Anesthesia might be the greatest medical advancement in human history (seriously, imagine having surgery without it), but there’s still a shocking amount we don’t understand about it.
Cephalopods like octopus, squid, and cuttlefish seem to be as alien as any alien creature from a sci-fi movie, and it’s fun to speculate that they could be aliens from another planet. But could they be aliens from right here on Earth?
Today we look at some of the strangest – and most intelligent – animals on Earth. Cephalopods.
Airships took over the skies and imaginations of the early 20th century. They were a symbol of technological progress and a prosperous future. And then, they vanished. What happened? And why are they possibly making a comeback?
David Quammen is the author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, which eerily predicted the kind of zoonotic virus outbreaks that we’re seeing right now. In this interview, we talk about his experience tracking ebola in Africa in 2007, why bats make such great hosts for viruses, and why we’ll be seeing more outbreaks like this in the future.
The novel coronavirus pandemic has officially destabilized our economy, our workplaces, and our homes. That’s the bad news. The worse news? It won’t be the last.
In today’s video I speak with bestselling author David Quammen about zoonotic viruses – viruses that jump from animals to humans. Why they’re so dangerous, why we’ve been seeing more of them in recent years, and why COVID-19 will not be the last one we’ll be dealing with.
You never know what life’s gonna throw at you. Often our best efforts and most brilliant ideas turn into hellish nightmares. From the plant that ate the south to a pill that destroyed a generation, here are 5 times that’s happened.
Our asteroid belt holds minerals and precious metals worth trillions, even quadrillions of dollars. So could asteroid mining create the first trillionaire? Or is the hype overblown?
There are millions of asteroids in the asteroid belt (and perhaps just as many trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit), and some of them potentially contain precious metals worth more than all the money in the world. One single asteroid, 16 Psyche, is worth quintillions of dollars. But somehow early pioneers in asteroid mining like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries have struggled and gone under. How, in this new space race, with the prices of launching to space falling every year, has asteroid mining not become a thing? The answer, and the reality about asteroid mining, is more complex than we think.
You might have heard of Quasars or have a vague idea of what they are, but the incredible reality of these monsters from long ago are almost beyond human comprehension.
Electric cars have a dark secret – cobalt. The element that is in almost all lithium-ion batteries is often considered a conflict mineral because half of all cobalt reserves are found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a troubled region with over a century of instability.
But is it as bad as the anti-EV crowd has led us to believe? What’s the reality of the situation, and what are some of the solutions?
Dead whales have a tendency to explode, and in some cases, humans blow them up for them. Here’s why. Maybe don’t eat while you’re watching this.
