The human body is a big, meaty sack of wonder. All day long, things are happening inside of yourself that you’re never aware of. Synapses fire in your brain, nerves send signals through your muscles, your heart and lungs and stomach and spleen are all doing what they do, all without any input from you. …
Author: Ian Fortey
The financial world is bigger than ever these days thanks to cryptocurrency, which has opened the door for people who historically had little to no interest in finance thanks to the seeming complexity of the stock market. And, let’s be honest, the stock market has long felt inaccessible to most people. Very few people own…
It’s been said that America is a litigious society, and Judge Judy might agree. But there has long been a pervasive myth that courts are bogged down with frivolous lawsuits even though, statistically speaking, relatively few lawsuits actually meet the criteria of frivolous. That may be because, in between the conception and execution, some people…
Medicine is an absolute marvel of science. To think we’ve gone from at one point using poisons like mercury to try to treat diseases to being able to grow a patient a new ear using their own cells. There are new and seemingly miraculous treatments being put into use all the time. Sometimes they’re extremely…
You can trace the history of modern animation back to the 1830s and the phenakistoscope, which created the illusion of movement with images on a spinning cardboard disk. In the present, there aren’t even statistics about how many animated cartoons have been created because it’s an all-but-impossible task to figure out. Everyone from major studios…
You’d think that anyone who puts the time, effort and money into becoming a doctor would really be committed to helping people. Years of medical school, huge tuition fees and, arguably, a lot of intelligence need to be involved. And yet, despite that, you keep hearing stories of doctors doing things so remarkably dumb or…
Can any animated show claim to be more influential than The Simpsons? At this point, it may be the most influential TV show period, animated or otherwise. And whether you love or hate the “new” Simpsons, you can’t deny that the show has been a powerhouse of comedy for over 30 years now. But beyond…
There’s an old saying that goes “use it or lose it” which essentially means if you have a thing, you better make use of it before it’s gone. We don’t have a lot of sayings about overuse, however, and it turns out we should. There are plenty of things in life you can overuse that…
Your brain is almost always there when you need it, barring those occasions when you find yourself chemically altered, really tired or far too enamored with an attractive person you’re trying to impress. And while it’s a marvel of biology capable of doing incredible things, the fact is your brain is only human. If you…
Fear is one of the greatest motivators in the world. It can make a person act irrationally, and it can breed paranoia and distrust. And sometimes it just has really bizarre and unexpected effects that echo throughout history. All because someone was afraid of what might happen if they let things play out a certain…
For a long time, the pursuit of bigness consumed a lot of the world. It still does in many ways. Just look at the massive Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, towering 2717 feet in the air. The world likes big. But the opposite end of the scale holds fascination as well. The smaller we can…
We’ve found evidence of surgery performed on people as far back as 12,000 years ago. These procedures indicate our ancient ancestors performed surgical trepanation which involved drilling a hole through the skull to expose the brain. So it was clearly something that would have taken a deft hand if the patient was to live. Today,…
Every element has a distinctive atomic number. The atomic number represents the number of protons in the nuclei. Isotopes have the same number of protons, meaning it’s the same element, but there’s a different number of neutrons. Carbon, for instance, has three isotopes – carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14. Each one has six protons, but they…
We’ve covered some of the side hustles that celebrities have had, but this is by no means a new trend. (1940s film star Hedy Lamarr, for example, basically invented WiFi.) Numerous figures of note throughout history have achieved fame for one thing, while also making a name for themselves with some lesser known skills as…
Blackmail is about as old as secrets. The idea of someone using secret information to coerce another into doing what they want exists in all cultures throughout all time. It’s typically frowned upon and certainly considered a crime, but the blackmailer does need to get caught and, often, the victim wants to keep everything on…
In the past, we’ve covered just how expensive war can get and, as many people know, the defense budget of a country like the United States or Russia is enough to make Elon Musk break into a sweat. But not every victory has to break the bank and there is more than a little precedent…
People have loved getting attention for as long as attention has been a thing.The publicity stunt exists solely for this reason and when they work well, they can cause a stir and amuse thousands. But when they go wrong, it can go spectacularly wrong. 10. The Crash at Crush What would someone have to do…
Your brain is an amazing organ. It generates enough electricity to power a lightbulb. It’s believed to operate at one exaFLOP, which is said to be of a scale of “a billion billion calculations per second.” It may have a storage capacity in the range of one petabyte, or 500 billion printed pages of standard…
For some people, nothing is more satisfying than pushing their personal limits and seeing to what extremes they can go. Whether that’s climbing a mountain or traversing untraversable terrain, there is no challenge some of us will not accept. For other people, nothing so lofty or exciting consumes their lives, but they are subject to…
Along with turning water into wine, Jesus was also said to have the power to cast out demons. That means exorcisms have been around for at least 2000 years. Surprisingly, the Catholic Church didn’t really establish any guidelines until 1614. But in the modern world, and no doubt thanks to the influence of pop culture,…
To this day, 2011’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides still stands as the most expensive film ever made with a truly baffling $379 million budget. The average studio movie costs $65 million, not including marketing. Even the average bare bones, no frills, just out of film school indie movie will cost between $10,000…
Cancel culture is a buzz term we can’t escape these days. Ban, ignore, refuse or deny anything and it’s a victim of cancel culture rightly or wrongly. But the concept of banning things is hardly a new one. We’ve done it just short of forever. Even music is unable to escape the cold, callused hand…
The idea of a world beneath our feet has been fascinating to people for ages. It’s a staple of old science fiction in stories like Journey to the Center of the Earth and the Divine Comedy both describe incredibly rich and detailed worlds and even in modern times the idea that there’s something more down…
They say that only two things in life are guaranteed: death and taxes. If you’re not a human, then that means only one thing is guaranteed. And even though we all have to die sometime, we sure don’t all get to go out the same way. The animal kingdom can be brutal and death can…