Innovative Design Shines in the Tour de France

Currently in stage 16, this year’s Tour de France is a brilliant display of endurance, skill and innovative design. Aero and climbing bikes are crucial for standard and uphill stages, whereas time trial bikes are used to shave off seconds and on downhill legs. For a race that is often decided by no more than 1/100 of a second during each stage, and less than …

Disco’s Revenge: House Music

What legendary DJ Frankie Knuckles called “Disco’s Revenge,” house music gathered steam months after Chicago’s “Disco Demolition” in 1979—in which 55,000 fans attended a White Sox baseball game in order to destroy disco records beforehand. They rushed the field, shattered their records, and newspapers proclaimed the death of the genre. The early ’80s, though, saw a rise in house music, which Vox explains was essentially …

How Human Voices Affect Wild Animals

Humans are super-predators—even when we’re not actively behaving as such. A recent study conducted in an English forest documented the reactions beavers had to the sound of wolves, bears and humans. While they ignored the wolf sounds and were “mildly concerned” by the sound of a bear, the beavers were “profoundly disturbed” by the sound of human speech. A different study played human speech in …