Listen to audio clips from Hoover, a harbor seal named after its insatiable appetite, who learned to say English phrases such as 'hello there' and 'come over here.'

Here are some tips from Pew Research to help you distinguish between a good poll and an unreliable one.

'Tulip mania,' the 1630s Dutch craze where rare bulbs were briefly traded like luxury assets, may have been the first financial bubble—and it still shapes markets today.

Watch Dr. Laurence Peter explain his 'Peter Principle,' which states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence and explains why bosses aren't always good at their jobs.

Explore (and debunk) the world's most contagious misconceptions—from the 5-second rule to sugar rushes—on this interactive site. Click on each misconception for further evidence.

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

As part of the up to 15 pounds of seafood they consume daily, sea otters eat urchins that feed on kelp forests—sources of shelter and food to over 800 species—thereby making the marine mammal a keystone species.

There are up to 100 trillion microbes in the gut, and maintaining the relative balance in this ecosystem is important for our health.

Watch 4-plus decades of Pixar's opening logos.

Explore 3D models of some of the most dangerous viruses, allowing us to understand these and other pathogens in new ways.

Rapid intensification is the increase in a hurricane's sustained wind speed by at least 35 miles per hour within 24 hours, which can strengthen it by up to two categories.

Humans may have as many as 100,000 to 150,000 individual hairs on our scalps, growing at a rate of roughly 1 centimeter per month.

The tallest tsunami in recorded history was 524 meters (1,720 feet) high—taller than the Empire State Building—and occurred in Lituya Bay, Alaska, in 1958 after an earthquake dislodged a rockface into the water.

Pregnancy makes someone more attractive to the mosquito species that transmits malaria.

Cats have a mutation that prevents them from tasting sweetness, and goldfish rank among the world's supertasters.

Metamorphosis evolved over millions of years as species that hatched as smaller versions of adults started exhibiting genetic mutations that differentiated juvenile and adult bodies.

Computer scientists first started trying to optimize dating using computers in the 1950s.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital

Sea stars are invertebrates—they lack a backbone—and while most exhibit pentametric radial symmetry due to having five arms radiating from a central disk, some can possess more than 40.

Apeirophobia is the fear of everlasting life and may stem from the human brain's inability to conceptualize the concept of anything happening beyond what it can project out, such as the concept of an infinite life.

There are 'YouTube camps' that teach children how to create content for the video platform.

The final shots of the Civil War were fired in the Arctic over 2 months after the South's surrender.

Watch Bruce Springsteen's 1985 performance of Woody Guthrie's 'This Land Is Your Land,' which he calls 'the greatest song ever written about America.'

Experience 14 billion years of important moments in world history with this scrollable interactive timeline.

This interactive website features nearly 40,000 photos from Wikipedia for you to create visual mosaics with.

Watch an animated visualization of how the Large Hadron Collider works, including how particles are accelerated through a series of machines and how collision data is collected and distributed worldwide.

Streaming service Netflix's sound logo 'Tudum' was designed as a key sonic differentiator.

If the moon were less than one-twelfth its current distance from Earth, the planet's tidal forces would overcome the moon's internal gravity, tearing it apart and forming a ring of debris.

Plato's famous allegory of the cave is a metaphor exploring the value of truth over ignorance.

Watch footage from the moments the Titanic wreck was discovered by a joint US-French research team in 1985.

Watch a two-year time-lapse of a pinecone seed transforming into a pine tree.

Explore the 2025 Uber Lost & Found Index to find out the weirdest items that passengers left behind in Ubers last year, from ten live lobsters to a mannequin head with human hair.

The animatronic shark from 'Jaws' was a complex machine called 'Bruce.'

The average banana produces one positron—the antimatter counterpart to an electron—every 75 minutes as its trace amounts of radioactive potassium decay.

The world's largest waterfall is in the ocean and is more than three times the height of Angel Falls, the largest waterfall on land.

Washing dishware before putting it in a dishwasher may reduce the appliance's effectiveness because it dynamically adjusts wash time and temperature based on a sensor that detects dirtiness.

The collapse of gas bubbles in the joint synovial fluid causes 'cracking' knuckles.

You may be better at spotting a lie when listening to a speaker's voice inflections rather than watching for facial and body cues.

Joan Didion interviewed The Grateful Dead in 1967, before they became music icons.

Although the moon passes between the sun and Earth each month, its orbit is tilted by five degrees, preventing Earth from experiencing a solar eclipse each month.