Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have successfully grown the first-ever working 3D brain circuits in a petri dish. Writing in the journal Nature, they say the network of living cells will allow us to study how the human brain develops.

Scientists have been culturing brain cells in the lab for some time now. But previous projects have produced only flat sheets of cells and tissue, which can’t really come close to recreating the three-dimensional conditions inside our heads. The Stanford researchers were especially interested in the way brain cells in a developing fetus can join up together to create networks.

“We’ve never been able to recapitulate these human-brain developmental events in a dish before,” senior author Sergiu Pasca, MD said in a statement.

Studying real-life pregnant women and their fetuses can also be ethically and technically tricky, which means there’s still a lot about our journey into the world that we don’t know.

“[This] process happens in the second half of pregnancy, so viewing it live is challenging,” Pasca said.

The latest project builds on earlier work from Pasca and his colleagues. In 2015, they devised a way to encourage pluripotent stem cells to grow, not into flat sheets, but into dense little spheres that can connect in three dimensions. The researchers used these spheres to grow two types of neurons, each found in a different region of the brain. Once the cells were functional, the researchers gently introduced the two groups to one another and watched to see what would happen.

The results were extraordinary. Within three days, the two batches had begun reaching toward and networking with one another. Experiments on the new circuits showed that the still-growing cells were sending signals back and forth, strengthening connections between two areas of the brain. It was like watching a brain come into being.

“Our method of assembling and carefully characterizing neuronal circuits in a dish is opening up new windows through which we can view the normal development of the fetal human brain,” said Pasca. “More importantly, it will help us see how this goes awry in individual patients.”

Earlier this month, TLC announced that it was reviving the show that put the network on the map: Trading Spaces. The home improvement show was a ratings juggernaut for the network from 2000 to 2008, netting 9 million viewers per episode at its peak.

It succeeded with a simple premise: Two couples would trade houses, each helping an interior designer redecorate a room in the swapped home. They had just 48 hours and a $1000 budget. Then, the new room would be revealed to the homeowners. Some jumped with joy, others cried loudly offscreen. Now, all that drama is set to return sometime in 2018. But before Ty Pennington (presumably) dusts off his toolbelt, here are 10 fast facts about the original series.

1. IT WAS BASED ON A BBC SHOW.

Trading Spaces shook up both TLC and reality television when it premiered on October 13, 2000. But its concept wasn’t all that revolutionary. It was actually borrowed from the BBC show Changing Rooms, which ran from 1996 through 2004. On Changing Rooms, two couples also swapped homes to complete a quick interior redesign. There was even a breakout carpenter. Ty Pennington’s UK equivalent was “Handy” Andy Kane, who went on to record a super cheesy cover of “If I Had a Hammer.”

2. PAIGE DAVIS WAS NOT THE FIRST HOST.

Although she’s probably the person most associated with Trading Spaces, Paige Davis was not the show’s original host. Alex McLeod hosted the first 40 episodes and earned a Daytime Emmy for her work. But she quit the DIY series to pursue other projects, including Joe Millionaire.

3. THERE WAS A SECRET CARPENTER.

Besides Davis and its stable of designers, Trading Spaces boasted two other personalities: the carpenters. The originals were Pennington and Amy Wynn Pastor, but the pair weren’t churning out all that woodwork themselves. There was actually a third unseen carpenter, Eddie Barnard. According to Salon, he handled some of the more intensive projects but was billed only as “prop master” in the credits. Pastor felt super guilty about taking credit for his work when she first joined the show. “Every single day at the end of the shoot, I’d say, ‘I’m sorry,’” she recalled.

4. THEY WERE SERIOUS ABOUT KEEPING THE DESIGNS SECRET.

Since Trading Spaces relied on genuine reactions (be they positive or otherwise), the crew took great pains to hide any clues that might tip off the contestants. Good Housekeeping reported that sheets were hung from the windows so no one could sneak a peek inside, and any paint splotches on clothing were covered with duct tape before a producer or crew member went over to the other house.

5. COUPLES WERE ALLOWED TO DESIGNATE “PROTECTED” AREAS.

Although countless angry couples would probably dispute this, executive producer Denise Cramsey told SF Gate that their liability release forms included space to list “protected” areas. That obviously didn’t mean the entire room, but if you specified a door or piece of furniture, the designers allegedly wouldn’t touch it. If the form was blank, all your stuff was fair game.

6. THERE WERE THREE WAYS TO GET DISQUALIFIED.

At the height of its popularity, Trading Spaces got an average of 100 to 200 submissions daily. That meant the producers could afford to be a little choosy, but according to a former contestant, there were only three grounds for disqualification. The first was if the show’s tractor-trailer couldn’t pull up to the house or there wasn’t sufficient space outside for the carpentry. The second was if the owners refused to let the designers alter “many household items like the curtains, cabinets, flooring, or furniture.” The third was if it was more than a two-minute walk between the houses. The crew was constantly doing quick runs between the locations, so if your best friends lived the next neighborhood over, you weren’t getting onto the show.

7. FANS DISCUSSED THE SHOW ON MESSAGE BOARDS AND MADE A DRINKING GAME.

Trading Spaces was popular fodder on the emerging message boards of the early internet. Fans would post about their favorite episodes or defend their preferred designers. They also created a drinking game that included rules to take a drink every time “Ty climbs into cabinetry” or “someone mentions Genevieve’s bare feet.”

8. UNHAPPY COUPLES REDID THEIR ROOMS ALMOST IMMEDIATELY.

There’s a whole YouTube category of Trading Spaces “fails” or “hate it reveals” and, unsurprisingly, the homeowners in those clips did not keep their new rooms. Some couldn’t even wait 24 hours. In 2003, The Washington Post reported that Elaine and Bernie Burke ripped the burlap curtain in their redesigned bedroom off the next morning, throwing it in their yard to protect flowers from frost. April Kilstrom and Leslie Hoover had a much harder time: They were the miserable recipients of Hildi Santo-Tomas’s infamous hay room. The designer completely covered the walls of their living room, a space they shared with a toddler and baby, with strands of straw. According to SF Gate, it took the partners and three other adults 17 hours just to strip all the glue.

9. SOME OF THE DESIGNERS STAYED ON TV.

After Trading Spaces ended in 2008, some designers (like Santo-Tomas) faded into relative obscurity. But a few stayed onscreen through new home decorating shows. Vern Yip appeared on HGTV’s Deserving Design and also served as a judge on the same network’s Design Star. Doug Wilson stayed on TLC as the host of Moving Up. Genevieve Gorder became a regular HGTV all-star, with credits including Dear Genevieve, Design Star, and Genevieve’s Renovation under her belt. She’s now a frequent contributor to The Rachael Ray Show.

10. GENEVIEVE GORDER ALSO DESIGNED HER OWN QVC LINE.

Gorder also debuted a QVC bedding line back in 2010. It’s currently unavailable, but you can still find her rugs at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Netflix has got a lot to offer its customers next month, with more than 75 new entries being added to its library—including more than two dozen Netflix originals, with new seasons of House of Cards, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Master of None among them. Which means the streaming network has to lose a handful of titles, too—some of them more disappointing than others. (What About Bob? and Grosse Point Blank will say goodbye, as will all of Scrubs.) Here’s everything leaving Netflix in May.

May 1

11 Blocks (2015)
Alfie (2004)
America’s Secret D-Day Disaster (2014)
Apocalypse: World War II: Season 1 (2009)
Bang Bang! (2014)
Bombs, Bullets, and Fraud (2007)
China’s Forbidden City (2008)
Civil War 360 (2013)
Contact (1997)
David Attenborough’s Rise of the Animals: Triumph of the Vertebrates (2013)
Day of the Kamikaze (2007)
Doomsdays (2013)
Fantastic Four (2005)
Flicka: Country Pride (2012)
Good Will Hunting (1997)
Heart of the Country (2013)
Invincible (2006)
Jetsons: The Movie (1990)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Jurassic Park III (2001)
Last: Season 1 (2015)
Loosies (2011)
Monkeybone (2001)
Mystery Files: Hitler (2011)
Mystery Files: Leonardo da Vinci (2010)
Ninja: Shadow Warriors (2012)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Psychic Investigators: Season 2 (2009)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)
Samurai Headhunters (2013)
Secrets of the Third Reich: Season 1 (2014)
Secrets: A Viking Map? (2013)
Secrets: Golden Raft of El Dorado (2013)
Secrets: Richard III Revealed (2013)
Shuttle Discovery’s Last Mission (2013)
Sinister (2012)
Small Soldiers (1998)
Speed Kills: Seasons 1-2
Stripped (2014)
The Day Kennedy Died (2013)
The Doors (1991)
The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)
The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence (2011)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
The Real Story: Season 1 (2010)
The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)
Things We Lost in the Fire (2007)
Titanic’s Final Mystery (2012)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
Truly Strange: The Secret Life of Breasts (2014)
Turf War: Lions and Hippos (2009)
Turnaround Jake (2014)
Urban Legends: Season 3 (2010)

May 2

A.N.T Farm: Seasons 1-3
Blue Exorcist: Season 1
Good Luck Charlie: Season 1 – 4
Kickin’ It: Seasons 1 – 4
Scrubs: Season 1 – 9
Totally Spies!: Season 1
Twisted: Season 1

May 5

Amapola
Flubber
Grosse Pointe Blank
The Recruit
What About Bob?

May 7

Bob’s Burgers: Seasons 1-2
American Dad!: Season 7

May 11

American Dad!: Season 8

May 15

Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown: Seasons 1 – 5

May 17

American Dad!: Seasons 9 – 10

May 19

Step Up (2006)

May 26

Graceland: Seasons 1 – 3

Whether you’re watching The Simpsons, Pokemon, or Adventure Time, there’s one color that stands out. Yellow has been a favorite choice of animators since cartoons were first colorized, and they aren’t just choosing the shade because it looks pretty. A combination of art theory and psychology helps explain yellow’s rise to prominence.

As Sploid reports, and ChannelFrederator lays out, a cartoon character’s color scheme is usually chosen to complement their background. In SpongeBob SquarePants, for example, the most common setting is the expansive blue backdrop of the ocean. According to the RGB color scale used in television screens, blue is in direct contrast to yellow, so bright yellow was the most visually appealing choice for the show’s title character. This bit of color theory also applies to shows set on land, where a lot of the action takes place against the blue sky.

Color complements are just one part of the yellow character trend; the color yellow holds a lot of significant connotations, too. It’s often associated with feelings of happiness, playfulness, and warmth—a.k.a. traits we see in many of our cartoon protagonists.

Using yellow is also an effective way to grab someone’s attention. That’s the reason why The Simpsons‘s creators chose yellow instead of a more natural skin tone for their characters—they figured the shade would be instantly recognizable to viewers flipping through channels. Yellow’s eye-grabbing qualities also explain its prevalence in restaurant advertisements.

You can learn the full story behind this colorful phenomenon in the video below.

Have you got a Big Question you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions@mentalfloss.com.

Netflix’s April slate of new movies and TV shows was full of original programming, with a range of new titles—including Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return, The Get Down: Part 2, and Bill Nye Saves the World—making their debut. May will see a continuation of that trend (and what has largely become Netflix’s programming strategy) with more than two dozen movies, series, documentaries, and comedy specials that are exclusive to the streaming network. This, of course, includes the return of House of Cards, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Master of None. Plus The Keepers, which is being touted as the next Making a Murderer. We’re all in!

Here’s every new movie, series, documentary, and special coming to Netflix in May.

May 1

American Experience: The Big Burn (2014)
American Experience: The Boys of ’36 (2017)
Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008)
Blood on the Mountain (2016)
Chaahat (1996)
Chocolat (2000)
Decanted (2016)
Don’t Think Twice (2016)
Drifter (2017)
Forrest Gump (1994)
Happy Feet (2006)
In the Shadow of Iris (2017)
Love (2015)
Losing Sight of Shore (2017)
Malibu’s Most Wanted (2003)
Nerdland (2016)
Raja Hindustani (1996)
Richard Pryor: Icon (2014)
Under Arrest: Season 5 (2016)

May 2

Bodyguards: Secret Lives from the Watchtower (2016)
Hija De La Laguna (2015)
Maria Bamford: Old Baby (2017)
Two Lovers and a Bear (2016)

May 5

Chelsea: Season 2
Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie (2017)
Kazoops!: Season 3
Sense8: Season 2
Simplemente Manu NNa
Spirit: Riding Free: Season 1
The Last Kingdom: Season 2
The Mars Generation

May 6

Cold War 2 (2016)
When the Bough Breaks (2017)

May 7

LoveTrue (2016)
Stake Land II (2016)
The Host (2013)

May 8

Beyond the Gates (2016)
Hunter Gatherer (2016)

May 9

Norm Macdonald: Hitler’s Dog, Gossip & Trickery
Queen of the South: Season 1 (2016)
All We Had (2016)

May 10

El apóstata (2015)
The Adventure Club (2016)

May 11

Switched at Birth: Season 5 (2017)
The Fosters: Season 4 (2016)

May 12

All Hail King Julien: Exiled: Season 1
Anne with an E: Season 1
Get Me Roger Stone
Master of None: Season 2
Mindhorn (2017)
Sahara (2017)

May 15

Command and Control (2016)
Cave (2016)
Lovesong (2016)
Sherlock: Series 4 (2016)
The Intent (2016)

May 16

Tracy Morgan: Staying Alive
The Break-Up (2006)
The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

May 18

Royal Pains: Season 8 (2016)
Riverdale: Season 1 (2016)

May 19

BLAME! (2017)
Laerte-se
The Keepers: Season 1
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Season 3

May 21

What’s With Wheat (2017)

May 22

Inglourious Basterds (2009)
They Call Us Monsters (2017)

May 23

Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King
Dig Two Graves (2014)

May 24

Southpaw (2015)

May 26

Believe (2016)
Bloodline: Season 3
I am Jane Doe (2017)
Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower
War Machine (2017)

May 28

Bunk’d: Season 2 (2016)

May 29

Forever Pure (2016)
A New High (2015)

May 30

F is for Family: Season 2
House of Cards: Season 5
Marvel’s Doctor Strange (2016)
Masterminds
Sarah Silverman A Speck of Dust

Secretaries, receptionists, and other administrative professionals perform tasks that are vital to many companies. But because their work is often supportive and behind-the-scenes, it may go unnoticed or under-appreciated. In honor of Administrative Professionals Day on April 26, take a look at some famous secretaries and administrative assistants.

1. JOAN RIVERS

After graduating from Barnard College in 1954, Joan Rivers worked as a tour guide at Rockefeller Center, a fashion publicist, and a secretary for Irvin Arthur, who was a successful talent agent and nightclub booker. During the day, she answered Arthur’s office phone—sometimes performing her monologue to callers before handing the phone over to her boss. At night, she did stand-up at clubs in New York City. Arthur discouraged Rivers from pursuing comedy, and he reportedly told her that she was already too old to make it. Rivers certainly proved him wrong, becoming one of the most successful female comedy stars.

2. JEREMY BERNARD

In 2011, Jeremy Bernard became the White House’s first male (and first openly gay) Social Secretary. The role involved planning all of the White House’s official social events, including state dinners, Medal of Honor ceremonies, and teas hosted by former FLOTUS Michelle Obama. Bernard also helped Obama compile guest lists, choose decorations, and select invitations for events. During his four years as Social Secretary, Bernard was profiled by Vogue and became a well-known figure in Washington, D.C.

3. HELEN GURLEY BROWN

Helen Gurley Brown—born in Arkansas in 1922—took a few college classes at a Texas college before going to secretarial school. In the 1940s, she worked 17 different secretarial jobs around Los Angeles, including at a radio station and an ad agency. She later recalled how her male bosses would regularly fondle the secretaries, trying to see their underwear.

After working as a secretary, Brown became an advertising copywriter and wrote Sex and the Single Girl, an advice book aimed at unmarried women. The book, published in 1962, became a bestseller and was turned into a film. From 1965 to 1997, Brown was Cosmopolitan’s editor in chief, turning the magazine from a more traditional, literary publication to one that candidly covered sex and women’s issues.

4. CARLY FIORINA

Before she ran for president (and later vice president) in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Cara “Carly” Fiorina worked as a secretary. To earn money to attend Stanford University, the Texas native worked as a receptionist at a hair salon and, during summers, took secretary jobs through a temp agency. She went on to enroll at the UCLA School of Law and dropped out after one semester.

Then, Fiorina worked as a secretary again, typing and filing for a nine-person real estate firm. Her bosses increased her responsibilities and eventually she found her way back to school, getting an MBA and going to work for AT&T and Lucent. She became the CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 1999, making her the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company.

5. URSULA BURNS

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Ursula Burns was born in a New York City housing project in 1958 and grew up poor with a single mother and two siblings. After studying mechanical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic (now New York University Tandon School of Engineering), she worked toward a master’s degree in engineering at Columbia University. She also interned in upstate New York with Xerox’s engineering program for minorities, which paid for some of her education. Burns worked her way up through the Xerox corporate ladder throughout the 1980s and ’90s, serving as an executive assistant to Xerox’s vice president of marketing and customer operations and, later, as a secretary to the company’s chairman and CEO.

In 2009, Burns became the chairwoman and CEO of Xerox—and the first female, African-American CEO of a Fortune 500 company. She expanded the company from copying and printing to a tech company. Today, Burns is active in helping students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, succeed in STEM fields.

6. BETTE NESMITH GRAHAM

After secretarial school, Bette Nesmith Graham moved to Dallas, Texas and became an executive secretary for a Texas bank. The single mother went on to work on an IBM electric typewriter in the early 1950s. Unfortunately, the device’s design made it difficult to neatly erase typos. Worried that she’d lose her job every time she made a typing error, Graham thought of a solution after she saw artists painting holiday decorations on the bank windows and remembered from her own art background that artists would often just paint over their mistakes.

Graham tried brushing a white, water-based paint onto the paper to cover her typos. Her idea worked. Calling her correcting fluid “Mistake Out,” Graham sold her invention to other secretaries and, in 1958, renamed it “Liquid Paper.” She sold her company to Gillette Corporation for almost 50 million dollars in 1979.

7. EVELYN LINCOLN

Evelyn Lincoln, born in Polk County, Nebraska in 1909, was the daughter of a prominent Nebraskan politician. She studied law at George Washington University and went on to work as a Congressional aide until 1953, when she began working for a new Massachusetts senator, John F. Kennedy. When her boss became president, Lincoln worked in an office next to his in the White House. Lincoln was intimately involved in the president’s daily life, and she served as his secretary until his death. (She was riding in his motorcade when he was assassinated in 1963.) After Kennedy’s death, Lincoln worked as a secretary for other politicians, wrote two memoirs, and donated the JFK papers she saved to the Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

8. J.K. ROWLING

Although it’s widely known that J.K. Rowling struggled financially before finishing the first Harry Potter title, you might not know that she worked as a secretary at Amnesty International’s London headquarters. To pay her rent, she took notes and translated for the human rights organization’s research department. “There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them,” she told Harvard Magazine. “I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.”

Rowling was reportedly fired from her secretarial job because she was distracted by her desire to write about a boy wizard…and the rest is magical history.

9. ROSE MARY WOODS

Rose Mary Woods began working as a secretary for Senator Richard Nixon in 1951. Woods, who had already been working as a secretary in Washington, D.C., became Nixon’s confidante, working for him for decades. In 1974, Woods gave grand jury testimony in which she tried to explain her role in the notorious 18.5 minutes of missing audio from a Watergate tape.

The Ohio native apologized for pressing the wrong button and recording over about five minutes of the tape and she became infamous for demonstrating how she allegedly made the mistake. Dubbed the Rose Mary stretch, she stretched back for the telephone while her foot simultaneously hit the transcription machine’s pedal. Nixon told Woods first when he decided to resign, and he asked her to tell his wife and daughters for him. He later wrote that he considered Woods as a member of his family. After Nixon resigned from the presidency, Woods continued to work as his secretary before working for other politicians.

10. BARBARA WALTERS

Barbara Walters has interviewed everyone from Mother Teresa and Maya Angelou to Fidel Castro and Vladimir Putin. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1931, the famous broadcast journalist graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in English. Before starting her career at The Today Show, Walters worked as a secretary for the publicity director of WRCA-TV, an NBC affiliate in New York.

11. NAOMI JUDD

In the 1980s and early ’90s, The Judds, Naomi and her daughter Wynonna, were one of the most successful country musical groups. The duo sold millions of albums, won Grammy Awards, and toured the world. But before she was a country superstar, Naomi supported herself and her two daughters with gigs as a waitress in Los Angeles. She applied for a job as a receptionist for the 5th Dimension, the pop group famous for songs “Up, Up and Away” and “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.”

Naomi didn’t get the receptionist job, but she worked in the same office as a secretary for a talent agent for a few months. Naomi later revealed the reason she took the secretary job: She couldn’t afford a car, and the office was just a couple of blocks from where she lived.