The Naked Mole Rat

Mole Rats and War

This story is about a creature with a head like a furry shovel, and a body about the size of a sneaker. By rodent standards, the sandy blind mole rat is huge. But it’s sp

Borrowed vision

People who suffer from retinitis pigmentosa lose their vision as the light-sensitive cells in their eyes start to break down. But what if they could be implanted with lig

Your Brain on Holidays

Caution! The holiday season is upon us. Terrible holiday jingles blast out of every speaker and get stuck in your head, there’s so much to do before the end of the year,

Russian Flu aka American Fever

In the late 19th century, a deadly illness spread across Asia and into Europe, infecting millions, and prompting what may have been the world’s first “infodemic” — with n

To Teach and Die for Ukraine: The Story of Yulia Zdanovska

Ukraine is a country that produces a lot of talented math and programming students, and Yuliya Zdanovska was among the most promising. But it was the choices she made abo

The Neanderthals’ Last Gift

The world is quickly running out of effective antibiotics to treat fast-evolving bacteria. Even routine dental work or knee replacements could soon result in many more de

The Friendliest and the Most Ruthless Species on the Planet

There are few noises as guaranteed to chill the blood as that of a group of chimpanzees attacking another group of chimps. Wild chimps are notoriously savage. But they ar

How Feminism Helps to Understand Elephants

Humans have been fascinated by elephants since forever. But until a few decades ago, we didn’t know the most basic things about them, like how they choose a mate, or how

What is menstruation for?

Strangely enough, we don’t quite know. Only a few mammals regularly shed their entire uterine lining.  According to one hypothesis, menstruation evolved as a defence aga

The Leakey Family and the Human Family

For decades, scientists believed that humans gradually evolved — more or less in a straight line — from knuckle-walking apes to upright-walking, sneaker-wearing humans. B

The Naked Mole Rat: Trailer

The Naked Mole Rat is where scientist-turned-storyteller Ilya Kolmanovsky explores what bizarre creatures and real scientists can teach us about ourselves. Once he studie