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Every day, we toss around ‘official numbers’ we only dimly, at best, understand. But now the next time you apply sunscreen, take shelter during an earthquake, check the weather, or turn up the volume of your music, you might just have a better idea of what’s really going on.

No movie has influenced our modern perception of dinosaurs more than 1993’s Jurassic Park. But although the movie thrilled a generation of future paleontologists, it falls flat on paleontological accuracy. The mechanism that allows the titular theme park to resurrect dinosaurs—cloning them from bits of DNA found inside mosquitoes trapped in amber—seemed at least somewhat plausible at the time (although the odds of finding mosquitoes that just happened to feed off a dinosaur before they croaked are mind-bogglingly slim). But sadly, more recent scientific investigations have quashed our dinosaur dreams.

It’s getting to that point (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway) where access to air conditioning and kegs of iced coffee becomes a prime motivator in our lives. But there are even simpler ways to beat the heat. As we start treading into the dog days of summer, why not look to the dogs—and kangaroos, and elephants—to teach us on how to keep our cool when it’s just too darn hot out?

Mad elephants, anxious dogs, compulsive bears: do their minds come unspooled the same way that a person’s does? After her experience with a disturbed pet, science historian Laurel Braitman set out to explore the roots of animal mental illness—and the ways that we can treat it. We spoke to Braitman recently about her new book, Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves.

Just this month, Greg Brown and Mitch Moffitt, the hosts of the popular YouTube science show AsapSCIENCE, came out as a gay couple to viewers in a new video. We’re so pleased that this pair can come out in a proud and public way—for it was not always thus. It being Pride Month, we wanted to take a brief look at the experiences of LGBT people in science. While you might assume that science would be a more enlightened and welcoming field for people of different orientations and gender presentations, history tells a different story. Even very recently, scientists have had to keep their identities hidden to avoid hurting their careers, or endangering their lives.

The comic rappers behind the web series “Epic Rap Battles of History” came out with a new installment, pitting Sir Isaac Newton (“Weird Al” Yankovic) against Bill Nye (“Nice Peter”), with an assist by Neil deGrasse Tyson (Jurassic 5’s Chali 2na). But the rhymes flow so fast that you might miss some of the neat scientific and historical references. We’ve got you covered, though: 00:11: Why is it Sir Isaac Newton, anyway? Newton was knighted by England’s Queen Anne in 1705, ostensibly for his scientific achievements, but actually more as a political power play. Newton’s patron, Charles Montagu, the First Earl of Halifax, arranged the knighthood to bolster Newton’s reputation before a parliamentary election. Unfortunately, Newton ended up losing anyway. 00:15: “Of all the scientific minds in history/ They put Beaker in a bow tie up against me?”: Newton is unfavorably comparing Bill Nye to the Muppet Beaker, the lab assistant to Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, who speaks mostly in “meep”s. 00:20: “You’re no match for me/You got a bach degree”: Bill Nye does, indeed, hold only a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University (not counting various honorary degrees). He began working as an engineer at Boeing right after college. 00:22: …