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.
# science
Tracking the magnetic north pole has been a difficult task over the last few hundred years, and even today, in the age of computers and lasers, it hasn’t gotten any easier as scientists were surprised by its rapid migration towards Asia.
# science
Slowly but surely, violence in movies has been escalating, prompting recurring spasms of fear that a surge in violent crime will inevitably follow, yet violent crimes rates keep declining. Why?
# science
On average, winters are getting warmer and milder across the Northern Hemisphere. So what’s with all the sudden cold snaps hammering North America and Europe?
# tech
Australian lawmakers stunned the country’s techies by passing a law requiring them to help law enforcement snoop on encrypted data on request, and putting e-commerce and basic digital security at risk.
# podcast
The Singularity is the event in which humanity changes from sacks of meat to immortal AIs. It's also about as realistic as getting an admission letter to Hogwarts.
# tech
In a move straight of a Dickensian cyberpunk novel, a Chinese app alerts citizens if someone in debt is within 500 meters, and encourages spying on their spending habits.
# space
A recent paper imagines a new explanation for the strange motions of Trans-Neptunian Objects observed by astronomers for the last 200 years, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t still search for Planet Nine.
# tech
Earthquakes might be both powerful and inevitable. But we have the tools to soften their blows, save millions of lives, and save billions when cleaning up after them.
# health
We knew people would die as climate change got progressively worse. Now we have a realistic idea of just how many, and plenty of hints that these statistics are underestimated.
# podcast
Humans have spent millenia looking for a fountain of youth or a recipe for immortality. Why have we been failing? And is there anything we can do to make death optional?