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French fries. Baked potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Potato chips. Potatoes are everywhere because they’re easy to grow, nutritious, and totally delicious. But they’re also crucially important to the creation of the world as we know it. The modern world was built on potatoes! Ted-Ed explores the history of potatoes and shows how Western countries rose to…
The opening sequence of the latest James Bond movie Spectre involves explosions, a chase scene, a well tailored suit and a fight scene inside a totally insane helicopter ride. This behind the scenes footage shows how batshit some of those tricks and maneuvers were. The helicopter purposely dives itself into a group of people on…
Seattle City Council has unanimously passed a bill allowing drivers for Uber, Lyft, and other ride-hailing services to form unions. Seattle is the first US city to allow these drivers a way to collectively bargain. This means drivers will be able negotiate their salaries and working conditions as a unit. It does not mean, however,…
The Department of Homeland Security is planning to look more closely at visa applicants’ social media footprints before letting them into the country. This new push dovetails with amplified fears about extremist immigrants. The day that she and her husband killed 14 people in San Bernadino, Ca., Tashfeen Malik “pledged allegiance” to ISIS on Facebook.…
Thanks to a super-sensitive new tool, NASA can now see exactly where air pollution is increasing and decreasing–down to the level of neighborhoods–and in some cases, the results are surprising. In 2004, NASA launched its Aura satellite, a research craft designed to monitor the Earth’s ozone. One of the (many!) instruments aboard Aura was the…
We know surprisingly little about our oceans. To help with this glaring blind spot, the XPrize has announced a new $7 million contest to foster innovations in ocean exploration technology. Announced today at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, the $7 million award will incentivize teams to create solutions that…
There have been so many little changes in the original Star Wars trilogy since their theatrical release because there have been so many “special edition” DVDs and Blu Rays and VHS tapes and LaserDiscs that have come out after the fact that it’s really hard to keep up with what the original movies showed in…
Forget studies that show that we are lazy, fried cheese-fed, cubicle dwellers. Or, at least forget the “lazy” part. Out of all the primates, humans distinguish themselves by getting the least amount of sleep. Here’s a novel idea about why humans are playing with iPads while the rest of our close family is still throwing…
New York City has plenty of parks that revamp aging transit infrastructure: The High Line transforms a decrepit elevated rail route, the Lowline reclaims forgotten tunnels. But neither of those is as ambitious as the Green Line, a concept that would turn a major street into a linear park. The Green Line is an idea…
Something strange is happening in California: A punishing drought has been hanging over the state these last five years. And yet, in the middle of it, water-guzzling almond production is skyrocketing—and has been every year of the drought. What’s going on? The answer lies in an agricultural quirk. Almonds have gotten a bad rap recently…
Worthless natural remedies, especially when they come from “exotic” locations, have always been popular. They’ve also always been big business. Here’s one of the earliest struggles on record—when the richest man in Europe went after a medieval doctor. Syphilis blindsided medieval Europe, affecting everyone from peasants to monarchs. People were desperate for a cure, and…
If you were a child once upon a time, you may have remembered Bugs Bunny cleverly stuffing Elmer Fudd’s shotgun with a carrot so that when Fudd fired his shotgun, it would explode in his face. But would that actually happen if you did that in real life? Demolition Ranch, answerer of life’s questions about…
Remember that scene in Traffic where they mold cocaine into dolls? This kind of trickery happens in real life, too. A band of international smugglers recently got caught with over $370 million worth of cocaine disguised as 40 shipping pallets. No, the pallets weren’t filled with cocaine. The pallets were cocaine. A total of 11…
Turning a giant refrigerator box into an intergalactic spaceship is easy with enough imagination and tin foil. But why wait for an appliance to fail when this detailed cardboard space pod kit will inspire even more imaginary space missions? Available exclusively from Target for $80, Makedo’s Space Pod kit comes with pre-printed and pre-cut cardboard…
Another year, another couple thousand new apps for you to wade through in a befuddled haze. Which ones should you download? Which ones should you actually pay for? And which ones deserve to take up prime real estate on your home screen? Whether you’ve spent the last 365 days asking yourself those very questions, or…
Ah, the po’ boy sandwich. When done right with great crispy crust bread and fully dressed, it’s delicious with anything inside—fried shrimp or fried oysters or roast beef and so on. But how did a sandwich ever get the name of a po’ boy? What’s the origins of this magnificent creation? The Mind of a…
I love headphones, always have. That’s probably because for most of my life, I was hearing impaired. Headphones were the only way for me to hear music the way it was supposed to be heard—the treble, the bass, and everything in between. But I don’t want to be tethered to my laptop and phone: I…
The State Department’s anti-ISIS social media campaign, Think Again Turn Away, took its inept hearts and minds mission a step further in the wrong direction this morning by promoting an anti-Islam advocate as a human rights hero. In honor of #HumanRightsDay, Think Again Turn Away tweeted this fact sheet highlighting the accomplishments of Ayaan Hirsi…
After years of controversy, Japan’s Sport Council has chosen a new design for an Olympic stadium in Tokyo. It will be be smaller, more sensitive to its surroundings, and (relatively) inexpensive—and it could be a model for other host cities. It’s been more than two years since Japan’s architects first revolted against the New National…
We debunked dozens of fake photos this year, covering everything from Charles Manson’s baby photos to John Lennon’s skateboarding skills, and everything in between. It was another busy year for anyone spreading fake images on the internet. Below, we have 76 photos that you may have seen floating around the internet in 2015. Some are…
