A fast explainer on every Winter Olympic sport

How the Winter Games used to look

Using archival footage from the first Winter Olympics in 1924 to the present day, this video explores 100 years of Winter Olympic competition. Watch different eras of ski jumping, figure skating, and bobsledding. See how athletes use the facilities year-round to train. And learn how swimming facilities used for the Summer Games are transformed into curling ice for the Winter Games.

The all-time list of every modern Olympic sport

Curious about which sports were played at the 1894 Olympics? Want to learn the rules of Breaking? This list gives a comprehensive overview of every Olympic sport ever played, sortable by game type and specific Olympic year. Click into a sport to see a brief overview, a list of rules, and an explainer video.

Ski mountaineering—or 'skimo'—debuted at the 2026 Winter Olympics

The sport involves skiing both uphill and downhill, with sections where the skis are strapped to the athlete's back. Skiers start at the bottom with a carpet-like layer on their skis to help ascend, remove them for the final climb, and then step back into normal skis for a slalom-like descent.

The top 10 most unbreakable Winter Olympics records

Some athletes and teams dominate a sport or an era. This video compiles the records least likely to be surpassed (and excludes those that are impossible due to rule changes). From the Dutch sweep of four podiums in speed skating to Eric Heiden's five individual gold medals at Lake Placed in 1980, watch this list of the Games' most enduring feats.

Winter Olympic sports highlight various laws and principles of physics

Figure skaters leverage the conservation of angular momentum during spins by tightening their bodies, and the skintight suits used in ski jumping help reduce drag. Centripetal force allows speedskaters to make tight turns, while friction on skis helps ski mountaineers climb slopes. No action can violate the conservation of energy.

An exploration of what makes Olympic curling so difficult and strange

The sport is often maligned for its oddity, but this impassioned video argues it's one of the more impressive (and good-natured) sports in the Olympics. Sometimes labeled "chess on ice," curling at the Olympics uses 44-pound, 60-million-year-old granite stones all extracted from the same Scottish island.

One halfpipe skier qualified for the Olympics via loopholes

Freestyle skier Elizabeth Swaney reached the 2018 Winter Olympics by completing safe, trick-free halfpipe runs and accumulating ranking points in low-participation events. The story, told humorously in this brief video, highlights how qualification systems can reward persistence and rule optimization over peak athletic performance.

100 storylines to watch at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics

NBC compiled 100 storylines to watch at the Milan Cortina Winter Games—spanning medal races, comeback bids, historic firsts, and geopolitical questions—to help fans track what could define the 2026 Olympics Winter Games.

The X Games is an annual extreme sports competition

The official X Games site offers event schedules, athlete profiles, competition results, and news for both summer and winter editions—along with videos and highlights from skateboarding, BMX, motocross, and other action sports.

The sports competition developed on the Alaskan tundra

Alaska's NYO Games invite high school athletes from the state's over 270 indigenous tribes to compete in numerous events based on survival tactics developed by their ancestors. This short documentary from Great Big Story walks through some of the more grueling events and speaks with the Games' coaches and young athletes about how the event preserves their shared culture.

Decoding sports-betting language

The world of sports gambling is filled with insider lingo: What's a "spread"? How about a "moneyline" or a "parlay"? This resource breaks down the jargon, helping you navigate the industry or, at least, giving you the keys to talk about it.

The complex science of snow removal

Plowing snow seems simple, but its actually a technically complex task and requires significant logistics, patience, and funding. New York City's 19,000 miles of roads require days to plow at a cost of $12M per inch of fallen snow, and roughly 17 million tons of salt were applied to road surfaces across the US in a recent year. Dive into the details of snow removal with an in-depth and funny video.

The steep and slippery Russian ice slides sparked centuries-long obsessions with thrill-seeking

When a French traveler happened upon the 17th and 18th century Russian pastime of sledding down man-made hills, he brought the idea home and inspired others to modernize the mechanics. Adoration for coasters spread around Europe and eventually reached the US, where the scream machine would undergo major advancements.

Explore a series of interdisciplinary explainers on climate science

From animations on the quantum mechanics of greenhouse gases to a photo essay on how scientists acquire climate data, this collection provides detailed explorations of how different branches of science have contributed to our understanding of climatology.

Watch how dozens of everyday human tasks are performed in space

This playlist features clips of astronauts aboard the International Space Station explaining how they cook, eat, sleep, and conduct research in microgravity. Other activities to pass the time, including watering plants and playing soccer, are also shown.

The economics of ski resorts

More than 480 ski resorts pack in nearly 65 million visitors each year in the US for historically high prices. Daily lift tickets may cost three figures at many locations. Amid industry consolidation and more stringent land use regulations, ski resorts are upping their prices—a factor that does not appear to be dampening the sport's popularity. Learn more here.

Breaking down the golf world's 4 'major' tournaments

The PGA Tour features over 30 tournaments per year, but none are as important as the four majors: the Masters, the PGA Championship, the US Open, and the Open Championship. This Golf Monthly article dives into each major and the courses it is played on, including the traditions each weekend brings to the Tour.

What's inside an Oreo?

If you look at the ingredient list on your Oreo packaging, you may discover that you don't recognize—or can't even pronounce—some of the listed ingredients, let alone know what they're used for! For instance: Did you know that soy lecithin helps makes oil and water mix? Or that cocoa processed with alkali becomes darker and less acidic? A food scientist breaks down what's inside an Oreo in this seven-minute video.

A Netflix docuseries turned the sport into a national obsession

Throughout much of its history, Formula 1 racing was a European sport that failed to ever find a major audience in the US. That changed with the “Drive to Survive,” the Netflix docuseries that premiered in 2019. This analysis from two communications professors unpacks how the series has successfully presented the sport for an American audience and cultivated a dedicated fanbase in the process.

Learn how stablecoins function in just 4 minutes

This video explains the basics of stablecoins in a beginner-friendly manner. It also dives a bit deeper into the larger stablecoin landscape, detailing, for instance, the many stablecoins backed by fiat currency other than the US dollar, like the euro, the Turkish lira, and the Singapore dollar.

A guide to the most popular yoga styles

Not every yoga class is the same. Many follow particular styles, which dictate the poses, format, and general intention behind the session. This guide breaks down 11 of the most popular yoga styles, including vinyasa (sometimes considered the most athletic) and Bikram (which takes place in a sauna-like environment).

What's the difference between an ocean, sea, and saltwater lake?

What are the seven seas, the five oceans, and why isn't the Dead Sea considered a sea? This overview provides definitions for each.

Every type of US national park, explained

Ever wonder what kinds of sites comprise the US National Park System? Using the recent re-designation of New River Gorge as a national park as a jumping-off point, this engaging video breaks down the 19 different designations within the National Park System. This includes parks, reserves, monuments, and scenic trails.

Every ‘SNL’ season, ranked

This list gives an overview of the strengths, weaknesses, and nuances of every one of the 50 seasons of "SNL." Helpfully, it also includes plenty of great sketches, acting as a compilation of the legendary show’s definitive moments.

Breaking down the different types of vaccine technologies

There are several different types of vaccines. Each type is designed to teach your immune system how to fight off germs—and the serious diseases they cause. This short overview breaks down the differences between the types.

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

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.

The deadliest aspect of volcanic eruptions is often not lava, but pyroclastic flows—avalanches of ash, gas, and rock that can move more than half the speed of sound.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

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.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

This poison ivy knowledge quiz—accompanied by photos of the plant's varied forms—may help you identify this common rash-inducing growth.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.