Modern Times
Stories still going on, or only just finished. 17 stories, a few minutes each.
- Kiruna — The Town That MovedKiruna, Sweden's northernmost city, sits 145 kilometers above the Arctic Circle on top of one of the largest and purest iron ore deposits on Earth.…
- The Baader-Meinhof PhenomenonYou learn a new word, and suddenly you see it everywhere. You hear about a band, and within a week it seems like everyone is mentioning them. You…
- The Svalbard Global Seed VaultOn a remote island in the Norwegian Arctic, about 620 miles from the North Pole, there's a concrete entrance jutting out of a mountainside. Behind…
- Leap SecondsThe Earth is slowing down. It has been for billions of years.
- The Library of Unwritten BooksIn Richard Brautigan's 1971 novel *The Abortion*, there's a library in San Francisco that accepts any book anyone wants to deposit. Not published…
- The Great Maple Syrup HeistQuebec produces about 77 percent of the world's maple syrup, and the industry is tightly controlled by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers.
- Why Wombat Poop Is Cube-ShapedOf all the animals on Earth, only the wombat produces cube-shaped feces. Each day, a bare-nosed wombat deposits roughly a hundred six-sided…
- Why Cats PurrThe assumption is that a purring cat is a happy cat. And that's often true—cats purr when they're content, when they're being petted, when they're…
- The Lake That Turns Animals to StoneIn northern Tanzania, near the Kenyan border, there's a shallow salt lake that preserves dead animals like fossils.
- The Corpse FlowerThe titan arum blooms so rarely and smells so terrible that botanic gardens issue public alerts when one is about to open. Visitors line up,…
- The Sailing Stones of Death ValleyIn a remote corner of Death Valley, rocks move by themselves.
- Why We Have FingerprintsThe most common explanation for why humans have fingerprints is grip—the ridges on our fingertips supposedly help us hold onto objects, the way…
- Why Old Books Smell GoodThe smell of old books has a name: bibliosmia. It's a compound aroma produced by the chemical decomposition of paper, binding glue, and ink over…
- Why Your Voice Sounds Different on RecordingsAlmost everyone dislikes the sound of their own voice on a recording. The experience is so universal that psychologists have given it a name: voice…
- The Boy Who Built a Nuclear ReactorIn 2008, a fourteen-year-old from Texarkana, Arkansas, named Taylor Wilson became the youngest person in history to achieve nuclear fusion. He…
- Why We Get GoosebumpsWhen you're cold or frightened, tiny muscles at the base of each hair follicle contract, pulling the hair upright and creating a small bump on the…
- Why Paper Cuts Hurt So MuchA paper cut barely breaks the skin. There's often no visible blood. Yet the pain is immediate, sharp, and disproportionate to the injury—a fact…