A loaded Boeing 737 can weigh 174,200 pounds — about the same as 25 grown elephants. Nothing is holding it up but air. Here is what the wings are actually doing to it.

You tap a link and the page is there in half a second. In that half second your request found an address, got chopped into pieces, and quite possibly crossed an ocean on a cable the width of a garden hose.

Put your hand flat on a table and press. Your hand stops. But the atoms in your hand and the atoms in the table never get anywhere near each other — and they never will.

Go and put your hand on the back of your fridge. It is warm. That is not a fault, and it is not wasted energy — it is the entire trick, and it means the title of this episode is a lie.

A fully loaded lorry can weigh 80,000 pounds, and a bridge holds it over a river on a strip of road with nothing underneath. The surprising part is that making the bridge out of stronger stuff is not how it is done.

The blue dot finds you in about two seconds, anywhere on earth. No satellite up there has ever detected your phone, received anything from it, or knows it exists — and it still works.

Rub a balloon on your head and it will hang on the wall by itself. Nobody put glue on it. Get a balloon before you start — you can do every bit of this one while you listen.