Understanding the structure of the Chinese phonetic alphabet

Company names you may have been mispronouncing

Global company names often get Americanized or anglicized to the point where they’re unrecognizable. Here's a helpful explainer on how to say a dozen of them, from Adidas to Huawei.

A collection of ancient Mayan glyphs and pictographs

The Maya had a syllabic and pictorial writing style that featured many incredibly detailed glyphs. Click here to check out this ancient writing style (and maybe test out their related phonetic sounds).

Why English is so difficult to learn

As a language, English is a hodgepodge—a Germanic language heavily influenced by French and Latin. These combinatorial roots have left the language full of irregularities and inconsistencies, with complexities such as varying verb forms for...

China's 'One China' principle vs. the US 'One China' policy

The "One China" policy means different things to different people, but in the larger sense there are two primary interpretations: the Chinese and the American versions. Both refer to relations and contact between the mainland People's Republic of China and Taiwan/The Republic of China. This article covers the subtleties and differences between each country's approach to the "One China" principle.

Band names often fit into 'semantic spaces'

Linguist Chi Luu explains that we often understand and identify with band names, even if they're odd (or nonsensical) word combinations, based on their associations with other words. For example, bands that begin with "The" often nod to 1960s garage rock; heavy metal bands often rely on morbid or funereal words.

Translating ‘Harry Potter’ required creativity across 60+ languages

This Vox video explores how translators adapted JK Rowling’s wordplay, invented spells, and cultural references—reimagining names and magical terms while attempting to preserve humor, rhythm, and meaning for readers around the world.

Hóngbāo, or traditional red envelopes, can now be shared digitally

The red envelopes people exchange during the Lunar New Year have a long history and plenty of lore. Symbolizing the triumph of good over evil, hóngbāo may be given to anyone from a grandparent to a favorite celebrity. However, never give an amount with a "4" in it, as the pronunciation sounds like the Chinese word for death.

How do maps get their place names in multilingual areas?

In countries with multiple local dialects, cartographers struggle to standardize place names enough to create maps of the region. This process inevitably leads to conflict. Case in point, Switzerland, where in the late 1800s many dialects called the same places by different names, leading one alienated community to demand the return of its local names. Read about this and several other examples of contentious place-naming on maps here.

The Ancient Chinese harnessed solar power for heating and cooling 6,000 years ago

Neolithic Chinese homes faced south for winter sun warmth, while overhangs shielded them from high summer sun. These efforts also influenced urban planning, with cities aligning streets east-west for optimal solar exposure.

Always forget a face? The science of face-blindness

Faces and names don't always go together in some people's minds. While everyone forgets other peoples's names occasion, people diagnosed with prosopagnosia can't recognize faces, much less names. Even friends can family members can appear to be strangers. This article covers the diagnosis and issues attendant to prosopagnosia and its sufferers.

What you can learn from your last name

Surnames are a powerful source of information, giving insight into one’s ancestral history and cultural heritage. This article explores the specifics, giving examples of how one’s last name reveals one's ethnic background or even what your ancestors did for a living. Discover more about surnames around the world, and reflect on your own personal history.

Who’s who at the Vatican?

The Vatican is a massive organization whose processes and positions can appear impossibly dense to the common public. But, as this explainer from a University of Dayton professor makes clear, the Catholic Church's bureaucracy functions much like similarly-sized companies and universities. While the processes might still seem unnecessarily complex after reading, you'll at least be able to trace the org chart from the Pope on down.

The names of comets can change based on subsequent observations

The International Astronomical Union's coded naming system uses the first letter to indicate a comet's category, which can change over time. "D" represents comets that have been lost or broken up, while "A" applies to former comets that are now asteroids or dwarf planets.

Making sense of Mexico City's traffic honks and horns

A car's horn makes just one sound, but somehow, drivers across the world manage to use the monotone for a surprising variety of purposes. This audio-inflected essay takes readers into the nuanced horns of Mexico City's famously congested traffic, providing a "claxonomy" (taxonomy + claxones, or horns) of its drivers' honks.

Claude Shannon, for whom Anthropic's AI tools are named, proved the existence of an unbreakable cipher

In the one-time pad approach, the encryption key is randomly generated and of equal length to the plaintext. This randomness ensures that every possible plaintext is equally likely—RBBHN can mean HELLO, SOLVE, CODES, and so on, using a different key—while matching the message and key lengths prevents the appearance of patterns that can be exploited.

How to identify baseball pitches

You might be familiar with terms like "fastball," "curve ball," and "change up," but identifying the specific elements of each pitch type—not to mention what constitutes the more specific types like "splitter" and "cutter"—can leave even passionate fans stumped. This helpful guide to the most used pitches in the big leagues allows you to become a pro in just a few minutes.

How the Domain Name System works and how it provides a directory for the internet

DNS translates domain names, such as join1440.com, into numerical IP addresses, such as 192.0.2.1, which computer systems use to determine what content a user is looking for across the World Wide Web, making navigation easier for the vast majority of users. Web outages can occur if the DNS servers making these translations become inaccessible.

Who was China's last emperor?

The last emperor of China's last dynasty came into power as a toddler. This article details the rise and abdication of Emperor Aisin Gioro Puyi. Puyi, also known as Henry Puyi, was forced to abdicate his throne in 1912 following the Wuchang...

Here's why pennies don't make sense

Did you know that pennies cost roughly 3 cents to produce? That fact doesn't seem to make sense, being that pennies are only worth 1 cent each. This podcast episode explains why we still have pennies, plus where they came from, why Americans don't use pennies, and how we got here. Click here to listen.

Visualize how transformer architecture generates an LLM's outputs

Transformer architecture is the neural network framework upon which large language models predict and generate text based on user inputs. This interactive lets you explore the "thinking" a GPT does to generate responses based on your input.

A dispute with his label led to Prince changing his name to a symbol

Prince wrote and recorded music at a fever pitch. That kind of prolific output, however, concerned his label, Warner Bros., which believed that too many releases might oversaturate the market. That eventually led to tensions between Prince and the label, with Prince asking for his master recordings, which would give him full control over how his music would be used. Warner Bros. declined, and Prince changed his name to the unpronounceable symbol that he'd used on album covers in the past, believing it would void his record contract. It didn't, but Warner Bros. eventually released him, though he began going by Prince in 2000 and resigned with Warner Bros. in 2014.

Understanding the highly sensitive person

This article explores the world of highly sensitive people (HSP), detailing their traits and the discourse surrounding them. Read an honest probe into the personality trait that considers issues people with the HSP label have while also surfacing the shame that sensitive people may feel in society.

Mark Zuckerberg has named all three of his daughters after Roman emperors

Zuckerberg studied Latin in high school and became interested in ancient Rome. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, went to Rome on their honeymoon. His daughters—August, Maxima, and Aurelia—are all named after Roman emperors.

Different types of ice link water molecules together in unique shapes

The ice used to cool drinks—Iₕ—is composed of H₂O molecules arranged in hexagonal structures. This structure forms as ice expands during freezing, providing additional space between molecules, lowering the overall density, and allowing it to float in water. Under sufficient pressure, this spacing can collapse in many ways, creating new forms of ice.

We hear because soundwaves are converted into electrochemical signals in our ears

This science teacher video systematically walks through the biology of the outer, middle, and inner ear. The explanation starts with the auricle, an external part that funnels sound through the auditory canal, and the tympanic membrane (the ear drum), which vibrates when sounds hit it. Beyond that, as the video details, is the eustachian tube, which is connected to the back of our throats and allows air to pass in and out to equalize ear pressure.

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.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

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.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

Ebola is a filovirus, meaning it resembles a thread under a microscope, though it sometimes twists and can resemble a bowl of spaghetti.

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.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

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

Pure water does not conduct electricity because this flow of energy requires the movement of charged particles, and water is a neutral molecule.

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.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

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

Poison ivy's characteristic rash is caused by an allergic response to an oily compound in the plant called urushiol.

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

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

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

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