One of the scientists shows the petri dishes in which they grow cells at the department of Genome Biology, Graduate School of Medicine. Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, August 7th, 2003. Kosuke Okahara for NPR hide caption

Mathematician John Urschel contains multitudes. These days, he researches linear algebra at MIT, but he also had another career: professional NFL football player. The Washington Post/The Washington Post via Getty Im hide caption

Karen Chin in the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, where she is the curator of paleontology. She is also a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder and a leading expert on fossilized dinosaur feces. Casey A. Cass/University of Colo hide caption

Kenji López-Alt says spatchcocking the turkey is the best way to overcome the common problem of light meat overcooking by the time dark meat is ready. Viktoria Agureeva/Getty Images hide caption

Tourists walk around the base of the Washington Monument as smoke from wildfires in Canada casts a haze of the U.S. Capitol on the National Mall in June of this year. Air pollution alerts were issued across the United States due to the fires. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

A member of the emergency services walks near a crack cutting across the main road in Grindavik, Iceland following recent earthquakes. The southwestern town was evacuated early Saturday after magma shifting under the Earth's crust caused hundreds of earthquakes that experts warned could be a precursor to a volcanic eruption. Kjartan Torbjoernsson/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

The cover of Fei-Fei Li's new memoir, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI. Fei-Fei Li hide caption

Research has found that trees contribute to the formation of clouds, which reflect heat from the sun and cool the atmosphere in the immediate area. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images hide caption