There are over 7,100 spoken and written languages today, but which is the oldest? What about the oldest extinct language? — Back before cell phones were standard, my friends and I used to write each other notes during class and exchange them in the hallways between bells. The boys thought it was great fun to intercept these hallway exchanges and read the note’s contents. To get around this annoyance and privacy…

You may lose your placenta at birth, but new research suggests it influences the rest of your life. — Parents are great, kids too, but I’ve never had the desire to become a parent by creating a child. Pregnancy is one experience I’m all too happy to skip, and perhaps because of that, I’ve never thought much about the placenta. I mean, I’m well aware of the incredible mind-bending…

Some people have six packs, while others have eight packs, and some even have four or two packs. — I came of age when defined six-pack abs were all the rage. This was during the dawn of the internet when billboards, magazines, and shows were full of skinny people showing off their “washboard” abs. If you don’t know, the slang term “washboard” refers to the popular 19th and 20th-century…

This makes over a thousand that we know of. — If you’ve read much of my writing, you’ve probably noticed that ancient human history is a favorite topic of mine. I just love learning about how people lived thousands and hundreds of thousands of years ago. We can’t know everything about them. …

It’s called Dogxim, part dog and part fox — Nature is a bit like a mad scientist with a passion for mixing and matching and trial and error. One look at evolution shows this perfectly. All species change over time. Combinations of traits, whether physical or incorporeal, are tweaked with every new generation. All with the same goal of…

And how scientists may become able to alter our perception of taste in the future — My brother is the pickiest eater I’ve ever known. Most of my family thought his palette would expand as he got older, but his preferences as an adult haven’t changed much. I can describe his diet in two words: bland and repetitive. I don’t judge him for it; people like…

Yet, fear can be exciting, so there must be some benefit to intentionally scaring ourselves. — From time to time, especially around Halloween, I enjoy indulging in some good ol’ self-induced fear. Bring on the scary movies and haunted houses. Let’s check out that corn maze with the Freddie Krugers, Jasons, and clowns lurking around every corner. …

Your postmortem Microbiome teams up with microbes in the soil to ‘recycle’ your body — You likely know that you, me, and everyone else have whole communities made of trillions of microorganisms within us. Scientists began intensely studying our microbiome only a couple of decades ago, but they’ve already learned quite a bit. We now know these communities are vital to our health and work…

A relatively new field of research — Nature is multidimensional. Beyond the individual categories we study — like physics, biology, or chemistry — there are also two levels of Nature that follow different sets of rules: the macro, or large scale level, and the tiny quantum one. …