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Hearing Morgan Freeman talk on helium is pretty damn hilarious

Blessed with the calming voice of a warm blanket on a cold night, Morgan Freeman is basically the best narrator for nearly every documentary and most life situations. I could listen him talk about anything and it would feel important. But what about Morgan Freeman on helium? How’s that sound? Hilarious. It’s an ad for…

Watch all these dogs run on their dog treadmills in their dog gym

Sometimes when you have a lot of dogs, they don’t all get the exercise they need. Not these dogs though, they get to use these sweet dog treadmills at their outdoor dog gym. So even though there’s a lot of dogs, they all get to be active. Well, most of them. The dog on the…

io9 Nights: What Are You Watching?

It’s that weird time of year between the traditional end of television season and the start of the summer season. There’s not a lot that’s new on, so what are you watching? Now, I’m normally going to leave this feature wide-open. But tonight I have one additional request: Help me name io9 at night’s open…

And This Is Why We Leave Time Travel to the Professionals

“Let’s just pop back to last Tuesday,” she says. “Oh don’t worry about stepping on that lizard,” she says. “It can’t be that important.” It can’t be that important huh? WELL LOOK AT ME NOW! Bleeding, terrified, being hunted by my future-past self while trying to reconstruct a quantum timeline without tearing the universe a…

Cry Me A Blood River, The 100

There is so much death on this show. So much. Has someone died in every episode of this series? I want to say yes, and this week was no different. Death, death, death, teen stuff, death… That’s the 100. Spoilers below… Honestly, I was very nonplussed with this episode. Everyone was just acting like a…

Cover a 100-Year-Old Blues Song

Disquiet Junto Project 0125: Yellow Disquiet Blues Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. Tracks by participants…

This Map Shows How L.A. Grew Into a 469-Square-Mile City

When the colonial administrators of New Spain founded Los Angeles in 1781, they granted the pueblo four square leagues of land—a grant that defined the city’s limits when it incorporated under American law in 1850. For decades, Los Angeles confined itself much to its original borders. Then, in the 1890s, it suddenly engorged itself on…

The subway in Brazil looks like a nightmarish ocean of drowning people

It’s like that horrifying scene in World War Z when zombies are just on top of each other. It’s like a mosh pit that never ends for all of eternity. It’s a human traffic jam with absolutely no room to breathe. It’s the subway system in Sao Paulo after a bus strike. And the World…

This Is What David Lynch’s Return Of The Jedi Might Have Looked Like

Most people know the story about how George Lucas offered the third Star Wars movie to David Lynch, who turned it down because of Lucas’ poor choice of restaurant. Now, a gent named C-SPIT has taken it upon himself to imagine what that movie may have looked like. WARNING: You will have nightmares about Ewoks…

Your Favorite Fantastical Cover Artist, Even If You Never Realized It

I absolutely gurantee you’ve admired the artwork of John Harris at some point, even if you never knew his name. And now, a new book collects some of his most eye-popping art featuring spaceships and alien worlds. And we’ve got some exclusive images, with artist commentary! Top image: “Quiet Night.” Harris writes: “Inside the Roche…

​Will The 2015 Jeep Renegade Be Any Good Off-Road?

We’re excited for the new, compact 2015 Jeep Renegade. But, will it go off-road? We called up Jeep’s chief engineer and asked. He gave us exclusive, never-before-seen specs and details. The Renegade is an all-new Jeep, based on the parent company’s new “Small Wide” platform, also used by the Fiat 500L. It’s scheduled to go…

An Archeologist Explains Why Looters Are Stealing More Than You Think

Pilfered artifacts are a problem for archeologists, but the problem can go much deeper than just the loss of the items. After reading this post on the problems of the fossil black market, commenter and archeologist trudibell_ chimed in to tell us that the pain was shared across archeological digs as well — and not…

Gareth Edwards Is Directing The First Stand-Alone Star Wars Film

Fresh off his triumph with the Godzilla reboot, Gareth Edwards is taking on another monumental challenge: transforming Star Wars into just a single series of films into a Shared Universe of films. Edwards will direct the first standalone Star Wars film, coming December 2016. Who’s this film about? The Lucasfilm press release doesn’t say. We’d…

Minnesota has banned triclosan, an anti-bacterial agent found in soap, deodorants and toothpaste. It’s the first state to do so. Triclosan is a health hazard and a likely contributor to resistant bacteria — if it even works at all. (mast3r/Shutterstock)

Your Yelp Complaints Are Being Used to Track Food Poisoning in NYC

You wake up and there is definitely something wrong with your stomach. Could it be the tacos last night? Oh man, it was definitely the tacos at that dirty joint. So what do you do? You whine about your diarrhea on Yelp as a warning to would-be taco eaters. And now, the health department might…

Why Godzilla Kicked Pacific Rim‘s Ass at the Box Office

Though Pacific Rim was arguably a more original and complex movie than Godzilla, it fizzled at the box office — while Godzilla’s formulaic fun earned so much money its first weekend that the studio has already ordered a sequel. What made one giant monster movie succeed where the other failed? Top image: Godzilla concept art…

The most spectacular and destructive atomic bombs in history

Here are the most spectacular and destructive atomic detonations in history. Most of them are in crispy HD thanks to the folks of Atom Central, one of my favorite sites. Looking at their terrifying beauty, I can’t understand why we wasted so much in these absurd devices of mass extermination. I made the GIF above…

China Shuts Down Museum Showing Thousands of Fake Artifacts

China is currently undergoing a huge boom in museums—299 new ones have opened in the last year alone. And just like the US’s own 20th century museum boom, which inspired cascades of forgeries, China’s is bringing out the fakes: The government has shuttered one museum where a third of the 8,000 artifacts were fake. According…

“Space age outfits in silver vinyl by Pierre Cardin, on display at Fashion Week in Paris, 26th January 1968.” [Getty Images] Not quite as cool as the 1939 version, in this humble bloggist’s opinion.

Mars Gets a New Crater, We Find it Within a Day

We have such a vigilant orbital watch program that when a meteor a few meters in diameter pinged Mars, we spotted the crater within 24 hours. We’re living in the future, people. Unless this is the past, because NASA announced the discovery in Latin. Project scientist Bruce Cantor spotted a crater 50 meters in diameter…