Category: Website

The cure for earworms, DJ Kool Herc and the birth of hip hop, the cover of Take Five that’s not in 5/4 time, and the suspicious copyright status of Happy Birthday to You.

The international light bulb conspiracy, the creative taxes (and tax evaders) of early modern England, how German employees help control their company, and the bond that has been paying 5% interest every year since 1648.

The North Korean reality show about haircuts, the impressive moves of the smallest sumo wrestler in Japan, Hong Kong’s backwards-named street, and Mao Zedong’s epic war… against sparrows.

Smallpox cultists, the half a billion neurons in your guts, androgen immunity, and the citric acid panic of 1976.

The first people born in Antarctica, the polar parka made from animal guts, the town without appendices, and a mysterious death at the South Pole.

The chemist who changed the planet’s atmosphere more than any other living thing in history; the physics of falling bullets; why two events can be both simultaneous and not simultaneous at the same time; and old people smell.

Politicians courting the violent fringe, the first mammal casualty of climate change, the largest free trade agreement in the world, and the phantom serial killer of Heilbronn.

Colombian Nadaists; the tomb-raiders whose blackmail returned Eva Perón’s body to Argentina; the 40,000km-long Incan road network; and why the largest national park, and the largest rainforest, in the European Union is in South America.