Stuff To Blow Your Mind

Why are mystery packages so appealing? How do they improve our mental faculties and fuel our creativity? In this classic episode, Robert and Julie share tales of sealed envelopes, quantum thought exp…

Spices are essentially chemical weapons. They protect a plant from animals and microbes. yet humans long ago learned to hack these defenses and use them to flavor their food. Join Robert and Julie fo…

Was Scrooge's bitterness an actual mental disorder? And was his visitation by the ghosts of the past, present and future his subconscious mind's attempt at DIY psychotherapy? Or did he merely spike h…

Find out why the Grinch had the personality of a toadstool sandwich, with arsenic sauce. Robert and Julie explore the physiology of the Green One, not to mention his self-imposed social isolation, wh…

Why do deer and moose boast antlers? How does this material grow faster than any living vertebrate bones on Earth? You'd think we'd know the answers to these questions, but antlers remain far more my…

What if you could suck all the oxygen out of a room with a nifty piece of material? Soon you may be able to with a crystalline material that stores, binds and releases oxygen. Find out how, and join …

Whether you're a tattoo virgin or a sleeved-and-stamped ink enthusiast, there's no denying the cultural staying power of the tattoo. But where do we go from here? In this episode of Stuff to Blow You…

Tattoos allow us to make the outer body reflect the inner self. In a life of flux, they allow us to make names, symbols, gods and ideas a semi-permanent part of corporeal form. Then again, they also …

What does comfort mean to you? Thanksgiving dinner? A cup of tomato soup and a warm blanket? In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie examine the particulars of comfort, w…

You may not be the turkey on the chopping block, but holiday get-togethers with family can make you feel that way. Find out how to navigate the holiday in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

What if you were suffering from a debilitating bacterial infection and you found out that pumping someone else's fecal matter into your rectum could vanquish it. Find out about fecal microbiota trans…

Robert and Julie bow down to the will of Arnie the Mailbot and finally get to the mounting stack of listener mail. Tune in for discussions on past episodes, mind-bending concepts and the future of hu…

Sure Biosphere 2 was the laughingstock of the science community when its mission came to a close in 1993. (Blame the Star Trek-like uniforms.) But scientific findings spiraled out of it long after th…

Enter Biosphere 2 with Robert and Julie and tour a technological wonder of the early 90s -- a 7,200,000 cubic foot Earth-in-miniature. Find out about this "Eden on top of an aircraft" and what went a…

Have you ever heard someone say something you disagreed with and kept your opinions to yourself? You, my friend, just fell into the spiral of silence.

Did a masked madman terrorize a sleepy Illinois town with a paralyzing gas gun? Or did something equally bizarre transpire back in August of 1944? Lend an ear to this bone-chilling episode of Stuff t…

Why is scary music so scary? Why does an uncanny tune creep us out so? Is it all context and culture or is there something deeper at work? In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert a…

Gather round the cauldron with Robert and Julie as they ladle out hefty servings of magical thinking, medieval psychedelics, feminist history and the power of ritual. Just what was old-school witcher…

What about darkness is so unsettling? Find out about the most extreme instances of an absence of light and how it works on our bodies.

Glass, Cold, Sound, Clean, Time and Light. Just a random collection of items in the physical world, right? Not in the hands of science journalist Steven Johnson, who weaves a revelatory tale of techn…