Comedian and writer Athena Kugblenu has a hot take: we’re all liars, and that’s OK. Exploring the line between the little lies that do no harm and the big, self-serving whoppers you’d best avoid, she offers a crucial question to ask...

In the past decade, astronomers have discovered interstellar objects, including a 2014 meteor that collided with Earth and 'Oumuamua in 2017. These objects, moving too fast to be bound by the Sun's gravity, have sparked questions about...

If a tree falls in space, and it's frequency is modulated by multiple octaves and digitized, does it make a sound?

Everyone lies. Even you and even me. We lie about small things and we lie about big things. We lie to help ourselves and we lie to protect others. Powerful people lie, all the way down to little kids telling fibs. Why do we do this if...

What exactly is a topological space?

While comets were historically thought to be ill omens of war and famine, recent science has revealed that these celestial wonders actually contain amino acids, the building blocks of life on Earth. Justin Dowd explores the implications...

Racism thrives on your silence and apathy, says human rights lawyer Dexter Dias. Telling the story of a harrowing UK court case that spotlights the corrosive effects of injustice, Dias urges us all to speak out and expose toxic myths...

We hear anywhere from 10 to 200 lies a day. And although we've spent much of our history coming up with ways to detect these lies by tracking physiological changes in their tellers, these methods have proved unreliable. Is there a more...

In an unmissable talk, journalist Carole Cadwalladr digs into one of the most perplexing events in recent times: the UK's super-close 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Tracking the result to a barrage of misleading Facebook ads...

People love Santa. Christmas is the largest holiday in western culture, and Santa Claus is the centerpiece of that holiday (sorry baby Jesus). But even though our understanding of Santa changes as we mature, we still maintain and...

In this edition of IDTIMWYTIM, Hank explains why the common understanding of "equinox" is wrong, what the equinox actually is, and then rages a little against astronomers and their stupid confusing Latin terms.

Childhood is surreal. Why shouldn't children's books be? In this whimsical talk, award-winning author Mac Barnett speaks about writing that escapes the page, art as a doorway to wonder -- and what real kids say to a fictional whale.

On any given day we're lied to from 10 to 200 times, and the clues to detect those lies can be subtle and counter-intuitive. Pamela Meyer, author of Liespotting, shows the manners and "hotspots" used by those trained to recognize...

There's an angry divisive tension in the air that threatens to make modern politics impossible. Elizabeth Lesser explores the two sides of human nature within us (call them "the mystic" and "the warrior”) that can be harnessed to elevate...

Today, we're going to discuss how numbers, like statistics, and visual representations like charts and infographics can be used to help us better understand the world or profoundly deceive. Data is a really powerful form of evidence...

Kurt Vonnegut found the tidy, satisfying arcs of many stories at odds with reality, and he set out to explore the ambiguity between good and bad fortune in his own novels. He tried to make sense of human behavior by studying the shapes...

Lice are tiny bugs that love to live in people's hair and suck their blood! Anyone can get lice and they can be tricky to get rid of, but Jessi and Squeaks are here with some lice facts that could help you avoid these itchy little critters!

For six months, Suki Kim worked as an English teacher at an elite school for North Korea's future leaders -- while writing a book on one of the world's most repressive regimes. As she helped her students grapple with concepts like...

Flies are evasive buzzing machines that make it nearly impossible to swat. Luckily, science has some explanation to help you predict their next move.

Hank gets into the dirty details behind our lying ways - how such behavior evolved, how pathological liars are different from the rest of us, and how scientists are getting better at spotting lies in many situations.

You and your team have crash-landed on an ancient planet. Can you appease the three alien overlords who rule it and get your team safely home? Created by logician Raymond Smullyan, and popularized by his colleague George Boolos, this...

Lemmings are small, thickset vole-like animals that live in the Arctic tundra. They live in a harsh environment, are super-cute, kinda mean, and totally misunderstood.

When Dick Fosbury couldn't compete against the skilled high jumpers at his college, he tried jumping in a different way -- backwards. Fosbury improved his record immediately and continued to amaze the world with his new technique all the...

New ReviewBadenoch calls Mandelson row a 'disgrace'PA