Every why

Why does a voice assistant struggle to truly understand?

Because understanding human language takes far more than recognizing words: it requires grasping context, intent, and implied meaning, something today's machines still can't do the way a brain does.

Evelie

Why is Roland-Garros named after a pilot?

Because the stadium built in 1928 for the Davis Cup was named after Roland Garros, a World War I aviator killed in 1918, at the insistence of his former classmate who had become president of the Stade Français sports club. The pilot had no connection to tennis.

Chroneve

Why did the Vikings reach America nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus?

Tendrille

Why are kids everywhere saying “6-7” right now?

At dawn the air is still, sound carries far, the light is too thin for hunting: the best moment to advertise that you're alive and in good shape.

Plumaire

Why do birds sing at dawn?

Eyes follow the words, but somewhere in the head, a voice speaks them. Not for everyone: a meaningful share of people read in complete silence, and they often only realise it when they discover others don't.

Lumera

Why do we hear an inner voice when we read?

Edison wanted 'Hello'. Bell wanted 'Ahoy'. One of them won, and the word travelled the world, reaching French as 'allô'.

Evelie

Why do we say "hello" when we pick up the phone?

Past a certain size, gravity crushes every bump back toward the centre. A sphere is what a massive body always ends up becoming.

Cosmira

Why are planets round?

At France's National Assembly in 1789, supporters of the king sat to the right of the chair, the revolutionaries to the left. The word stuck.

Chroneve

Why do we talk about "left" and "right" in politics?

Because at France's National Assembly in 1789, the king's supporters sat to the right of the presiding officer and the revolutionaries to the left, and the word outlived the chambers and regimes that gave rise to it.

Droplets so small they fall almost infinitely slowly: a faint upward breath is enough to hold them.

Plumaire

Why do clouds stay up?

Because they are made of droplets so small they fall almost infinitely slowly: a faint upward breath of air is enough to hold them up, despite the hundreds of tonnes of water inside.

Sylvora

Why do leaves turn red in autumn?

A reflex left over from a coat we no longer have. In the cold or under strong feeling, every hair gets pulled upright.

Lumera

Why do we get goosebumps?

As a wave moves into shallow water it slows down. Arriving at an angle, one end brakes before the other, the wave pivots and ends up facing the beach.

Corallis

Why do waves always arrive parallel to the shore?

The mirror does nothing: our brain invents the reversal. A visual metaphor, not an optics diagram.

Evelie

Why do mirrors flip left and right but not up and down?

Their light crosses kilometres of restless air before reaching the eye. Planets, being closer, don't twinkle.

Cosmira

Why do stars twinkle?

As they grow, empires pay more for their own complexity than that complexity returns. The same internal strains come back every cycle.

Chroneve

Why do empires always end up collapsing?

Because past a certain size, empires pay more for their own complexity than it returns, and because the same internal strains (too many elites, widening inequality, frozen institutions) recur in every cycle, from the Bronze Age to Rome to the Maya.

An old habit borrowed from wolves: flatten the grass, scare off whatever might bite, sniff the wind, and the gesture survives even on a parquet floor where none of it makes sense anymore.

Sylvora

Why do dogs circle before lying down?

When you speak, you hear two voices at once: one through the air, one vibrating through your skull. A recording only keeps the first.

Lumera

Why does your own voice sound strange when you hear it recorded?

The first pressurised airliners had nearly square windows. Two came apart in mid-flight in 1954: a corner concentrates stress where a curve disperses it.

Plumaire

Why are aircraft windows round?

Because corners concentrate pressure until the metal splits. When the first pressurised jets (fitted with squarish windows) came apart in mid-flight in 1954, engineers learned that an oval spreads stress evenly around its rim, and offers no corner where a tear can begin.

Rain dissolves the rocks, rivers carry the salt down to the ocean, the water evaporates, and the salt stays behind.

Corallis

Why is the sea salty?

Because rain has been dissolving rock for billions of years: rivers carry the salt to the ocean, the Sun lifts the water back into the sky, and the salt is what stays behind.

Origins blurry, but a worldwide festival of small, gentle lies. One day a year when truth tries on a costume.

Evelie

Why do we play pranks on April 1st?

When the sun sinks, its light has to push through far more atmosphere to reach us. The blue scatters away on the way; the red survives. The sky doesn't change: the path lengthens.

Cosmira

Why are sunsets red?

Each new year is a smaller slice of a life, and routine leaves fewer dense memories to look back on.

Chroneve

Why does time seem to speed up as we get older?

They don't photosynthesise, they have no digestive tract, and their DNA places them in a kingdom of their own, closer to us than to any tree.

Sylvora

Why aren't fungi plants or animals?

Neither a whim nor an exercise: the posture saves heat, and a passive joint mechanism lets the bird stand effortlessly, even asleep.

Plumaire

Why do flamingos stand on one leg?

Watching someone yawn lights up the same circuits in your brain: an old way for social animals to keep their arousal levels in step.

Lumera

Why is yawning contagious?

A child's brain builds the world one brick at a time: every 'why' is a brick looking for its place.

Tendrille

Why do kids ask so many questions?

Because their brains are building the world in real time, and every "why" is a brick looking for where it fits.

The Moon pulls the sea harder on one side of Earth than the other. The ocean stretches into two bulges that the planet rotates through each day.

Corallis

Why are there tides?

Because the Moon pulls on the sea harder on one side of Earth than the other: the ocean stretches into two bulges that the planet rotates through each day.