🎁 This Might Be the Best Gift You Give This Year 🎁

These are longer stories told one chapter at a time, in order, so you can follow along from the first night to the last. I introduce each chapter, and Clark’s music plays underneath my voice to keep you company.

In this episode, we’ll trade the big questions for a handful of small fun facts. We’ll meet a caterpillar that bluffs like a snake, then swim to a coral reef to find out how a fish helps make the sand on the beach. Lots of great facts to explore as you drift off to sleep .

We are bringing back this one from a few years ago. In this episode, we discover why you might have thought you saw a ghost. We found out that many cultures, even if they are far apart, have tales about ghosts or spirits. We looked at ghosts from a science perspective and learned that sometimes our eyes and brains play tricks on us, like seeing things that aren't really there. We also talked about how you could design an experiment to find out if the ghost your friend saw was real. Plus, we dived into the magical world of rainbows, the buzz of mosquitoes, and the mysteries of our noses. Did you know mosquitoes really like Type O blood and are drawn to carbon dioxide and sweat?

Éabha, who is six, and Fionn, who is eight, both wrote to us about the same thing: what is the red spot on Jupiter made of, and why is it red?

Luna and Elodie both noticed that the pattern on one side of a butterfly looks copied onto the other. In this episode, we'll find out that butterfly wings actually grow separately, following the same genetic instructions. Along the way, we'll meet two genes that scientists found by switching them off, and see why the match isn't always perfect.