There is an animal so unlike us that scientists studying what alien life might look like use it as their nearest model — its body breaking nearly every rule about how a creature runs. Today’s secret is what it is, and three things inside it that sound invented.
Last week more than 1,100 of the people building frontier AI signed one letter asking for a brake. Almost no one noticed where they sent it — and where they did not. Today’s Call is what that single choice sets in motion, and who is about to be left out.
There is a creature alive in the ocean today whose kind was already ancient before the first tree on Earth had grown. We tend to file it under the age of the dinosaurs. Today’s secret is how far back it really goes, and the one everyday thing on land it quietly predates.
We picture her against the backdrop of the pyramids, as if she watched them rise. She did not. Today’s secret is which modern moment she was, in fact, closer to.
A shark’s sense of smell is the stuff of legend — a trace of blood in a vast volume of water. Your own nose is usually treated as feeble by comparison. Today’s secret is the molecule behind it, and just how sensitive to it you really are.