Everyone has dreams, but some people are better at remembering them than others. Scientists aren't sure why we dream, but remembering them has a lot to do with the activity in your brain, and with how well you sleep.

What would it be like to have a limitless memory? Can the meaning of life be found in an infinite library? Is time a labyrinth or a single moment? Jorge Luis Borges explored these questions of infinity in his many works. His body of...

You’re probably familiar with that flash of recognition that happens when you see a person and suddenly realize it is someone you know, but neuroscientists have been trying to understand exactly how our brains do this for years.

Do you remember having a cold in 5th grade? Or the flu a couple years ago? Your immune system does. Our bodies hold many levels of immune defense. Millions of B cells and T cells and antibodies are constantly on patrol for germs and...

1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221. These are the first five elements of a number sequence. Can you figure out what comes next? Alex Gendler reveals the answer and explains how beyond just being a neat puzzle, this type of sequence has practical...

Hatshepsut was a female pharaoh during the New Kingdom in Egypt. Twenty years after her death, somebody smashed her statues, took a chisel and attempted to erase the pharaoh's name and image from history. But who did it? And why? Kate...

A fortuneteller's ability to read your future might seem magical, but those “psychic powers” have way more to do with psychology than the supernatural. Chapters cognitive biases 0:09 COLD READING 0:29 Barnum effect 1:28 subjective...

You're pretty sure being a baby was awesome, but why can't you actually remember any of it?

From robots to braces to the Mars Rover, see how a special kind of metal called shape memory alloys advance technology in everyday ways that we don't always realize.

Today we’re going to create memory! Using the basic logic gates we discussed in episode 3 we can build a circuit that stores a single bit of information, and then through some clever scaling (and of course many new levels of...

If you feel like you’ve been more forgetful than normal recently, you’re definitely not alone. Your memory can have a lot to do with what's happening around you.

Turns out, two atomic clocks are indeed better than one. And what role does sleep play in memory suppression?

The world is a living tapestry ... As the weave of life is torn apart in one place, the threads unravel in another, says author and physics professor Vandana Singh, acknowledging humanity's interconnectedness with the planet -- and the...

Synesthesia allows people to hear color or taste numbers,and maybe even remember some things better than the average person.

Have you ever seen or experienced something and wished you spoke up? Writer Sakinah Hofler makes the case for writing as a tool to help you process difficult memories and reclaim the power they may hold. Pick up a pen or pull up a...

Since Joseph Marie Jacquard’s textile loom in 1801, there has been a demonstrated need to give our machines instructions. In the last few episodes, our instructions were already in our computer’s memory, but we need to talk about how...

Researchers have noticed a decline in reading ability starting in your 40s. And learning more about why this happens might help us tell the difference between healthy aging and Alzheimer’s disease.

So we ended last episode with programming at the hardware level with things like plugboards and huge panels of switches, but what was really needed was a more versatile way to program computers - software! For much of this series we’ve...

Sebastian Seung is mapping a massively ambitious new model of the brain that focuses on the connections between each neuron. He calls it our "connectome," and it's as individual as our genome -- and understanding it could open a new way...

Today we’re going to build the ticking heart of every computer - the Central Processing Unit or CPU. The CPU’s job is to execute the programs we know and love - you know like GTA V, Slack... and Power Point. To make our CPU we’ll bring...

Your rich, eccentric uncle just passed away, and you and your 99 nasty relatives have been invited to the reading of his will. He wanted to leave all of his money to you, but he knew that if he did, your relatives would pester you...

You might feel like your thinking has been getting a bit slower and foggier as you get older, and that eventually happens to everybody. But how can we keep our minds young?

A samurai is found dead in a quiet bamboo grove. One by one, the crime's only known witnesses recount their version of the events. But as they each tell their tale, it becomes clear that every testimony is plausible yet different. And...

Imagine, for a second, a duck teaching a French class. A ping-pong match in orbit around a black hole. A dolphin balancing a pineapple. You probably haven't actually seen any of these things. But you could imagine them instantly. How...