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Advent calendars have evolved far beyond cardboard and chocolate. From science kits and retro electronics to coding projects, nostalgic movie collectibles and even charitable “reverse” calendars, here are some of the most unusual and brilliant ways to count down to Christmas this year...

Here's a red-letter date in the history of science: November 5th, 1955. Yes! Of course! November 5th, 1955! That was the day I invented time travel. I remember it vividly. I was standing on the edge of my toilet hanging a clock, the porcelain was wet, I slipped, hit my head on the sink, and when I came to I had a revelation, a vision… A picture in my head, a picture of this – this is what makes time travel possible! Doc Brown – Back to the Future (1985) It was seventy years a

The 20th century brought an education revolution. Could the 21st century be on the brink of another? In 1900, only one in three children went to school. By the turn of the millennium, it was four in five – an astonishing leap. The mission to widen access to education was a world-changing success. But in 2025, it’s starting to run out of steam. Schoolchildren have all the world’s information at their fingertips – and AI assistants to help do their homework – yet classrooms, c

One week ago, more than six million of us tuned into The Celebrity Traitors  (UK)  – and haven’t stopped talking about it since! Starring a raft of bona fide household names – a rarity for “celebrity” editions nowadays – the opening episode delivered a feast of mind games, side-eyes, and rising paranoia as 19 hopefuls descended on the Scottish Highlands to root out the traitors among them, all in the name of charity. And it didn’t take long for the accusations to fly. Within

For those of us who revel in the place where science and humour intersect, the Ig Nobel Prizes never disappoint. Now in their 35th year, these satirical awards celebrate research that “makes people laugh, then think” – the kind of unusual, imaginative, and sometimes wildly impractical discoveries unlikely to pass muster at those other awards  in Stockholm. Founded in 1991 by Marc Abrahams – then editor of the   Journal of Irreproducible Results  and later co-founder of the An

Why are we so bad at predicting the future – and how can we get better at it? Humans have been trying to peer into the future for millennia and, for just as long, we’ve been blindsided by events that we should have seen coming — stock market crashes, natural disasters, the fact they’re still making Smurf movies in 2025... For much of history, our forecasting flops can be put down to some of the questionable methods we used. Crystal balls, tea leaves, and horoscopes proved far

My inbox is overflowing. Every day I get bombarded with promotions, pointless updates, and notifications I never signed up for. Most of the time I swipe away without even opening. But imagine if, just once, an email landed that you actually  looked forward to reading... Alright, you caught me – this is a shameless plug for the iluli newsletter . But I promise there’s a good reason. Each month, we take on subjects that might sound intimidating at first – from bioprinting huma

Zapping brains with electricity has long been the stuff of horror stories. From Frankenstein and Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , to the often grim history of early electroshock therapy, the associations have been… less than reassuring. But today, this idea is being explored as a treatment for depression and anxiety, and even as a way to improve cognition. Neurostimulation devices, which utilise tiny electrical currents and magnetic pulses to rebalance b

After months of speculation, two years of development, delays and impatient countdowns from the AI faithful, GPT-5 has finally arrived – and the reaction has been... interesting. Some users see it as a significant step forward; others are left wondering what the fuss is about. For casual ChatGPT users – the ones who drop in to ask, “What’s the best movie trilogy ever, and why is it Back to the Future?”   – the grand reveal likely felt underwhelming. The “4” in the corner quie

With enough data and the ability to crunch it, virtually any challenge facing humanity today can be solved – Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO If you’re a regular iluli follower, you’ll know that in recent months we’ve covered topics like the world-changing potential of superconductors , the pursuit of new frontiers in outer space, and how AI-powered breakthroughs in biology are transforming our understanding of life itself. Technology is revolutionising the world and solvin

Black Mirror’s  “ USS Callister ” first beamed onto screens in late 2017, wrapped in the familiar aesthetics of a Star Trek tribute – high-necked uniforms, retro sets, and a Shatner-esque captain at the helm. But beneath the camp was something far darker: a lonely, resentful tech genius – Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) – trapping digital clones of his co-workers in a sadistic simulation of his own design. A classic descent into techno-horror from the brilliant mind of Charlie Br

We’re often told to trust our instincts – but is intuition really the best guide for making big decisions?  It’s the snap judgment in an emergency that saves a life, or the lightning-fast thinking of an elite athlete making a pass no one else saw coming. In the right context, intuition can be a powerful asset. But it can also lead us astray – making us prone to bias, blind spots and oversimplification. So, when should you trust your gut, and when should you slow down and thin

In Netflix’s limited series Zero Day , a political thriller fronted by Robert De Niro, the United States is thrust into a distinctly modern crisis: a coordinated cyberattack that cripples the nation’s critical infrastructure, igniting political turmoil, media manipulation, and widespread panic . For one harrowing minute, mobile phones, computers, and communication networks across the country go dark. Trains derail, planes lose contact with control towers, and critical hospita

We Brits are known for our obsession with the weather. From polite nods about the rain being "good for the garden" to groaning when it edges past 24°C, it's a national pastime.    But this recent heatwave? Temperatures soaring past 30°C in June?! That’s justifiable grumble material, if ever there was such a thing. Long-time readers will know I’m a certified gadget addict. Even my motorhome hasn’t been spared – it’s packing six 150Ah lithium batteries to power air conditionin

A telescope powerful enough to spot a golf ball on the Moon. A camera so detailed you’d need 400 Ultra HD TVs just to view a single image in its full resolution. And the potential to uncover 20 billion galaxies. Yesterday, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its very first images. Perched on a mountaintop in Chile, the $800 million marvel is being hailed as a once-in-a-generation leap for astronomy. One of the first images (below) shows a vibrant star-forming region 9,000

How often have you come across a terrible piece of technology and wondered how it ever made it past the drawing board?  Buttons in weird places. Features you’ll never use. Options you need but can’t find. You wonder: who signed this off, and did they ever use it themselves? One thing is for sure – they would’ve benefited from reading product management guru Marty Cagan's influential book Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love. It focuses on “product teams” – the

More than thirty years ago, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park captivated audiences with its amber-encased DNA, lab-grown dinosaurs, and a franchise so enduring even Dr. Ian “life, uh… finds a way” Malcolm might not have predicted its staying power.   And with the aptly titled Jurassic World Rebirth  (yes, there’s another one!) roaring into cinemas this July, it’s the perfect time to ask: how close are we to turning science fiction into fact? These days, with dino DNA long gone

For a few weeks in the summer of 2023, solid-state physics was one of the hottest trending topics on the internet (yes, really !). Social media was flooded with videos of what looked like a small piece of metal levitating above a magnet. Commentators proclaimed that this magical-looking phenomenon was about to change the world in ways we could barely imagine. This floating metal was said to represent a scientific breakthrough more than a century in the making. The “holy gra

Back in the days of cavemen, motivation was as primal as it gets: eat, drink, mate – and try not to get trampled by a woolly mammoth. Jump ahead to the Industrial Revolution, and things changed. Work became more structured, more repetitive, and more hierarchical. A new kind of motivation emerged – external incentives built on the logic of reward and punishment. Or, as it’s more commonly known, “the carrot and the stick.” This extrinsic model still dominates the workplace toda

If you ever land a job interview with Peter Thiel – the tech entrepreneur and billionaire investor behind some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names – brace yourself for one big question:   What important truth do very few people agree with you on?   It’s a tricky question, no doubt, but it offers an intriguing insight into what Thiel values, as he explains in his 2014 bestseller Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future:   This question sounds easy […] actually,