The world is more interesting than you think.
Unexpected facts, big ideas, and little discoveries. Find something that sparks your curiosity today.
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Can a fantasy character change your personality
A fictional character can lend you a temporary model for how to act. If you identify with someone brave, generous, or ruthless, their choices can shape what…
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Gold nanoparticles can reveal a single molecule
A molecule tucked between close gold nanoparticles scatters light much more strongly because the tiny gap boosts the light around it. Raman spectroscopy…
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What your eyes can reveal about your heart
The retina contains tiny blood vessels that doctors can examine through the eye without surgery. Changes in those vessels can reflect damage elsewhere in the…
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An ancient mailbag reads like a toxic group chat
Miwnay wrote that her merchant husband had abandoned her and their daughter in Dunhuang with debts. Her proposed next marriage—to a pig or a dog—makes the…
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Blade Runner made photo enhancement a scene you could follow
Deckard speaks commands to the ESPER machine, moving into and around details in a photograph. The audience watches the investigation through the device rather…
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How gut bacteria can turn chemotherapy against you
Irinotecan is meant to fight cancer, but its trip through the body leaves behind a processed form that certain intestinal bacteria can turn back into active…
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A coffee maker cues you to take your pills
A coffee maker can become a reminder because routines provide cues. If taking your pill follows making coffee, the familiar machine and morning sequence can…
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Klaus Fiedler exposes lethal blind spots in logic
Logic can show that a conclusion follows from a premise; it cannot make the premise true. If people accept a false starting point without examining it,…
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Brazil beat hyperinflation with a currency that didn't exist
People kept paying in cruzeiros, even as those prices spiraled, but wages, taxes, and price tags could be set in the stable URV. Once people could trust the…
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A treetop walk looks down on a former tuberculosis hospital
At Beelitz-Heilstätten near Berlin, a raised walkway passes above parts of the former sanatorium complex. Trees have grown around abandoned buildings, so…
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Eat sleep console model replaces newborn meds
Newborns with withdrawal symptoms may have trouble feeding, sleeping, and settling, so Eat, Sleep, Console focuses on helping them manage those everyday…
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The bus terminal that works like a small city
TAPO is more than a place to catch a bus: the terminal has chapels and food markets, giving it some of the feel of a small city.
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A car stereo can make a movie song part of the scene
When characters can hear the music too, it becomes a choice made inside their world rather than only a score for the audience. The track can reveal taste, set…
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In a test tube, shorter RNA could win an evolutionary race
Sol Spiegelman's experiments supplied RNA with copying machinery and repeatedly transferred material into fresh reaction mixtures. Variants that replicated…
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Why Napoleon adopted a 300-bee emblem
Napoleon wanted his new empire to look ancient, so he borrowed the bee motif from gold bees found in the 5th-century tomb of King Childeric. The bees lent his…
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Cairo Geniza texts reveal strict Fatimid passport rules
Carrying spices and flax across the Mediterranean meant carrying paperwork, too: merchants needed specific safe-conduct passes, sealed with wax, under Fatimid…
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Qing Eight Banners permanently garrisoned Xinjiang frontiers
The Qing replaced temporary deployments with a permanent frontier presence by moving Eight Banner families to Xinjiang. They farmed there and helped keep…
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How hiding sales tax changes what people buy
In Raj Chetty’s supermarket experiment, putting the sales tax on cosmetics’ price tags cut sales by 8%. Shoppers already knew tax would appear at checkout;…
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How the shoguns kept daimyo families hostage
Daimyos had to spend alternating years in Edo, while their wives and heirs stayed there. The arrangement kept family members close to the shogun and rebellion…
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Ferries to Stromboli follow the lava
Captains adjust docking schedules around the Sciara del Fuoco, the lava flow on Stromboli, to avoid arriving while molten rock is reaching the shipping lane.
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The belief that drains your willpower
If you believe willpower is a tank that empties with every hard choice, feeling tired can seem like proof you’re nearly out. That expectation can make the…
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How a dirty bike chain steals your power
Road grit sticks to chain oil and turns it into grinding paste. As the chain bends around the gears, that gritty mixture adds friction and wears both chain…
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Facebook's $19 billion WhatsApp deal was about the network
The announced 2014 package targeted a messaging service with hundreds of millions of users and a comparatively tiny workforce. Its value was not a factory or…
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SAP HANA crushing data to fit inside fast RAM
Because RAM is expensive and limited, SAP HANA uses dictionary-based compression to store repeated values once and refer to them with compact codes. This…
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