If I were to ask you to picture “radioactive waste,” the image that would likely spring to mind is that of a rusty metal barrel leaking glowing, neon-green sludge. It is an image which has appeared in countless movies and TV shows, yet, as we saw in our previous video How Does Nuclear Waste Disposal Work, real nuclear waste looks […]

Mithridates VI, also known as Mithridates the Great, was the ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus, a region of northern Anatolia in what is now modern-day Turkey, from 120 to 63 BC. In 120 BC Mithridates’ father, Mithridates V, was assassinated by poison, allegedly as part of a conspiracy lead by his wife, Queen Laodice VI. Throughout his life, the […]

June 26, 1995 is a day the residents of Golf Manor, Michigan will never forget. On that day, hazmat-suited agents of the Environmental Protection Agency descended upon the quiet suburb and began systematically dismantling the garden potting shed of one Patty Hahn. When interviewed about the incident, most residents believed there had been some kind of chemical spill. But the […]

Looking back at the long and storied history of literature, film, and other narrative art forms, one trend becomes abundantly clear: writers love mental illness. From depression to bipolar disorder to schizophrenia, psychiatric disorders have been used by artists for hundreds of years to heighten drama, make heroes more heroic, villains more villainous, and allow actors to flex their acting […]

Jean D. asks: Why do we need oxygen to live? Take a deep breath. Now repeat. Do this about 16 times per minute and you usually get all the oxygen your body needs. Every wonder why you need oxygen to survive in the first place? All life as we know it occurs because of how atoms and molecules interact with […]

Ashley K asks: How dangerous are rubber bullets? Utilised the world over, rubber bullets and stun guns are controversial additions to the arsenals of police forces and militaries due to their tendency to do the exact opposite of what they’re designed to do, rather than be non-lethal, occasionally killing the people they are leveled at. But how dangerous are they […]

At the end of James Cameron’s 1989 underwater thriller The Abyss, oil rig diver Bud Brigman, played by Ed Harris, dons an experimental diving suit in which instead of air he breathes a special oxygenated liquid. This allows him to avoid the lethal effects of extreme water pressure and descend to the bottom of a deep ocean trench to defuse […]

At 10AM on August 23, 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson, a convict on leave from prison, walked into the Kreditbanken Norrmalmstorg bank in Stockholm, Sweden. Dressed in a wig with his face painted black, as he entered the bank lobby he pulled a submachine gun from under his coat, fired into the air, and yelled out: “The party has just begun!” Thus […]

In an oversimplified nutshell, cancer is, to quote cancer.gov, a disease “in which abnormal cells divide without control and can invade nearby tissues.”  Given its propensity to spread and divide in an uncontrolled manner throughout a person’s body, it brings up the question of whether it’s possible for cancer cells to make their way from one living thing to another […]