Sports and athleticism sometimes have a tenuous relationship. Sure, there are the freak athletes who dominate their sport: Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders, and Jim Thorpe come to mind, each two-sport stars. But then there are the players who aren’t physical specimens that rise to the top of their profession. Thirty-seven place kickers stand atop the ...

You are what you eat. Which for some of us, means we are lasso-toting, cowboy-hat-wearing cream-filled golden sponge cakes. Yee-haw. For others, their body is a temple — everything that goes in must be pure organic brain or muscle fuel grown with the greatest of eco-responsibility in mind. For most, we’re somewhere in between. We’d like our ...

Where would the human race be without software? The concept was first explored in the 19th century for the Analytical Engine, then later theorized more formally by Alan Turing in the 1930s. The first piece of software was executed in 1948 on the University of Manchester’s “Manchester Baby” computer. The term “software” itself wasn’t coined until ...

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. To be sure, this is a powerful, poignant refrain that is easy to fathom when you imagine said chain is only six, even 12 links long. But what if your chain consists of 50 links? Thousands of links? Imagine you had a chain with enough links to span several continents. Now finding the weakest link ...

In the 1960s, George Jetson showed us the sexy side of the future. We were promised flying cars that could fold into briefcases and robotic maids (top that, Back to the Future 2!). The joke of the whole thing — the same basic joke they used about the primitive world in The Flintstones — is that all that cool future tech was blasé to George and ...

Aristotle is credited as the first to say, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” In other words, if you have the ingredients you’d use to bake a pie in a pile, it isn’t as meaningful as having the baked pie itself. The value of the final product isn’t just about gathering the raw materials; knowing how to properly mix the ingredients ...

Humans have been imagining the future in a variety of ways for quite some time now. We’ve dreamed everything up, from flying cars to funky clothes to space travel. Another trope is artificial intelligence (AI). For centuries, we’ve imagined coexisting with independently functional machines, automatons, and robots. Published more than 130 years ...

Remember your earliest ambitions? For some it was to be the starting shortstop for the New York Yankees. For others, it was to be the first astronaut to set foot on Mars. Perhaps you wanted to be the prima ballerina for the American Ballet Theater. Unfortunately for most of us, life happens, it gets messy, and our ambitions recede as circumstances ...

Every great film series includes a few key elements. Usually, they’re grounded in a great first act: the original movie that got the audience hook, line, and sinker — think Star Wars: A New Hope, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, The Godfather. We fall in love with compelling characters at first sight. Soon, a sequel is born to resume ...

We live in an age of immense and often overwhelming information sharing. The internet, social media, and a cacophony of smart devices have democratized the flow of information so that everything from TikTok dances to lifehacks to the fringiest of conspiracy theories find a wide, enthusiastic audience. No matter your informational vice, it’s ...