Hubble tension. And, more monoliths continue to pop up, a look at two of the more interesting ones from this past week. Spon…
How your brain takes out the trash while you sleep. The English man who crossed the Alps on a space hopper. And a subreddit where over half a million people pretend our world is just one big MMORPG. Sponsors: BitTrust IRA, W…
How Star Wars toys have changed over the years and why it may not be a good thing for kids. What if there were tons of alien civilizations elsewhere in the Milky Way but they’re all long since dead? And the Danish tradition …
Down the rabbit hole of targeted marketing through the lens of some strange, butt-flap onesie pajamas for adults. Don’t trust the sea foam in Australia. And some Catalonian Christmas traditions that are pretty crappy. Sponso…
What will movie theaters look like in a post-pandemic world? And what do companies need to do to weather the storm? New research that suggests our early human ancestors could have hibernated. And the pyrotechnic German punch…