Coachella produces around 107 tons of waste per day

Coachella is one of the largest music festivals in the world

Coachella is one of the largest music festivals in the US, though it almost didn't make it past its tumultuous first year. This overview explores how that show inspired the first Coachella in 1999, its early setbacks, and how it grew into a cultural mainstay.

A typical weekend at Coachella can cost thousands of dollars

Coachella might be a cutting-edge cultural event, but it doesn't come for free. Beyond the high ticket prices—which typically start around $500—there are other costs, like lodging, food, and libations. This article spotlights four attendees who break down their expenses for the week and why, despite the hefty price tag, they were so interested in heading to the desert.

Coachella fashion repurposes looks from Woodstock

Coachella attendees’ flower-forward fashion sense has been widely replicated (and lampooned) since the festival became a mainstay of the cultural calendar. This podcast, featuring a panel of style writers and music reporters, traces the aesthetic back to the 1969 Woodstock festival. In the process, they also look to untangle why festivalgoers fall into certain styles—and what that means for Coachella and its attendees.

Watch Daft Punk's legendary set

Coachella's main stage is known for attention-grabbing performances, but one of the festival's most momentous was on the smaller Sahara stage. That's where Daft Punk brought their huge LED pyramids and played an inventive mix of their past hits—resulting in a reimagining of dance music's approach to live performances.

The traffic lines leaving Burning Man

The traffic lines leaving Burning Man have become an annual gawking event among the press, as the festival known for its radical "leave no trace" principles nonetheless contributes its share of carbon emissions. See photos of the dramatic departure from the desert playa here.

Integrated circuits are made with light and require significant purified water and chemicals

The nonstop operation of fabrication plants, which takes months to manufacture a wafer of hundreds of integrated circuits, strains local resources and generates significant chemical waste. Much of the electricity consumed is used to maintain clean room conditions within plants.

Turning trash into music

In a town built on a landfill, a music teacher and young musicians created an orchestra using instruments made entirely from trash. From oil cans to bottle caps, they turned waste into music.

America generates more trash per person than any other country on Earth

The US produces roughly 292 million tons of municipal solid waste per year, about 4.9 pounds per person per day. Municipal solid waste includes food scraps, packaging, electronics, yard trimmings, and more. About 50% of the waste ends up in a landfill.

Davos has faced backlash over private jet usage

For the 2022 Davos meeting, which focused on the climate crisis, approximately one in 10 attendees arrived by private jet, producing emissions equivalent to those of roughly 350,000 cars in a week. One recorded jet flight to Davos covered just 13 miles.

See how CES comes to life with a massive setup across Las Vegas

This behind-the-scenes video shows crews assembling the sprawling CES show—filling more than 2.5 million square feet of exhibition space with booths, lights, and tech from around the world ahead of the event’s opening.

The food industry's hard-to-solve pollution

One-quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. That whopping number includes production and post-farm processes like distribution. See a visualization of the data along with a breakdown explaining how each process contributes to emissions, and why it’s so difficult to improve the agriculture industry.

Hosting the World Cup requires massive investments in infrastructure

Since the 1990s, those costs have crept into the billions. Cities are able to sell the high price tag with promises of jobs and tourism dollars, but long-term studies showed the promises were often overstated.

Fireworks contribute to air, water, and soil contamination and disrupt wildlife

Fireworks displays have far-reaching environmental consequences, including acid rain from displays during storms and microplastic pollution in water supplies. Wildlife has also been seen abandoning sites during fireworks and never returning.

Earth Day has become the largest civic event in the world

What began in 1970 with 20 million Americans now involves more than 1 billion participants across over 190 countries each year. Earth Day now encompasses rallies, cleanups, and climate actions worldwide.

The film industry is responsible for more than 200K jobs in California

Hollywood films generate roughly $49B for the US economy each year. In California, the film industry provides more than 200,000 jobs. Industry employees were paid more than $42B in wages in 2022.

The carbon footprint of manufacturing a wind turbine is offset within seven months

Despite initial carbon emissions during manufacturing, wind turbines generate nearly zero pollution across their 20- to 25-year lifetimes. Offsets occur when turbines replace energy generation from coal and natural gas plants, which emit carbon dioxide.

Completed in 2017, Apple's headquarters cost $5 billion dollars

Apple Park features a ring-shaped main building that accommodates over 12,000 employees, situated above a two-story underground parking garage equipped with its own traffic light system. Inspired by Stanford University's foliage, Steve Jobs hired one of their arborists to oversee the planting of over 9,000 indigenous trees.

MLB teams can travel with roughly 12,000 pounds of gear and luggage

Each of the league's 30 teams has travel directors facilitating intricate logistics to move players and luggage to the next city, often after a game and the night before another game day. This video breaks down the wild planning required.

The 'Elephant's Foot' in Chernobyl is part of the largest documented mass of corium

The nuclear disaster produced around 200 tons of nuclear fuel that mixed with the surrounding melted reactor core materials. As of 2025, corium has been naturally formed four other times in history: once during the Three Mile Island accident and three times at the Fukushima Daiichi plant disaster.

Take a peek inside those $225,000 Oscar gift bags.

Even the losers will win big at the Academy Awards, thanks to all of the free swag. Here’s what they’ll take home this year.

Stonehenge produces concert-hall-like acoustics

Acoustics researcher Trevor Cox discovered that Stonehenge acts like a concert hall, reflecting and amplifying sound. This video shows Cox demonstrating the effect using a scale model inside a soundproof studio.

Exposed concrete led to oxygen depletion within Biosphere 2

Instead of being absorbed by plants through photosynthesis to produce oxygen, significant amounts of carbon dioxide were taken up by the calcium hydroxide in the concrete, trapping the oxygen in calcium carbonate and water. This concrete was sealed before the start of the second B2 mission.

Visualize the impact of satellites and space debris orbiting Earth

According to NASA, approximately 9,000 metric tons of debris are orbiting Earth, with 70% of it located in low Earth orbit, where the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station reside. The growing reliance on space-based platforms for modern technologies, including Starlink satellites, increases the risk of debris collisions.

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

The show follows a frantic production schedule

The show is pitched, written, and designed in a week. Tuesdays feature infamously long writing sessions that usually stretch into Wednesday mornings. Fridays include shooting for digital shorts and an initial run-through of live material. Before Saturday's live show, there's an extended dress rehearsal.

Over 120 cameras are used to film a single F1 race

Watching a Formula 1 race today is an immersive experience: Every car has onboard cameras; there are helicopter, drone, and lift shots; nearly every corner has a camera to document drivers jockeying for position; and over 120 cameras are used to film a single race.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after exploding due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

Watch the cumbersome, but necessary, precautions healthcare workers must take to care for and protect themselves while caring for Ebola patients.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.