The year was 1776. In Bavaria, new ideals of rationalism, religious freedom and universal human rights competed with the Catholic church's heavy influence over public affairs. Adam Weishaupt, a law professor frustrated with the Church's...

We’ve been studying the body for most of human history, and yet we are still finding new organs (or parts of them - depending on your definition). Also, thanks to some marmosets, we know a little more about how anxiety and depression...

Have you ever seen a tree with a big, twisted knot growing out of it? That's just one way that plants can show signs of cancer. Quick Questions explains.

Why are Stars Star-Shaped

While it’s probably most famous for its role in gene editing, CRISPR does more than just that: its ability to precisely cut and alter DNA could lead to new antibiotics, faster diagnosis tools, and more. Chapters CREATING ANTIBIOTICS 1:07...

Be spreaders of facts and truths, says scientist and immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci. Having advised seven US presidents on various disease outbreaks including COVID-19, he shares insights on the present and future of pandemics, backed up...

The UN predicts that antimicrobial resistance will be our biggest killer by 2050. "That should really scare the hell out of all of us," says bioprocess engineer Leon Marchal. He's working on an urgently needed solution: transforming the...

The bubonic plague, which killed around 1/5 of the world's population in the 14th century, is still around today -- but it now claims only a few thousand lives each year. How did that number shrink so drastically? Sharon N. DeWitte...

From the 1200s through the 1600s, parts of Europe were afflicted with deadly, mysterious outbreaks of seemingly contagious, unstoppable dancing. While it's still unclear exactly why these "dancing plagues" happened, modern psychology may...

A meteor shower happens when rocks from space burn up in the atmosphere and make a beautiful light show! Lately, though, Squeaks has been wondering what would happen if one of those space rocks made it through the atmosphere to the...

Humans aren’t the only ones who have to worry about epidemics: meet six other animals who take their own precautions to avoid getting sick!

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The ancestors of modern horses became so successful that they spread all over the world, to Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa. But in their native range of North America, they'll vanish for 10,000 years. Until another strange...

The largest animal in the world is the blue whale, which weighs a massive 150 metric tons. Even so, it's not remotely close to being the largest organism by weight. That title goes to an organism so huge that it's estimated to weigh the...

Our first video ever! Agriculture, hula hoops, SARS, and THIS video: how long did they take to get around the earth?

If a surface is contaminated with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, how long does it pose a risk of infection?

How to See Without Glasses

Nuclear weapons are the most destructive things we’ve ever created, but it turns out there’s a way to make them even deadlier…

Some believe that increased carbon emissions could produce faster growing plants, but some scientists worry that it could mean more toxic and invasive species.

On Friday, May 12th, 2017, the ransomware program WannaCry started spreading to computers all over the world at an alarming rate. A couple days later, it was basically completely contained with very little damage done. So what happened?

Is it possible for there to be a dog that is made of one very determined cell?

Unlike humans, domestic canaries don’t have the option of social distancing when one of their own is ill. But canaries may have evolved a nifty workaround for protecting their populations when disease strikes!

How Fire Ants Took Over America



Fire ants are several species of ants in the genus Solenopsis, which includes over 200 species. Solenopsis are stinging ants, and most of their common names reflect this, for example, ginger...

What makes a book a book? Is it just anything that stores and communicates information? Or does it have to do with paper, binding, font, ink, its weight in your hands, the smell of the pages? To answer these questions, Julie Dreyfuss...

Stars are our stellar alchemists. They spend their entire lifespan creating and molding elements. In their final moments, a supernova spreads these elements out into the universe, providing the building blocks for new stars, planets, and...