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The British author who harvested mutant, jumbo peanuts from her atomic garden
In 1948, Muriel Howorth was living a relatively ordinary life in the seaside town of Eastbourne on the south coast of England when she received a letter that would completely change the trajectory of...
View Article‘Rock of Starvation’ reappears in Budapest during historic drought
A stone outcrop near the edge of the Danube River is unassuming at first glance. Most people would have a hard time picking it out from the countless other examples peaking above this portion of the...
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‘Proof by Underpants’ offers a cheeky way to test soil
You don’t necessarily need advanced sensor technology or fancy tools to assess the health of the soil just beneath your feet. As ecologists and around 1,000 citizen scientists in Switzerland recently...
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Indigenous nations in present-day Georgia may have enjoyed cacao
Various Indigenous peoples across the southwestern United States as well as Central and South America have harvested cacao plants for millennia. The same can’t be said for communities living on the...
View ArticleEating potatoes reshaped the DNA of Indigenous Andeans
Now a dietary staple around the world, the nutritious potato was first domesticated by the Indigenous peoples of the Andes around 10,000 years ago. It turns out that spuds played such a central role...
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Ancient South American families built massive waterways by themselves
The La Mojana field systems in Colombia’s wetlands are some of the largest examples of monumental ancient engineering in South America. Encompassing an area about as large as Grand Canyon National...
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In the 1890s, the U.S. hired a team of globe-trotting plant hunters
Adapted from Undesirable: Invasive Species, Humans and Where We All Belong, by Amy Crawford (Oxford University Press). In 1922, Popular Science ran an exclusive interview with Henry C. Wallace, then...
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During WWII, England poisoned sheep with anthrax on an idyllic Scottish island
Any tourists driving the remote coasts of Wester Ross in the northwest Scottish Highlands would be forgiven for overlooking Gruinard Island. After all, this low, featureless hump has nothing on the...
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Radiation fruit: How 1950s ‘gamma gardens’ created today’s grapefruit
The ruby-red grapefruit is a staple of grocery stores’ produce section. In cereal-box ads promoting a “balanced breakfast,” it appears halved in a bowl and glistening. Its rosy-colored flesh is...
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Humans packed avocados before migrating across the Americas 5,000 years ago
About 5,000 years ago, avocados went on an excellent adventure. Humans migrating north towards Nicaragua from parts of South America brought avocado seeds and then planted the fruit in Central...
View ArticleMallomar wins the 2026 Great Goat Graze-Off
July is always a special month in the United States. July Fourth marks the nation’s birthday (which was just celebrated with a ‘zombie-proof’ time capsule). And for the second year in a row, it’s time...
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The Shaker woman who reinvented the circular saw
In the 2025 musical film The Testament of Ann Lee, a radical 18th-century prophetess who claims to speak with God leads her followers from England to America. Remarkably, this story is based on real...
View ArticleGrape seeds from Texas are going to space
Wine grapes from Texas will soon join worms, human sperm, and cookie dough on a growing list of Earth objects sent to space. Hundreds of grape seeds will spend about six months being exposed to cosmic...
View ArticleCow tipping isn’t real and other myths about farm life
I grew up on a dairy farm in rural Ontario, a fact that occasionally surprises people I know. I guess I don’t come across as a farm kid. These days I live in a city and occasionally hear people...
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A ‘mystery beetle’ is devouring North Carolina’s precious blueberries
North Carolina’s blueberries may have a beetle problem. For the first time, scientists in the Tarheel State have documented the presence of Prionus imbricornus eating blueberry bushes. This longhorn...
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Cows can tell humans apart, new study finds
Cows are not necessarily known for their intelligence, but that less-than-stellar reputation is beginning to change. A 13-year-old pet cow in Austria named Veronika uses brooms to scratch her back,...
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Neanderthals dined on shellfish much earlier than humans
For decades, many paleoarchaeologists believed Neanderthals went extinct largely because they just weren’t intelligent enough to compete with their Homo sapien relatives. However, mounting historical...
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How to remove bamboo from your yard
Bamboo may feel like an easy landscaping win because it’s a fast-growing privacy screen that can turn a plain yard into a lush retreat. But then a few shoots start popping up in random places all over...
View ArticleWhy is everyone talking about watermelon buttholes?
Nothing ruins a summer picnic like a dry, mealy, tasteless watermelon. Maybe you learned to knock on a melon or look for certain webbing patterns when trying to find the ripest fruit, but what about...
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Why spring smells like semen and rotting fish
Ah, spring. The sun is out, the streets are humming, the days are getting longer, and the air smells like… like… um… say, can anyone else smell that? It’s not just me, right? Right?? It’s not just me....
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