What are the special challenges, pitfalls, opportunities and rare triumphs of seeking and synthesizing the essence of someone whose passion—quantum physics, number theory, nucleic acids, atomic species, computational design, gravitational phenomena—is so thoroughly foreign to the concerns of everyday life?

Nearly every group has its extreme outliers. Where does fundamentalism come from? How does the most powerful organ in the known universe, the human brain, make emotionally driven decisions that …

Come venture deep inside the world’s biggest physics machine, the Large Hadron Collider. This extraordinary feat of human engineering took 16 years and $10 billion to build, and just weeks ago began colliding particles at energies unseen since a fraction of a second after the big bang.

What if your brain at 77 were as plastic as it was at 7? What if you could learn Mandarin with the ease of a toddler or play Rachmaninoff without …

This video is part of our Brilliant Breakthroughs series: our new 20-episode mini-series exploring the “Eureka!” moments and proud accomplishments of the greatest scientific minds of our time. Join us …

Rattlesnakes, cobras, alligators, and a huge collection of venomous reptiles come with lots of risks in the daily life of herpetologist and reptile keeper Matt Lanier. Meet some of these …