Stephen Hawking's early rowing days shaped the bold persona for which he became known

Despite his disability, Stephen Hawking reshaped our understanding of black holes

His theoretical work—especially on black holes emitting radiation, now known as Hawking radiation—challenged long-held ideas. He also brought complex physics to the public through bestselling books like "A Brief History of Time."

According to his daughter, Stephen Hawking defied early doubts about his intellect

Lucy Hawking details what it was like to be the daughter of the famed cosmologist and what his life looked like from her eyes. Among the anecdotes was Stephen's enjoyment of being on "The Simpsons" because production gave him a wheelchair with helicopter blades.

How Stephen Hawking’s voice became iconic

Stephen Hawking relied on a voice synthesizer after losing the ability to speak due to complications with ALS. Despite technological advances, he refused to change the "Perfect Paul" voice, making it a cornerstone of his public identity.

'The Theory of Everything' depicts Stephen Hawking through Jane Wilde’s eyes

Stephen Hawking credits Jane Wilde, his first wife, for giving him “something to live for” after his ALS diagnosis. This biographical drama of Hawking’s life, adapted from her memoir, details their relationship and the effects his illness and success in physics had on their marriage.

Stephen Hawking on the need to explore space

Should we be content with being cosmic couch potatoes? In this interview, the late Professor Stephen Hawking lays out the case for continued and increased human space exploration, despite its cost and challenges.

Computer pioneer Alan Turing was also an elite runner

Alan Turing is credited with helping to found modern computer science, in addition to cracking the Nazi code known as Enigma. Beyond these world-historical achievements, the British mathematician also nearly represented his country in the Olympics in the marathon, running just 11 minutes slower than the eventual gold recipient at the 1948 games. Read more on this lesser-known aspect of the man here.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to a health condition

Gehrig's diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that now bears his name, forced him to retire early. Weeks later, he spoke with gratitude and stated, "For the past two weeks, you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." Gehrig died at the age of 37, about two years later.

'The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.'

- Roger Bannister (1929-2018)

Tony Hawk’s rise from outsider to skateboarding legend

In this podcast, Tony Hawk discusses his path from being an outsider in a niche sport to becoming skateboarding’s most recognizable figure—reflecting on competition dominance, business ventures, and lessons learned throughout his career.

A brain scientist's experience with a stroke

What happens when a leading brain scientist has a stroke of her own? Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor recounts moment by moment watching her brain function slow and then cease, followed by a prolonged recovery. Through this experience, she details what she learned about the phenomenon of stroke and how it has impacted her research ever since.

The Lucasian Chair is among the most prestigious academic positions in science

Once held by icons like Newton, Dirac, and Hawking, the position was founded in 1663. "Star Trek" imagined the Lucasian Chair’s future holder as the android Data, cementing its mythos across scientific and science fiction realms.

Some Nobel laureates have expressed beliefs in pseudoscience after winning

Examples of the phenomenon, known as Nobelitis or Nobel disease, include promoting psychic research, harmful practices like eugenics, and seeing talking raccoons. Increased external pressures after a win and a greater spotlight may contribute to developing or exposing these beliefs.

Bow ties became a Bill Nye wardrobe staple after he took part in an athletic banquet

In high school, boys served as waiters during a ceremony where girls would receive awards for gymnastics, lacrosse, and other sporting events. Wanting to fit the role, Nye's father helped him dress like a waiter, and he continued wearing bow ties upon seeing their practicality in the lab.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Richard Feynman exposed NASA's safety failures on the Rogers Commission

The Nobel Laureate served on the Rogers Commission investigating Challenger, famously demonstrating O-ring failure with ice water and eventually criticizing NASA's culture of risk normalization and management pressure in the final report.

Harvard drowned rats for this?

Harvard's 1950s rat study was ethically questionable, but scientifically profound. One rescue attempt made rats swim 40x longer. The finding: hope isn't poetic, it's biological.

The magic angle to skip a spinning stone is 20 degrees

The traditional shoreside activity—reputedly practiced by luminaries Shakespeare and Homer—can be broken down into its bare physics, from hydrodynamics and momentum to gravity.

Diving into the life of Henry David Thoreau

Before he went to live in the woods by Walden Pond, Thoreau (who originally went by David Henry) lived a fascinating life, opening a school with his brother, working for his father's pencil-making business, and becoming close to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who'd become a mentor figure for the aspiring writer. This deep profile explores all that and more.

In 1898, Nikola Tesla wowed a crowd by controlling a boat with no visible connection

Some onlookers thought it was a trick, such a a monkey being inside the boat, rather than mind control or some other metaphysical phenomenon. In reality, Tesla was pioneering radio waves, proving wireless control was possible.

When he first enrolled at Princeton University, Jeff Bezos wanted to study physics

He later changed his major to electrical engineering and computer science. He graduated Summa Cum Laude and received job offers at Intel, Nokia, and Accenture, but he declined those offers in favor of a job at a fintech startup.

A letter about a hurricane helped launch Hamilton's life in America

After a hurricane severely damaged the Caribbean island of St. Croix, Alexander Hamilton wrote a vivid letter that was later published and impressed local business leaders, who took up a collection to send the teenager to North America for schooling.

A quote from Sally Ride

“Three Secrets to Success: Be willing to learn new things. Be able to assimilate new information quickly. Be able to get along with and work with other people.”

Orville and Wilbur argued over everything, likely accelerating their progress

The two never married, and focused solely on their goal of achieving flight. While both were socially reserved, they were passionate about their project, regularly debating—even shouting—over the details of propellers, engines, wings and more. This video explores how their culture of open argument likely fueled their discoveries.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

William Blake may be best known as a poet, but he was also a painter

The author of "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" was a romantic poet and painter. "Newton," one of his better-known pieces, satirizes Isaac Newton, whom he saw as too concerned with the empiricism of science and, as a result, lacking an understanding of nature.

John Snow—not the one from 'Game of Thrones'—determined that contaminated water sickened London

His pioneering epidemiology work during an 1854 cholera outbreak mapped out the commonalities between people in London who were getting sick. He discovered that ill people were getting water from the same Broad Street pump. Before Snow's work, the prevailing theory was that bad air sickened individuals instead of cholera-causing bacteria in the water.

Some athletes warm up with equipment from other sports

Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani uses a cricket bat; his teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto throws a javelin. Quarterback CJ Stroud shoots free throws. The reasons are partially physical (it's good to exercise different parts of your body) and partially mental (it's nice to take the pressure off with someone else's game).

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.