How do the world's best leaders and visionaries earn trust? They don't just present data -- they also tell great stories. Leadership consultant Karen Eber demystifies what makes for effective storytelling and explains how anyone can...

The scene of the three wise men offering gifts to a newborn Jesus was widely painted during the Renaissance era, so how did painter Sandro Botticelli create a version that's still well known today? James Earle describes who and what set...

In which John Green teaches you about the Bronze Age civilization in what we today call the middle east, and how the vast, interconnected civilization that encompassed Egypt, The Levant, and Mesopotamia came to an end. What's that you...

This Valentine’s Day weekend, we'd like to tell you a deep-sea shrimp love story that begins with a sponge, and two shrimp — and ends in forever.

Military leaders have known for millennia that the time to prepare for a challenge is before it hits you, says scientist and retired US Navy officer David Titley. He takes us from the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria to the icy shores...

Hank gets to the bottom of this "faster-than-the-speed-of-light-neutrino" kerfuffle, discusses some ancient stuff, and announces the winner of the award for worst science in a film

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...

Bernie Krause has been recording wild soundscapes -- the wind in the trees, the chirping of birds, the subtle sounds of insect larvae -- for 45 years. In that time, he has seen many environments radically altered by humans, sometimes...

Long ago, all stories belonged to Nyame, the all-seeing Sky God. But one creature, Anansi, was determined to bring the stories down to Earth. Anansi went to Nyame and requested to take ownership of the world's stories. The Sky God told...

Find out why Flannery O’Connor, an American novelist, is known as a master of the grotesque in Southern Gothic literature. -- Flannery O’Connor scribbled tales of outcasts, intruders and misfits staged in the world she knew best: the...

This week we learned that the Neanderthal/Denisovan/Human family tree is pretty complicated, thanks to a close look into some Neanderthals' Y chromosomes.

In the 4th century BCE, a young Diogenes of Sinope was found to be counterfeiting coins. He was stripped of his citizenship, his money, all his possessions and sent into exile. He decided he would live self-sufficiently, close to nature,...

For the young and unemployed in the world's big cities, dreams of opportunity and wealth do come true -- but too often because they're heavily recruited by terrorist groups and other violent organizations. Human rights advocate Mohamed...

What relics will the 'anthropocene' age leave behind?

The world’s first artificial pigment, Egyptian blue, may help scientists prevent forgery and even save lives.

In which Mike Rugnetta sits you down for a little talk about myth as a way to construct or reinforce social orders. Specifically, we're going to look today at stories from around the world that establish or amplify the idea that the...

A few weeks before his release from prison, Jarrell Daniels took a class where incarcerated men learned alongside prosecutors. By simply sitting together and talking, they uncovered surprising truths about the criminal justice system and...

A pioneer in research on play, Dr. Stuart Brown says humor, games, roughhousing, flirtation and fantasy are more than just fun. Plenty of play in childhood makes for happy, smart adults -- and keeping it up can make us smarter at any age.

Camels are so well adapted to the desert that it's hard to imagine them living anywhere else. But what if we have them pegged all wrong? What if those big humps, feet and eyes were evolved for a different climate and a different time? In...

We're raising our girls to be perfect, and we're raising our boys to be brave, says Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code. Saujani has taken up the charge to socialize young girls to take risks and learn to program -- two skills...

Pollen goes unnoticed by most of us, except when hay fever strikes. But microscopes reveal it comes in stunning colors and shapes -- and travels remarkably well. Jonathan Drori gives an up-close glimpse of these fascinating flecks of...

What's a company's purpose? It's not the same as mission or vision, which change when leadership changes. Strategist Ashley M. Grice explains the power of purpose to push boundaries of innovation and bring clarity to every aspect of an...

Since it launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has snapped more than a million images and changed the way we see the universe, literally.

We live in one of a hundred billion of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. And now, thanks to modern astronomy, we know that the Milky Way is home to perhaps a hundred billion planets! In the past two decades, these...