Megaloceros was one of the largest members of the deer family ever to walk the Earth. The archaeological record is full of evidence that our ancestors lived alongside and interacted with these giant mammals for millennia. But what...

You’re alive right now… at least I’m pretty sure you are. But you’re not TOTALLY alive. Bits of you are always breaking down, being thrown out, and being replaced. Even right now, parts of you are dying. Some of your cells even died...

More people have food allergies than ever before. Peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish, eggs, and even milk… the list of possibly dangerous foods seems to get longer every day. But why do some people’s bodies have deadly reactions food? And why...

SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 are nasty enemies. Invisible, mysterious, and deadly, they have spread around the world and caused much of humanity to hide away. Germs like these only succeed and spread because of our social evolution, and our...

Antibiotic Resistance and the Rise of Superbugs

In September 1991, two hikers discovered a corpse emerging from the ice. Researchers soon realized they were looking at the mummified body of a man who'd lived about 5,300 years ago, and theorized he got caught in bad weather and froze....

As a death doula, or someone who supports dying people and their loved ones, Alua Arthur spends a lot of time thinking about the end of life. In a profound talk that examines our brief, perfectly human time on this planet, she asks us to...

Contrary to common belief, jesters weren't just a medieval European phenomenon but flourished in other times and cultures. The first reliably recorded jester is thought to be You Shi, of 7th century BCE China. Jesters had unique...

In 2018, an orca called Tahlequah gave birth. But her daughter died within an hour. Tahlequah, however, didn't leave her body. Over the next 17 days and 1,600 kilometers, she kept it afloat atop her own. By altering her feeding and...

It might seem pretty dark from a human point of view, but for some animals, feasting on your own offspring is the best way to ensure you and your other babies might have a more successful life.

You're lucky you don't literally age faster and drop dead when you see a dead person... because fruit flies do. Here's what researchers are learning about the connection between perception, aging, and mood disorders like depression.

Two mushroom guilds with vastly different strategies are locked in competition for forest dominance.

Nuclear war is a terrifying existential threat, but we shouldn't only fear the blasts because the ensuing smoke is the real killer.

By combining historical demography and epidemiology, we can (sort of) determine how people throughout history have died.

What really killed Mozart?

Working in the White House in the 1840s may have been more hazardous than we thought.

Hank shares some developments in cancer research, from new insights into the behavior of zombie cancer cells, to a new method that uses nanotechnology to kill cancer from within.

Spiderwebs are designed to trap bug-sized creatures. So how come spiders don’t get stuck?

What killed George Washington? Turns out it was probably related to the bloodletting and other 18th-century medicine his doctors applied.

Scientists found that the prevailing hypothesis of how the Alzheimer’s disease starts might be wrong, and some viruses could be the culprit.

A true "Renaissance Man", inventor, artist & scholar Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most diversely talented individuals of all time. His "unquenchable curiosity" led him to make discoveries and inventions that were beyond his time, not...

You might have heard that one year in a dog’s life is equivalent to seven in a human’s. But it turns out that the real ratio is both higher AND lower—depending on your dog’s current age.

Unless you saw the spider bite you, that swollen, bite-looking lesion on your arm is probably something else, and blaming it on an innocent 8-legged critter might do more harm than good. Hosted by: Stefan Chin

Lead is really useful when you add it to things like paint and gasoline. Problem is, it’s also poisonous. Hosted by: Hank Green