the magazine

How Dickens Fueled Spontaneous Combustion Truthers

8 Things That Are More Ancient Than They Appear

6 Barnyard Animals and How They Came to Be

National Geographic Channel/Mariella Furrer

Boone Smith, Professional Cat Handler

Popcorn has been around for a long time.

How 10 Classic Foods Made Their Way to America

Humans have had plenty of opportunities to discover new foods and transport them to new places over the past 12,000 years.

6 Brazen Acts of Culinary Thievery

How High-Pitch Tones Will Demolish Diets

How a 19th Century Volcanic Eruption Redefined the American Midwest

How a massive volcanic cloud from halfway across the world redefined the American Midwest

The Twilight Zone

For Rod Serling, TV was the perfect landscape to battle bigotry and corporate censorship. But was the nation ready for it?

Mikey Burton (Illustration). ALAMY (1-8, 10-13). CORBIS (9)

The Dishes 16 Writers Would Bring to a Literary Potluck

With recipes!

How Kurt Vonnegut’s Brother Settled History’s Most Dubious Chicken-Tornado Debate

Why Do We Carve Pumpkins?

When you think about it, scooping the innards out of a large squash, carving a scary face into it, and jamming a candle inside is a bit weird.

What Is Cloud Nine?

8 Brilliant Scientific Screw-ups

They say that patience is a virtue, but the following eight inventions prove that laziness, slovenliness, clumsiness and pure stupidity can be virtues, too.

"My in-laws are making the entire family go on a cruise. Can I beg off?"

Why Do Dead Whales Explode?

The Winners of the 2014 Platypus Awards

The Platties honor ideas that are interdisciplinary: a bit duck, a bit beaver, a bit otter. These are the new ideas and innovations that made us do a double take.

What Should I Do If I’m About to Get Struck by Lightning?

How Chinese is Chinese Food?

Secrets of the Most Elite Duck Painting Contest in America

The Federal Duck Stamp Contest is the most prestigious wildlife art contest you’ve never heard of.

Daniel Radcliffe on Space Travel, Russian Literature, and Napoleon

Harry Potter might have worn the glasses, but the truth is it's Daniel Radcliffe who's a bit of a nerd. A self-professed history buff, lover (and sometimes writer) of poetry, collector of books, and trivia enthusiast who makes quizzes for fun, Radcliffe i

How Rainbow Rowell Went From Newspaper Reporter to Superstar Novelist

A friend asked me, “What are you writing for yourself?” I realized I’d never written anything just for myself.

"Technology has made my life an open book."

The Secret that Helped an Untrained Runner Win an Ultramarathon

Cliff Young was not your typical marathon runner. A scrawny, 61-year-old Australian potato farmer who still lived with his mom, Young didn’t even own a pair of running shoes. So in 1983, when he signed up to compete in one of the world’s most grueling ult