Stuff happens. The weather forecast says it’s sunny, but you just got drenched. You got a flu shot—but you’re sick in bed with the flu. Your best friend from Boston met your other best friend from San Francisco. Coincidentally. What are the odds?

Award-winning writers take the stage to share their quirky, engrossing, and sometimes shocking insights about human anatomy and social psychology. Mary Roach, widely regarded as one of the country’s greatest …

Imagine navigating the globe with a map that only sketched out the continents. That’s pretty much how neuroscientists have been operating for decades. But one of the most ambitious programs …

Every successful scientist seems to have a “once in a blue moon” discovery during his or her lifework: an accident or epiphany that unexpectedly leads to a serendipitous breakthrough. Geneticist …

For this year’s inaugural address, “The Future of Big Science,” Nobel laureate and physicist Steven Weinberg considers the future of fundamental physics, especially as funding for basic research is reduced. Weinberg will explore physics’ small origins, starting with the discovery of the atomic nucleus 100 years ago by a single scientist.

How much brain do you need to be smart? Bees and ants perform marvels as colonies, though each insect has barely any brain. And plants—with no brain at all—exhibit behaviors …