It goes on some of our favorite foods, and it can even make our least favorite foods taste better. Yes, we're talking about melted cheese.

Today Hank is building on last week’s exploration of identity to focus on personal identity. Does it in reside in your body? Is it in the collective memories of your consciousness? There are, of course, strengths and weaknesses to both...

We humans like to think we’re special in basically all ways, but if the history of life is any indication, our species has a limited time on this planet. So the question is: when are we gonna go extinct?

Dorothy went over one. LeVar Burton read to us under one. In a song, Kermit the Frog connected us to one. Even Mork's suspenders were made of them. Our culture, and our skies, are full of rainbows, but do you know how they form? Do we...

The task sounds like it should be pretty easy, but the Stroop task is a fantastic, and very well studied, example of how your brain’s automatic processing can trip you up!

Today we’re exploring another branch of conflict theory: gender conflict theory, with a look at sociology’s forgotten founder, Harriet Martineau. We’ll also discuss the three waves of feminism, as well as intersectionality.

90 million years ago, an ancient snake known as Najash had...legs. It is by no means the only snake to have limbs either. But what's even stranger: we're not at all sure where it came from.

About the importance of the National Parks Foundation.

You and your team have crash-landed on an ancient planet. Can you appease the three alien overlords who rule it and get your team safely home? Created by logician Raymond Smullyan, and popularized by his colleague George Boolos, this...

Can you produce a rational number by exchanging infinitely many digits of pi and e?

If the universe is so vast and full of stars, why is the night sky dark?

Humanity has long been looking at the universe and asking the big questions: How did it begin? How will it end? Cosmologists are searching hard for the answers, but where do they even start? The answer is light. Pete Edwards outlines the...

The Order of Operations is Wrong

Hank updates us on two new missions that will help us learn more about some of the fascinating things in our space neighborhood.

Why is J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy so compelling? How about The Matrix or Harry Potter? What makes these disparate worlds come alive are clear, consistent rules for how people, societies -- and even the laws of physics --...

In 2011, a group of researchers conducted a study designed to find an impossible result. Their study involved real people, truthfully reported data, and commonplace statistical analyses. So how did they do it? The answer lies in a...

The value of money is determined by how much (or how little) of it is in circulation. But who makes that decision, and how does their choice affect the economy at large? Doug Levinson takes a trip into the United States Federal Reserve,...

There are fossils of viruses, of sorts, preserved in the DNA of the hosts that they've infected. Including you. This molecular fossil trail can help us understand where viruses came from, how they evolved and it can even help us tackle...

As a police officer, Jeremy Brewer interacts with individuals experiencing trauma and loss on a daily basis. Giving us a peek into this little-discussed aspect of the job, Brewer shares thoughtful insights on why respecting people's...

Co-ops date back almost 200 years, run by groups of people that work together to own and operate a company. What does it look like when this tried-and-true business model merges with the digital economy? Trebor Scholz introduces the...

It's time to invest in face-to-face training that empowers employees to have difficult conversations, says Tamekia MizLadi Smith. In a witty, provocative talk, Smith shares a workplace training program called "I'm G.R.A.C.E.D." that will...

How many stars are there in the universe? This question leads Hank to a couple other questions - How many stars can we see from Earth? How many stars are there in our galaxy? - but the answer to the original question proves elusive.

What is it about unfairness? Whether it's not being invited to a friend's wedding or getting penalized for bad luck or an honest mistake, unfairness often makes us so upset that we can't think straight. And it's not just a personal issue...

Paul Andersen shows you how to construct a cladogram from a group of organisms using shared characteristics. He also discusses the process of parsimony in cladogram construction. He then explains how modern cladograms are constructed...