Cool Stuff Daily
Cool Stuff Daily covers the most interesting and coolest stories in the world of science, progress, life-hacks, memes, exciting art, and hope. This is the antidote to depressing headlines. Smart stuff in podcast form. Cool news, as a service.
Hosted by Reggie Risseeuw and Marques Pfaff.
1001
Mon. 02/08 - A Live Animated Stage Production.....
How the Royal Shakespeare Company is using live motion capture to animate a virtual show in real time. A case study of a California town who has this whole pandemic response thing down. A 3D printed house has hit the market on Long Island. And...
17 min
1002
Fri. 02/05 - This Is Your Brain On Juggling
How learning to juggle is the perfect example of what happens to your brain when you learn a new skill. A new literary version of Street Fighter II. Why Burger King France is handing out free potatoes. And, following on yesterday’s story about the...
15 min
1003
Wed. 02/04 - An Unborn Baby's Debut Album
We were bracing for a flu and COVID double whammy of a winter, but it never came. What happened? An intriguing new community initiative taking off in Europe to help prevent the mounting problem of electronic waste. And have you heard of...
17 min
1004
Wed. 02/03 - Are We Too Cynical for Viral Stunt...
What causes ice ages? The science behind your frying pan. You know, the one that’s supposed to be non-stick but isn’t. Scientists explain why. Other scientists have engineered spinach to send emails. Sort of. And did you hear about the Hollyboob...
17 min
1005
Tue. 02/02 - How Frozen Helped Solve the Dyatlo...
How a 1970s seat belt crash test and the animated movie Frozen helped potentially solve the 62-year-old Dyatlov Pass mystery. A fascinating correction to something I said yesterday about Langston Hughes. And remembering Captain Sir Tom Moore....
16 min
1006
Mon. 02/01 - February's Mars Invasion
Sharing some thoughts from Langston Hughes on this first day of Black History Month, and questioning what makes someone a hero in our history books. Plus, the discovery of a new blue pigment. And all the Mars news for February. Sponsors: Indeed, Get...
17 min
1007
Fri. 1/29 - What Your Tone of Voice Could Say A...
What did everyday Romans in Pompeii eat? An archaeologist has tried to reconstruct their meals. Merriam-Webster has added 520 new words to the dictionary. How do they decide which words get added? And a sci-fi dictionary to explore this weekend. Plus,...
16 min
1008
Thu. 1/28 - Legal Protections for Sounds & Smel...
The mathematics of knitting. How France is trying to legally protect smells. A cautionary tale that will inspire you to go check on your office building if you’ve been working from home and no one’s done that for a few months. And a horrifying new...
15 min
1009
Wed. 1/27 - Putting Your Money In GameStop is O...
A brief dip into the GameStop Wall Street mayhem. A new water-is-wet kind of study proving that money indeed can buy you happiness. And the story of some students who just found out their new professor this semester has been dead for two years....
14 min
1010
Tue. 1/26 - Werner Herzog on Skateboarding
New DNA analysis upends some long held assumptions about the evolutionary background of dire wolves. How Adobe Flash broke an entire railway system. Astronomers have discovered a sextuply-eclipsing sextuple star system. Say that six times fast… And...
16 min
1011
Mon. 1/25 - The Moon Rock in Biden's Oval Offic...
The word “robot” was coined one hundred years ago today in a play about robots taking over the world. Good thing that hasn’t happened yet! ...right? The story behind the moon rock in President Biden’s newly redesigned Oval Office. And the...
16 min
1012
Fri. 1/22 - The Swedish Secret to Happy, Produc...
NASA trained an AI to detect craters on Mars. A possible discovery of giant prehistoric carnivorous worms. A new Swedish practice to adopt. And a mobile site that will match you with your film critic soulmate. Sponsors: NordVPN, Get 68% off a...
14 min
1013
Thu. 1/21 - Biophilic Recharge Rooms for Health...
Recharge Rooms are helping frontline healthcare workers cope with the continued toll the pandemic is taking on their well-being. How bats are helping scientists create better biologging instruments and the discoveries being made with the technology....
15 min
1014
Wed. 1/20 - Baby Megalodons & The Muppet Gatsby
New findings into the cannibalism and sheer size of baby megalodons. Teaching AIs to become our teachers. And The Great Gatsby has only been in the public domain for twenty days and things are already getting weird. Sponsor: NordVPN, Get 68% off a...
14 min
1015
Tue. 1/19 - Should Sea Shanty TikTok Take Its L...
A synthetic cornea implant has successfully helped a legally blind man regain his sight. Team USA and Team Canada women’s hockey players can’t stop falling in love and living happily ever after together. And a deep dive into the briny waters of...
17 min
1016
Mon. 1/18 - When the FBI Spied on Martin Luther...
Several of the women who influenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and left their own marks on the civil rights movement. A new documentary tracking the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. and other prominent Black activists, using...
17 min
1017
Fri. 1/15 - Wikipedia As An MMORPG & A Pigeon o...
A couple of stories for the birds today. First, ravens at the Tower of London are living up to their collective name of a conspiracy of ravens by possibly foretelling the fall of Britain. And a pigeon in Australia who was almost sentenced to death by...
15 min
1018
Thu. 1/14 - How We Narrowly Avoided an Emoji Sh...
The workaround the Unicode Consortium used to make sure we still get new emojis in 2021, pandemic or not. Facial hair is biologically useless. So why do some humans have it? And the SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule returning this evening will be carrying...
15 min
1019
Wed. 1/13 - Pablo Escobar's Hippos Are Out of C...
Pablo Escobar’s pet hippos have multiplied and are ravaging part of Colombia’s capital. An AI that can create very impressive and artistic images from text commands. Maybe a little too impressive. And a discovery in England this week that...
13 min
1020
Tue. 1/12 - 16th Century Disease Prevention & B...
The sixteenth-century manual on containing the spread of disease that is eerily reminiscent of current COVID guidelines. Bitcoin millionaires who can’t access their digital wallets due to forgotten passwords. And the guy whose massive beer...
13 min
1021
Mon. 1/11 - Tim Berners-Lee's Quest to Restore ...
It’s time for two writers to pay up on a 25-year-old bet about whether tech would destroy civilization. Tim Berners-Lee’s new quest to transform the web into the one he envisioned when he created it. How the most recent COVID-19 Stimulus Bill...
14 min
1022
Fri. 1/8 - What Folklore Can Teach Us About Con...
What folklorists can teach us about the structure and resilience of conspiracy theories. The genome of the platypus has been sequenced, and it’s just as weird as you’d expect. And a Swedish film festival that’s sending one person to an abandoned...
14 min
1023
Thu. 1/7 - Dude, IceBots on Mars!
A prototype for self-repairing planetary exploration robots made of ice. The surprising history of the word “dude.” And a new Danish children’s cartoon about the misadventures of a man with a huge dong. Yep. Sponsors: NordVPN, Get 68% off plus...
15 min
1024
Wed. 1/6 - The 60s Spy Satellite Helping Today'...
Space missions to keep your eye on in 2021. How satellites built to spy on the Soviets have helped unravel environmental mysteries. Why the dark ages aren’t considered so dark anymore. And a completely perplexing auction from David Hasselhoff and...
15 min
1025
Tue. 1/5 - A Nanny Cam to Keep You On-Task?
People who are choosing to be surveilled by strangers and productivity nannies in order to stay on task while remote working. A 3D-printed hydrogel inspired by cephalopods that changes shape when exposed to light. And UK officials have arguably messed...
14 min