Curly, festive ribbons are a delight, sure, but the physics behind HOW they curl is much more exciting!

For decades, we’ve heard how terrible fat is for us, but more recently, sugar has become the new villain. What does the science actually say about these two macronutrients and how they affect our health?

You’ve probably heard that eating breakfast every day helps you lose weight, but not many actual experiments have been done on this, so is it true?

The kilogram is the basic unit of mass in the metric system, but there's a serious problem: the standard that defines how much mass a kilogram actually has isn't reliable anymore

In the wealthiest circles of Victorian England, dieters would swallow an unhatched tapeworm and let it grow inside them by consuming undigested meals. And while modern fad diets aren't usually this extreme, they do promise similar...

In our last list of strange aircraft, we stuck to covering the weirdest jets to take to the sky, but there are plenty of other types of bizarre flying machines out there! In this episode, Hank will tell you about five other unlikely...

The math of backpropagation, the algorithm by which neural networks learn.

Science columnist Lee Hotz describes a remarkable project at WAIS Divide, Antarctica, where a hardy team are drilling into ten-thousand-year-old ice to extract vital data on our changing climate.

In 1895, crowds flooded Coney Island to see America's first-ever looping coaster: the Flip Flap Railway. But its thrilling flip caused cases of severe whiplash, neck injury and even ejections. Today, coasters can pull off far more...

Concrete doesn't dry - it sets!

How do we solve the problem of the suburbs? Urbanist Jeff Speck shows how we can free ourselves from dependence on the car -- which he calls "a gas-belching, time-wasting, life-threatening prosthetic device" -- by making our cities more...

Ancient civilizations developed clever solutions to their unique challenges and environments, and learning from those engineers can help us build a greener world today.

Learn some curious facts about the majestic manatee.

An overview of backpropagation, the algorithm behind how neural networks learn.

In the US, 80% of girls have been on a diet by the time they're 10 years old. In this honest, raw talk, neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt uses her personal story to frame an important lesson about how our brains manage our bodies, as she...

Designer Bastian Schaefer shows off a speculative design for the future of jet planes, with a skeleton inspired by strong, flexible, natural forms and by the needs of the world's, ahem, growing population. Imagine an airplane that's full...

You may wish that you could pack on a few pounds and sleep the next few months away, and scientists are one step closer to understanding how some animals are capable of doing this.

We've been sending people to space since the '60s, and we're just now starting to learn what that does to their brains.

The math of backpropagation, the algorithm by which neural networks learn.

This Quick Question explains the difference between gravity and g-force, and how you can experience zero-g in space even when it’s not zero gravity!

Hank introduces us to the man behind the periodic table - the brilliant Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.

Design legend Niels Diffrient talks about his life in industrial design (and the reason he became a designer instead of a jet pilot). He details his quest to completely rethink the office chair starting from one fundamental data set: the...

Weight discrimination has very real health consequences, especially when some of the most common perpetrators are medical professionals.

Plenty of robots can fly -- but none can fly like a real bird. That is, until Markus Fischer and his team at Festo built SmartBird, a large, lightweight robot, modeled on a seagull, that flies by flapping its wings. A soaring demo fresh...