Stuff To Blow Your Mind

From palm-reading fortune tellers to professionally-administered Myers Briggs test, everyone's a sucker for a an ego-stroking personality assessment. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Rober…

Imagine waking to a new, terrifying sensation: Your seemingly organic body is actually made of glass. While doctors and loved ones insist otherwise, you know in your heart that the slightest bump or …

In the previous episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explored the Christian tradition of the stigmata and its 13th century originator, Saint Francis of Assisi. But what are we to …

According to Christian tradition, a stigmatic prays to God so zealously, so faithfully that Christ's crucifixion wounds of manifest in the form of bleeding sores and gorey holes. In this episode of S…

A region of space barely a thousandth of a square degree on the sky contains a whopping 5,500 galaxies. Making the probability that there exists at least one planet that could support life pretty tan…

Imagine an entire 15th-century town overcome by a collective waking nightmare. The afflicted walk the streets with blackened limbs and seeping sores, all while psychotic hallucinations assault their …

Highly addictive substances like meth and heroin are formidable enemies for the recovering addict, but what does the future hold for their treatment? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Rober…

What is addiction? Why are some people predisposed to it and what happens in the brain when addiction takes hold? In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie break it all dow…

Stroll into the memory palace, an imagined location that just might expand your brain power. In this classic episode you'll learn all about the Method of Loci, a mnemonic device that allows mental at…

Explore Universe 25, a 101-square-inch tank designed as a utopia for mice and a mirror of human behavior. Every detail of the structure was crafted with comfort in mind: a never-ending supply of food…

Everyone loves a good whodunit, but why does the figure of the fictional detective tower so staggeringly over the modern world? He or she is a seeker of truth, a resolver of conflict, a subcultural l…

No longer limited by the constrains of their environment or biology, humans have remade their world. Why walk when you can soar? Why shout when you can whisper in the ear of a listener halfway round …

We often think of technology and religion as distinct and separate worlds, but what happens when they converge? Join Robert and Joe in this two-part episode as they examine religious world views shap…

We often think of technology and religion as distinct and separate worlds, but what happens when they converge? Join Robert and Joe in this two-part episode as they examine religious world views shap…

Five mass extinction events have ravaged the species of Earth, and we just might be living in the sixth. How can humanity survive the threat of cosmic calamity and its own tireless work to unbalance …

Trepanation is an ancient surgical procedure and we've found the millennia-aged skulls to prove it - each punctured and gouged to relieve inner-pressure and inner-madness. But is such cranial perfora…

Spider silk is nothing short of an engineering marvel. Weight for weight, it's stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar. But spiders are disagreeable creatures. Unlike the silkworms, they've prove…

At one time in human history superstitions were the guiding force in a person's life -- rules of thumb to live by. Find out which pieces of lore and superstition are actually spot-on and why in this …

What are we to make of coincidence? From the numerological cats cradles we weave around famous events to the curious ways human lives converge through time, coincidence seems to fly in the face of re…

Amid the regular cycle of sun and moon stalks a darkness -- a darkness that ancient humans perceived as cosmic abandonment, portent and demonic disruption. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,…