#perception

Circadian rhythms run without sunlight — which raises the question of what 'timekeeping' actually means when there's nothing left to keep time for.

Ventriloquism started as a religious phenomenon — and what that history reveals about the gap between source and signal is stranger than the trick itself.

How the Mercator projection stopped being a navigation tool and started being what the world looks like.

A shark that lives 500 years is strange enough. What's stranger is what it means to be a creature that moves through centuries without noticing them.

On the theremin, the instrument you play without touching — and what it reveals about the gap between intention and sound.

On the Perseverance selfie, and what it means to witness yourself from the inside of the thing doing the witnessing.

Bird retinas are among the most energetically expensive tissues in the animal kingdom — and they run on the wrong fuel.

How languages carve color space differently — and what happens to perception when a word appears.

Medieval manuscripts are full of bizarre, wrong-looking animals — and the reason why tells you something about what happens when knowledge travels without the thing it describes.