Exploring bleeding edge experiments, oddities, new and bizarre dicoveries, and fact-checking conspiracy theories since 2008. No question is out of bounds and no topic is too strange for a deep dive.
# podcast
As we’ve been told for decades, the wealthy and powerful are not like the rest of us. Not only do they enjoy things we can only dream of, their very mental wiring is altered.
# tech
Threatened by the open, permissive architecture of the internet, Russia is doing a dry run at building its own. If it succeeds, the effects on the global economy and geopolitics would be far-reaching and unsettling.
# science
Wealth and power don’t just change how you live and your priorities. They also change how your mind works in disconcerting ways.
# science
Environmental groups have been ringing the alarm about plastic waste filling oceans and landfills for decades, and the general public is finally paying attention. But do we have real solutions to this problem?
# science
Before you get your DNA tested, remember that most of the baseline samples used to process your genome only come from three countries and your reports will feature a lot of asterisks.
# podcast
In sci-fi movies, explorers arrive on alien worlds in the blink of an eye using warp drives, or cheat time with cryogenic sleep chambers. But how would interstellar travel actually work in the real world?
# space
If you imagine galaxies as tranquil clouds of gas and dust, lit up by billions of pinpoints of light, a 3D map of the Milky Way and the details behind it will show you otherwise.
# science
Paradoxically, we’re both closer and farther from zooming across the galaxy than you might think…
# space
Scientists think they found a time capsule from Earth’s earliest days buried just under the Moon’s surface for the last 4.1 billion years.
# health
Politicians and the public want short-term solutions to the opioid epidemic. But they aren't tackling its root cause: legitimate chronic pain.