Unsung Science

Grand Finale: A Pop Song is Born

In the days of old, creating a song required a composer, a lyricist, an arranger, a recording engineer, a band or orchestra. Today, in the pop world, a single person ofte

Electric Planes Take Off

Planes contribute 9% of the world’s carbon pollution, but electrifying them has always seemed impossible; batteries have never been powerful or light enough to carry them

Genetics, Votes, and Colin Firth

The U.S. has fallen into polarized, partisan, political bickering. Online, liberals and conservatives seem to despise each other. But nobody seems to stop to ask: How did

How Does Google Maps Do It?

Every month, over a billion people open their phones and fire up Google Maps. Its original function—offering driving directions, with real-time traffic tracking—was disru

How Cool Tech is Saving the Whales

For the most part, we don’t hunt whales anymore, but we’re still killing them—mostly by driving ships into them. One species, the North Atlantic right whale, is now extin

How the Webb Telescope Sees Back in Time

On Christmas Day, 2021, NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit a million miles from Earth—a huge and insanely ambitious machine, billions of dollars over

Inside Elon Musk's Brain

People use all kinds of words to describe Elon Musk, from “genius” to “megalomaniac,” from “visionary” to “erratic”—but now there’s less reason to call him “enigmatic,” t

Screaming Babies, Noise Canceling, and You

In April 1978, MIT professor Amar Bose was flying home to Boston from Switzerland. But when he tried to listen to music through the airline’s headphones, he couldn’t hear

The Pulse-Pounding Origin Story of USB-C

There’s a new kind of jack in town—well, new as of 2014—called USB-C. This single, tiny connector can carry power, video, audio, and data between electronic gadgets—simul

CeCe Moore Cracks Cold Cases with Genealogy

Genealogy has been around a while. So has DNA evidence. But what if you combined the two? What if you could use DNA from a crime scene, compare the unknown killer’s genet

What if Placebos ARE the Medicine?

We’ve known about the placebo effects for over 200 years. That’s where doctors give you a pill containing no actual medicine, but you still get better. Recent studies hav

The Man Who Invented QR Codes

In 1994, Masahiro Hara got tired of having to scan six or seven barcodes on every box of Toyota car-parts that zoomed past him on the assembly line. He wondered why the s

Inside the Lost Titanic Sub: An Update

The lost OceanGate submersible has captured the world’s attention. In the summer of 2022, “CBS News Sunday Morning” correspondent and "Unsung Science" host David Pogue wa

How Doug Lindsay Invented His Own Surgery

In his senior year of college, a monstrous ailment fell upon Doug Lindsay. His skin felt flayed. His heart raced. The room spun. He was so weak, he couldn’t sit up in bed

The Power of an Empty Metal Box

We’ve been shipping stuff across oceans for centuries. But until 1956, we loaded our ships in the dumbest way possible: one at a time. Then Malcolm McClean came along. He

From Klingon to Dothraki: Constructed Languages for Hollywood

The first time you heard “Star Trek” characters speak Klingon, or the “Game of Thrones” characters speaking Dothraki and High Valyrian, you might have assumed that the ac

The Million-Dollar Toothpaste Tube

We’re overrun with plastic. It’s in our oceans, our water, our food. Something has to be done—preferably by corporations, which churn out millions of tons of plastic ever

The Rewilded Farm

After 17 years of trying to prop up their failing farm outside of London, Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree were stressed, exhausted, and $1.7 million in debt. They decid

NASA Redirects an Asteroid

65 million years ago an asteroid struck the earth. In the ensuing planetary darkness, the dinosaurs went extinct. But the dinosaurs didn’t have a space program! Now we ca

How They Found the Shipwreck Endurance

In 1915, British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s historic expedition to Antarctica stalled when floating ice trapped, crushed, and finally sank his ship, Endurance. Shac