Kristen French

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    A set of three trees shaped like brains, fading from green to yellow to red, losing leaves along the way.

    The Five Eras of the Human Brain

    Our neural command centers evolve through predictable major turning points from birth to death

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    The Math Shows Jackson Pollock Painted Like a Child Would

    And that might be what made the artist so famous

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    This Ancient Sea Monster Had a Killer Bite and No Teeth

    The Dunkleosteus was even weirder than we thought

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    The Rise of the Ancient Bogs

    It was driven by the wind, and could tell us about the future of the climate

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    The Science of Your Weed’s Stank

    Researchers classified 25 scents that make your weed smell, including skunk, candy, toasted bread, and vomit

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    The Medieval Friar Who Foretold Carl Sagan’s “Star-Stuff”

    Before science could prove it, this philosopher saw our place in the stars

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    Archaeologists Uncover Lost Opioid Tradition in Ancient Egypt

    Chemical traces in a royal vase suggest the narcotic may have been a routine part of life

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    Falling Asleep Is More Like Plunging Off a Cliff Than We Thought

    It’s not the gradual slip into darkness that scientists assumed

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    A Trip Around Our Surprisingly Psychedelic Planet

    Inside Earth’s most hallucinatory ecosystems

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    Illustration of the silhouettes of children playing in and under a green leafy tree.

    Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most

    A new study upends conventional wisdom about how we relate to those closest to us