👟 Super shoes and sub 2-hour marathons

Headliner

The sub-2 hour marathon, and the technology that made it possible

by Dr. Jaroslav Boublik

For decades, the idea of a sub-two-hour marathon occupied a near-mythical place in endurance sport. That barrier finally fell in an official race at the 2026 London Marathon on April 26th, when Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe ran 1:59:30.

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Highlights

Tiny HousesOutdoors

Spacious tiny house brings on the luxury for a family living small

by Stefan Ionescu

Fritz Tiny Homes' Halcyon Grand packs two bedrooms into a 400-sq-ft park model, with a naturally lit master suite, full kitchen with dishwasher, spa-like bathroom, and advanced climate control for maximum livability.

AutomotiveTransport

Brembo's fluid-free braking system is coming to a car near you

by Abhimanyu Ghoshal

For the past few years, Brembo has been working on a whole new way to stop a vehicle in its tracks. The company's fluid-free Sensify system is going into production, and it shouldn't be long before you can stomp the pedals on one of these in a new car.

This iCloud alternative gives you 1TB of lifetime storage for under $200

Koofr makes cloud storage warnings a thing of the past thanks to its 1TB lifetime plan. What’s more, this centralized computing solution also allows you to access files from existing storage accounts, including Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.

TentsGearOutdoors

Pricey backpacking tent is so light & airy, it's fairly see-through

by C.C. Weiss

A year ago, we took a look at the Hyperlite Crosspeak 2 tent, an impressive cut of Dyneema that weighed just 2.1 lb but cost more than a dollar per gram. The all-new Crosspeak 1 dips well under 2 lb but still runs higher than a dollar per gram.

MotorcyclesTransport

Morbidelli N125V: Here's what a 125cc Ducati naked moto would look like

by Utkarsh Sood

The Morbidelli N125V is a 125cc motorcycle from China dressed in Ducati-like underpinnings. No kidding – a proper liquid-cooled V-twin, a steel trellis frame, an aluminum single-sided swingarm … this might just be the coolest entry-level moto ever!

Engineering

Want to make earthquake-resistant buildings? Try butterfly wings

by Malcolm Azania

Butterfly wings boast a superpower known as anisotropy, which increases a structure’s ability to absorb energy and resist impact through controlled deformation. It could massively benefit architectural innovation through light, durable design.

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Technology

Audiobooks go physical in Audible’s immersive 'Story House' pop-up

by Monica J. White

Audible’s Story House pop-up in New York reimagines the bookstore as a listening-first space, combining audiobooks, immersive audio, and live events into a communal real-world experience. The bookless bookstore runs for a month.

PhotographyConsumer TechTechnology

Adaptable carbon tripod is designed to hang out wherever needed

by Shirl Leigh

When the cityscape frustrates urban photographers with uneven terrain or limited spaces, photographic gear company Silence Corner strikes back with the Viperpod – a hybrid tripod designed to hang anywhere in seconds for unencumbered solo shooting.

Refractor: Science & Health

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EnvironmentScience

Earthquake 'whiplash' seen in large seismic events for the first time

by Bronwyn Thompson

Newly observed negative-phase waveforms in earthquake data has alerted scientists to a previously unrecognized feature of the "big ones" that occur when tectonic plates clash – and it may help us engineer safer structures in response to the movement.

BiologyScience

Potatoes may have given Indigenous Andeans digestive superpowers

by Mike McRae

Our taste for bread and pasta wouldn’t be the same if not for our ability to break down starch, a talent Peru’s Andean populations have taken to the extreme by evolving a unique profile of genes.

Elsewhere

An explanation of how, according to everything we know about Einsteinian and quantum physics, the past, present and future all exist together at all times, but maybe not in a deterministic way.

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