Mind & Society
Why AI-written essays leave nothing in your head
A psychologist explains why memory is a byproduct of thinking, and why handing an essay to AI means you remember almost nothing of it.
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Space
Why Alien Life Probably Isn't Made of Rock
Silicon is more common than carbon in Earth's crust, yet life never used it. An astronomer explains why silicon locks into stone and carbon stays flexible.
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Mind & Society
Five Million Chess Games Fit in Your Pocket. Creativity Doesn't
A smartphone can hold every grandmaster chess game ever played. A psychologist argues that human limits, not limitless knowledge, are where creativity begins.
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Technology & AI
What if our world is where AI gets its missing training data?
AI may use up all public human text by 2032. Sergey Markov offers a half-joke: maybe our world is a generator of synthetic training data for some model.
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History & Archaeology
Why the first cities rose where the rain didn't fall
Early farmers walked past lands with regular rain and settled where it never came. A historian on why Sumer's dry south may have pushed people to invent.
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Mind & Society
Little Red Riding Hood's basket changes at every border
Send Little Red Riding Hood from Bordeaux toward Russia and her basket changes at every border. A folklorist explains where a fairy tale keeps its nationality.
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Life & Evolution
Why every woman's body switches off a whole chromosome
Women have two X chromosomes and men one, so female cells wrap one X in a coat of non-coding RNA and switch it off. A biologist explains why it matters.
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Life & Evolution
The brain's second language: RNA mailed between neurons
Besides electrical spikes, brain cells can wrap non-coding RNA in membrane bubbles and send it to neighbours, changing how their genes work. A biologist explains.
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History & Archaeology
The Viking who got baptised three times for the free shirts
Vikings didn't burn their gods when they turned Christian. They demoted them to heroes of the past and carved Sigurd the dragon-slayer onto church walls.
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Mind & Society
The Stepmother Was Never Cruel for Nothing: A Marriage Map in a Tale
Why does the stepmother torment the heroine? A folklorist's quick answer: she came from far away, and her own daughter had to marry too.
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Earth & Climate
A $65 trillion bill hides under the Arctic seabed
A Nature paper priced one Arctic methane scenario at $65 trillion. Igor Semiletov explains why the shallow Siberian shelf is where it could start.
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Space
A lottery has gears. Quantum chance has none
A lottery drum has gears behind every draw. Quantum randomness has none, and physicist Alexey Semikhatov says that is hard to wrap your head around.
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Technology & AI
Teach an AI physics only up to 1925. Will it invent quantum theory?
A physicist proposes a test: train an AI on physics only up to 1925 and see whether it invents quantum mechanics. If it can, it might find theories we can't guess.
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Mind & Society
Why fairy-tale princes go home and princesses never do
In fairy tales the hero finds his bride and brings her home; the heroine walks to her husband and stays. A folklorist reads the pattern as an old marriage custom.
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Life & Evolution
The 10-Metre Squid No Human Saw, Until Cameras Went Down
Giant squid beaks turned up in whale stomachs long before anyone filmed the animal. An oceanologist explains why people are missing from the deep sea.
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