Past Articles by Robert Krulwich
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The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name, Of A Beetle For A Beer Bottle   What's that beetle doing to that beer bottle? The beetle dropped down from the sky, grabbed the bottle's bottom, keeps hugging and hugging it, even when being attacked by ants, and it won't — refuses to — let go. It can't be the beer it's after. The beer is at the other end. What's going on? |
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Isn't That King David? Nope, It's Just Dave Take something old, familiar and classical, add denim, polyester and glasses, and watch what happens! Two French artists create a new form of time travel. |
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Why Men Die Younger Than Women: The 'Guys Are Fragile' Thesis  Death, it appears, prefers gentlemen to ladies. Women don't just outlive men, they consistently outlive men at every stage of life. More boys die in utero, in infancy, in adolescence, in middle age, at every stage. That's why nature makes more of them. But why? What's so fragile about guys? |
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Why Men Die Younger Than Women: The 'Guys Are Fragile' Thesis Death, it appears, prefers gentlemen to ladies. Women don't just outlive men, they consistently outlive men at every stage of life. More boys die in utero, in infancy, in adolescence, in middle age, at every stage. That's why nature makes more of them. But why? What's so fragile about guys? |
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Why Men Die Younger Than Women: The 'Guys Are Fragile' Thesis Death, it appears, prefers gentlemen to ladies. Women don't just outlive men, they consistently outlive men at every stage of life. More boys die in utero, in infancy, in adolescence, in middle age, at every stage. That's why nature makes more of them. But why? What's so fragile about guys? |
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India has just banned dolphin entertainment parks. They are "morally unacceptable," says a government ministry. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, the U.S. Navy announced that 24 dolphins trained to sniff for underwater mines will be replaced by robots. We are definitely confused about dolphins. |
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The Most Dangerous Traffic Circle In The World? Moving north: two vans. Moving east: three taxis, a peddle cab and one lady walking. Moving west: six motorcyles, another taxi, a truck and a van. Moving south: a bicyclist, two cabs and a truck. All of them meet and there are no rules. Who lives? Who dies? |
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The Most Dangerous Traffic Circle In The World? Moving north: two vans. Moving east: three taxis, a peddle cab and one lady walking. Moving west: six motorcyles, another taxi, a truck and a van. Moving south: a bicyclist, two cabs and a truck. All of them meet and there are no rules. Who lives? Who dies? |
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The Most Dangerous Traffic Circle In The World? Moving north: two vans. Moving east: three taxis, a peddle cab and one lady walking. Moving west: six motorcyles, another taxi, a truck and a van. Moving south: a bicyclist, two cabs and a truck. All of them meet and there are no rules. Who lives? Who dies? |
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The Most Dangerous Traffic Circle In The World? Moving north: two vans. Moving east: three taxis, a peddle cab and one lady walking. Moving west: six motorcyles, another taxi, a truck and a van. Moving south: a bicyclist, two cabs and a truck. All of them meet and there are no rules. Who lives? Who dies? |
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The Most Dangerous Traffic Circle In The World? Moving north: two vans. Moving east: three taxis, a peddle cab and one lady walking. Moving west: six motorcyles, another taxi, a truck and a van. Moving south: a bicyclist, two cabs and a truck. All of them meet and there are no rules. Who lives? Who dies? |
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The Most Dangerous Traffic Circle In The World? Moving north: two vans. Moving east: three taxis, a peddle cab and one lady walking. Moving west: six motorcyles, another taxi, a truck and a van. Moving south: a bicyclist, two cabs and a truck. All of them meet and there are no rules. Who lives? Who dies? |
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The Most Dangerous Traffic Circle In The World? Moving north: two vans. Moving east: three taxis, a peddle cab and one lady walking. Moving west: six motorcyles, another taxi, a truck and a van. Moving south: a bicyclist, two cabs and a truck. All of them meet and there are no rules. Who lives? Who dies? |
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Watts For Lunch? (Or Why Humans Are Like Light Bulbs) Take a bunch of broccoli, or make it a Slurpee, burger, pizza and fries, swallow, and ask yourself, "How much energy did I just consume?" Enough to light a flashlight? Run an electric toothbrush? If I were a lunch-eating light bulb, how long would I glow? Here's the answer. |
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Watts For Lunch? (Or Why Humans Are Like Light Bulbs) Take a bunch of broccoli, or make it a Slurpee, burger, pizza and fries, swallow, and ask yourself, "How much energy did I just consume?" Enough to light a flashlight? Run an electric toothbrush? If I were a lunch-eating light bulb, how long would I glow? Here's the answer. |
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Watts For Lunch? (Or Why Humans Are Like Light Bulbs) Take a bunch of broccoli, or make it a Slurpee, burger, pizza and fries, swallow, and ask yourself, "How much energy did I just consume?" Enough to light a flashlight? Run an electric toothbrush? If I were a lunch-eating light bulb, how long would I glow? Here's the answer. |
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Watts For Lunch? (Or Why Humans Are Like Light Bulbs) Take a bunch of broccoli, or make it a Slurpee, burger, pizza and fries, swallow, and ask yourself, "How much energy did I just consume?" Enough to light a flashlight? Run an electric toothbrush? If I were a lunch-eating light bulb, how long would I glow? Here's the answer. |
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Watts For Lunch? (Or Why Humans Are Like Light Bulbs) Take a bunch of broccoli, or make it a Slurpee, burger, pizza and fries, swallow, and ask yourself, "How much energy did I just consume?" Enough to light a flashlight? Run an electric toothbrush? If I were a lunch-eating light bulb, how long would I glow? Here's the answer. |
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Watts For Lunch? (Or Why Humans Are Like Light Bulbs) Take a bunch of broccoli, or make it a Slurpee, burger, pizza and fries, swallow, and ask yourself, "How much energy did I just consume?" Enough to light a flashlight? Run an electric toothbrush? If I were a lunch-eating light bulb, how long would I glow? Here's the answer. |
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Watts For Lunch? (Or Why Humans Are Like Light Bulbs) Take a bunch of broccoli, or make it a Slurpee, burger, pizza and fries, swallow, and ask yourself, "How much energy did I just consume?" Enough to light a flashlight? Run an electric toothbrush? If I were a lunch-eating light bulb, how long would I glow? Here's the answer. |
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The Boomerang Graffito (Or Bad, Bad, Luther B!) Be really careful when you carve your name onto an ancient Egyptian temple. Not because it's wrong (which it is), but because sometimes the temple comes back to haunt you. The true story of Luther Bradish, an American spy who didn't keep his secret. |
 What can you do with beach sand? Build a sand castle. Dig a canal. Make a snake. What can you do with MIT's "smart" sand? One day, you will turn it into a hammer, fork, chair, anything you want. And when you're done? Poof! It's sand again. |
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What can you do with beach sand? Build a sand castle. Dig a canal. Make a snake. What can you do with MIT's "smart" sand? One day, you will turn it into a hammer, fork, chair, anything you want. And when you're done? Poof! It's sand again. |
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What Did Rachel Carson Hear? The Mystery Of The 'Fairy Bell Ringer' It's not easy making friends with wild animals, especially when the animal is impossibly small, very shy, hiding under a pile of leaves. But when the writer Rachel Carson heard a "ting! ting! ting!" coming from her backyard — like someone ringing a teeny bell — she had to meet this creature, the one she called "the Fairy Bell Ringer." |
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Not Winging It, But Ringing It  Dolphins make their own toys. They do this by producing perfect little air rings in the water, which they then shove, bite, sculpt and swallow. And they aren't the only ones. Today we celebrate (you should pardon the expression) toroidal vortices. |
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It has no center. No "off" switch. No brain. The Internet was designed to be virtually indestructible. But what if, one day, somehow, it stops? We can't have it anymore. What would that be like? Here's a short video about a French couple. She's ready. He's not. |
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Who's The Best Drinker? Dogs? Cats? Or Pigeons?  You, you with your lips, throat, cheek muscles and hands, you, with no effort can drink a glass of water. But what about your cat? Your dog? They don't have the advantages you do. Nor do pigeons. And yet, through ways both brilliant and mysterious, they too can drink. Here are their secrets. |
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How Benjamin Franklin Invented A Weight Loss Program, Using Balloons  "Someone asked me," Benjamin Franklin once said, "what's the use of a balloon?" They don't do much. They just float. What are they good for? And Franklin replied, "What's the use of a new-born baby?" They just sit there. They don't do much. You have to imagine possibilities. This is Franklin, in the 1780s, thinking about balloons. |
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The Little Metronome That Wouldn't  Take a metronome. Then take another. Then another. Set them ticking at different times. Look. Lift. (That's the key part.) Watch. Then Laugh. Because you will be dumbfounded. |
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David Foster Wallace Tells Us About Freedom  What do you get when you get a college diploma? To hear David Foster Wallace tell it, you get a muscle that will help you forever after — in shopping lines, overcrowded parking lots, in traffic jams. This muscle, he says, frees you when the world gets painfully dull. |
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What Did I Do Last Summer? Oh, I Discovered How To Make Babies Without Sex. And You? Sex is nice, but can animals make babies without it? One summer, two little boys, their tutor and the tutor's two friends did an experiment to explore this question. What they discovered, back in 1740, shocked the world. |
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What Is It About Bees And Hexagons? Bees could build flat honeycombs from just three shapes: squares, triangles or hexagons. But for some reason, bees choose hexagons. Always "perfect" hexagons. Why? |
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Astronomy's Little Secret: The Hidden Art Of 'Moonsweeping' If you live in North America, this week we had a crescent moon — a skinny sliver of light shaped like a toenail in the sky. Why that shape? Astronomers say it's a "phase." Most of the moon is in shadow. Pixar knows better. Meet the Moon Sweepers. A Grandpa, a dad and a boy. |
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What would it be like to be a string that made music? Not anything simple, like a guitar string or a cello string, but a magical string, a sine curve that's taut then loose, that doubles then doubles again, that sheds then dissolves into showers of notes. |
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Moths That Drive Cars (Really)  Welcome to the New World in which, no kidding, insects run robots. In this case, 14 moths take 14 drives in a wheeled vehicle and steer right to the target. Seeing is believing. |
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Wildlife That Isn't Wild And Isn't Alive  They're out of the lab now, flying through the air, crawling in the grass, buzzing near you, swimming in the ocean. They're robots. They're among us. We don't notice yet. But we will. |
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Our Very Normal Solar System Isn't Normal Anymore Turns out our solar system — with its medium sized sun, its four small rocky planets, its four big gassy ones farther out — isn't like the others. We are unusual. Very unusual. Says one prominent astronomer, we are "a bit of a freak." |
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The Boomerang Rocket Ship: Shoot It Up, Back It Comes  SpaceX calls it the "Grasshopper" — it's a rocket that doesn't fall back to Earth haphazardly after launch. It carefully returns itself to the launchpad standing up, right where it started. |
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The Boomerang Rocket Ship: Shoot It Up, Back It Comes SpaceX calls it the "Grasshopper" — it's a rocket that doesn't fall back to Earth haphazardly after launch. It carefully returns itself to the launchpad standing up, right where it started. |
 Ever want to look back in time? With "time merge media," you can watch athletes dribble, swing and dance, and even throw five pitches at once. |
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Mysterious Silly Putty Devours Innocent Magnets  If you liked the movie The Blob, then feast your eyes on this: It's tricked-out Silly Putty in the form of a gelatinous monster that eats magnets for lunch. |
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A Wet Towel In Space Is Not Like A Wet Towel On Earth  On Earth, a really wet wash cloth, squeezed tight, will drip. Watch what happens in space. |
 All animals are wired for pleasures that will lead them to reproduce, hunt for food and protect their young. The problem is, in some animals, like in some humans, the natural urge for good times gets untamed. |
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Trees On Top Of Skyscrapers? Yes! Yes, Say I. No! No, Says Tim Two residential towers, dense with trees, will have their official opening later this year in downtown Milan. Blogger and critic Tim De Chant thinks it's high-time we stop planting trees on skyscrapers. Krulwich disagrees. |
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A 'Whom Do You Hang With?' Map Of America Put away that old Rand McNally map — it's time for a new way to see what America really looks like. |
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A 'Whom Do You Hang With?' Map of America Put away that old Rand McNally map — it's time for a new way to see what America really looks like. |
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Who Stands Where In A Crowded Elevator And Why?  When a bunch of people get into an elevator, do they segregate in any predictable way? Do tall ones stand in the back? Do men stand in different places than women? Who looks where? |
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Is This Science Journalism? Nah. Then What Is It? The images are sharp and concentrated. But this isn't art, it's more than advertising, and it's not quite education. It's an invitation. |
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Is This Science Journalism? Nah. Then What Is It? The images are sharp and concentrated. But this isn't art, it's more than advertising, and it's not quite education. It's an invitation. |
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Is This Science Journalism? Nah. Then What Is It? The images are sharp and concentrated. But this isn't art, it's more than advertising, and it's not quite education. It's an invitation. |
