ideaPhysics
Why we can stop worrying and love the particle accelerator
Joel Frohlich
ideaMedicine
Gentle medicine could radically transform medical practice
Jacob Stegenga
essayBiology
The obesity era
As the American people got fatter, so did marmosets, vervet monkeys and mice. The problem may be bigger than any of us
David Berreby
essayHuman reproduction
The macho sperm myth
The idea that millions of sperm are on an Olympian race to reach the egg is yet another male fantasy of human reproduction
Robert D Martin
videoBiology
Watch a single cell become a complete organism in six pulsing minutes of timelapse
6 minutes
ideaMedicine
Lifestyle changes, not a magic pill, can reverse Alzheimer’s
Clayton Dalton
ideaHistory of science
What Einstein meant by ‘God does not play dice’
Jim Baggott
essayCosmology
Exodus
Elon Musk argues that we must put a million people on Mars if we are to ensure that humanity has a future
Ross Andersen
essayChildhood and adolescence
Childhood, disrupted
Adversity in childhood can create long-lasting scars, damaging our cells and our DNA, and making us sick as adults
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
ideaPhilosophy of science
Why philosophy is so important in science education
Subrena E Smith
ideaCosmology
Our Universe is too vast for even the most imaginative sci-fi
Michael Strauss
ideaComputing and artificial intelligence
Algorithms associating appearance and criminality have a dark past
Catherine Stinson
essayIllness and disease
The case against sugar
A potent toxin that alters hormones and metabolism, sugar sets the stage for epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes
Gary Taubes
essayFuture of technology
The golden quarter
Some of our greatest cultural and technological achievements took place between 1945 and 1971. Why has progress stalled?
Michael Hanlon
essayEvolution
War in the womb
A ferocious biological struggle between mother and baby belies any sentimental ideas we might have about pregnancy
Suzanne Sadedin
essayPhysics
Radical dimensions
Relativity says we live in four dimensions. String theory says it’s 10. What are ‘dimensions’ and how do they affect reality?
Margaret Wertheim
ideaAnthropology
It’s not that your teeth are too big: your jaw is too small
Peter Ungar
ideaComputing and artificial intelligence
Coding is not ‘fun’, it’s technically and ethically complex
Walter Vannini
ideaPleasure and pain
Psychogenic shivers: why we get the chills when we aren’t cold
Félix Schoeller
ideaPhilosophy of science
You thought quantum mechanics was weird: check out entangled time
Elise Crull
essayConsciousness and altered states
Hallucinogenic nights
Sleep paralysis has tormented me since childhood. But now it’s my portal to out-of-body travel and lucid dreams
Karen Emslie
essayPhysics
Time is an object
Not a backdrop, an illusion or an emergent phenomenon, time has a physical size that can be measured in laboratories
Sara Walker & Lee Cronin
essayHistory
The salacious Middle Ages
Medieval people feared death by celibacy as much as venereal disease, and practiced complex sexual health regimens
Katherine Harvey
videoEcology and environmental sciences
Yo-Yo Ma performs a work for cello in the woods, accompanied by a birdsong chorus
4 minutes