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BrainStuff Classics: Why Does Cashmere Cost So Much?
Cashmere can be more expensive than other wools because producing it is such an intensive process -- for the goats that grow it and the humans who ca…
5 months ago
Why Is There a Pooping Figurine in Some Nativity Scenes?
In Catalonia, there's a two-hundred-year-old tradition of including a figurine of a man pooping in the shadows of Nativity scenes. Learn about el cag…
5 months ago
How Do Rice Cookers Work?
These small appliances help home cooks achieve excellent rice via two categories of technology: ingeniously simple physics, or incredibly complex alg…
5 months ago
How Can Mudlarking Turn Trash Into Treasure?
Mudlarking means sifting through riverbank muck in hopes of finding lost or discarded historical artefacts. Learn how it works, especially in the Riv…
5 months, 1 week ago
How Do Walruses Work?
These arctic animals have complex social structures and may eat 6,000 clams in a single meal. Learn more walruses in this episode of BrainStuff, base…
5 months, 1 week ago
What Happens When Your Immune System Turns on You?
Your adaptive immune system remembers specific germs and fights them really effectively -- but it can sometimes make mistakes and attack your own hea…
5 months, 3 weeks ago
How Can Slime Mold Think Without a Brain?
Slime molds are collectives of single-celled organisms that don't have neurons, much less brains, but they can move, solve mazes, and remember where …
5 months, 3 weeks ago
What's the Difference Between Cougars, Pumas, and Mountain Lions?
Although there can be small differences, all of these are local names for the same species of cat, Puma concolor. Learn about them in this episode of…
5 months, 3 weeks ago
Who Named the Americas?
In the early 1500s, a sailor by the name of Amerigo Vespucci published lurid pamphlets about his travels to a distant continent. Learn how a pair of …
5 months, 3 weeks ago
BrainStuff Classics: Would Turkey Be So Popular Without Thanksgiving?
Americans eat a LOT of turkey around the winter holidays, but why? Learn about turkey's festive history and when we eat the most of it in this classi…
6 months ago