Brain Candy

Young people have always used language in new and different ways, and it has pretty much always driven older people crazy.

Books
Arts

Why It's Literally Not Wrong To Say 'Literally'

3:14pm January 10, 2017

by NPR Staff

Young people have always used language in new ways, and it has always driven older people crazy. But the linguist John McWhorter says all the LOLs are part of an inevitable evolution of language.

A child takes a facial recognition test in which he is asked to match the face on the top to one of the faces on the bottom.

Brain Area That Recognizes Faces Gets Busier And Better In Young Adults

6:38pm January 05, 2017

by Jon Hamilton

From birth through age 30 or so, our ability to recognize faces keeps improving, research shows. At first, kids discern adult faces better than other kids' mugs. Not so after adolescence.

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Researchers from the Max Planck Institute excavate the East Gallery of Denisova Cave in Siberia in August 2010. With ancient bone fragments so hard to come by, being able to successfully filter dirt for the DNA of extinct human ancestors can open new door

Dust To Dust: Scientists Find DNA Of Human Ancestors In Cave Floor Dirt

4:39pm January 04, 2017

by Joe Palca

Anthropologists in Germany say they may not need old bones to recover ancient DNA. They just analyze dust from the floor of caves where Neanderthals and other now-extinct human relatives once resided.

An artist's rendering of a black hole that's 2 billion times more massive than our sun. Streams of particles ejected from black holes like this one are thought to be the brightest objects in the universe.

Some Bizarre Black Holes Put On Light Shows

4:39pm January 04, 2017

by Rae Ellen Bichell

Black holes aren't all doom and gloom. Some of these incredibly dense matter-suckers fling powerful jets of light and charged particles — the space version of a fireworks show.

Science

As A Rough Year Ends, We Turn To The Cosmos For Some Perspective

6:00am December 30, 2016

by Nell Greenfieldboyce

As 2016 winds down, we take a moment to contemplate the billions of years that led to 2017 and the billions more yet to come.

Arts

A Brief History Of Food Emoji: Why You Won't Find Hummus On Your Phone

7:00am December 28, 2016

by Laura Oliver

There are burgers and sushi, and even the salacious eggplant, but where are the dumplings and salad? Creating a more culturally diverse menu of food emoji is harder than you think.

As more people turn to laser displays for holiday house decorations, aviation authorities warn not to shine them into the sky.

National

For Christmas Thrills Without The Spills, More Decorators Turn To Lasers

7:08am December 26, 2016

by Stephan Bisaha

It's a new way to deck the house for the holidays. Laser lights project decorations without a need of a ladder, but Christmas light purists say they don't compare to the old-fashioned bulbs.

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YouTuber Cory Williams reacts to the strange sound made by his local frozen lake.

Why Does A Frozen Lake Sound Like A Star Wars Blaster?

11:07am December 21, 2016

by Adam Cole

Visitors to icy lakes are sometimes treated to the sounds of a space age battle. Why? NPR's Skunk Bear takes on the cold case in their latest video.

Geologists studied these scraps of diamond leftover from the shaping of big jewels.

Big Diamonds Bring Scientists A Message From Superdeep Earth

4:59pm December 18, 2016

by Rae Ellen Bichell

When scientists got their hands on a collection of the world's biggest gem diamonds, they found something surprising inside — clues about what sits hundreds of miles beneath our feet.

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NPR Staff: We Pry Into The 'Why' Behind Our Own Anxiety Dreams

8:29am December 18, 2016

We asked our coworkers to tell us their deepest, darkest, most stressful dreams. And boy did they deliver. Then we asked Robert Stickgold, a neuroscientist who studies dreams, what it all means.