Be Smart

Science and Nature Series / 13 Seasons

Join Joe Hanson as he explores curiosity and illuminates the science behind… well, everything.

4m 26s

Your Climate Conscience - feat. Al Gore

S5 E27 / 5m 21s

News about climate change is often full of doom, guilt, and anxiety. This can make many people reluctant to pay attention to or discuss it. We asked former Vice President Al Gore to help us find a different way to talk about climate change.

When Is It Winter On Other Planets?

S5 E29 / 5m

Earth has seasons, but what about the rest of the planets in the solar system? Let’s take a tour from Mercury to Pluto and see what seasons would be like on all our planetary neighbors. Bring a sweater!

How Poop Shapes the World

S5 E30 / 3m 34s

Waste not, want not… right? Poop, in all of its various forms throughout nature, shapes the world in ways you might not imagine. One creature’s waste is another’s fuel, and all over nature these leftovers help new life spring up. Here’s how whales, birds, worms, bats, and more help the world breathe clean, thanks to their poop.

DNA Doesn’t Look Like What You Think!

S5 E31 / 5m 18s

Biology textbooks are full of drawings of DNA, but none of those show what DNA actually looks like. Sure, they’re good models for understanding how DNA works, but inside of real cells, it’s a whole lot more interesting. Learn why we can’t look directly at DNA, and find out how DNA is actually packed inside cells.

Why Is The Universe So Empty? (ft. PHD Comics!)

S5 E34 / 4m 4s

Why is the universe organized the way it is? And why is it so empty? From planets and stars to superclusters and galactic filaments, the universe’s largest structures formed because of its smallest. In this special collaboration with PHD Comics, we’ll learn how the earliest, quantumest blips seeded the structure of everything everywhere.

Doomsday Machines

S5 E35 / 5m 35s

Nuclear weapons represent the darker side of E=mc^2. Science has given us the ability to understand what will happen if these weapons are ever used again… and what will happen if they are *never* used again.

Why It Is What Time It Is (The History of Time)

S5 E36 / 5m 54s

How did we come up with our system of telling time? Why do we divide the day into 24 hours of 60 minutes each, and put 60 seconds in each minute? Where does the definition of a second come from? And who decides what clock shows the correct time? There’s clearly a lot of questions when it comes to time.

The Cheerios Effect

S5 E37 / 5m 8s

Ever notice how cereal clumps up in your bowl, or how cereal sticks to the edges of the bowl? Bubbles in beverages do the same thing.You've probably seen this surface tension and buoyancy at work, but did you know there's some mind-blowing science behind it? What we learn in our cereal bowl even connects to the lives of tiny insects that walk on water.

Orchid Mantis: Looks That Kill

S5 E38 / 3m 44s

Many creatures wear disguises in order to keep safe from predators, but there are some that dress to kill. Orchid mantises are one of nature’s most awesome examples of aggressive mimicry. These killer insects are almost indistinguishable from orchids! Scientists recently learned that their disguise doesn’t work quite how we thought it did.

Beavers: The Smartest Things in Fur Pants

S5 E39 / 4m 42s

Beavers have done more to shape North American landscapes than any animal beside humans. We don’t notice them much today because there aren’t many left, but before colonization, North America was home to hundreds of millions of these furry engineers. This week, we show you why Earth’s second largest rodent is more amazing than you ever knew, and why they’re the smartest thing in fur pants.

Asteroid Mining: Our Ticket To Living Off Earth?

S5 E39 / 5m 17s

Asteroid mining sounds like something out of a bad space movie, but harvesting materials from space rocks might be our ticket to building space colonies or living on Mars.

Inside an Ice Cave! - Nature's Most Beautiful Blue

S5 E41 / 5m 45s

Where do glaciers and icebergs get their beautiful blue color? This unique blue might be nature’s most brilliant, and the color arises in a very special way thanks to some surprising interactions between light and water molecules. Who knew physics could be so breathtaking?

20 Million Year-Old Spider!! Unweaving Spider Silk 🕷

S5 E42 / 7m 14s

Living things have engineered some pretty awesome materials, but I’m not sure anything measures up to spider silk. It’s as strong, as stretchy, and as resilient than even humans’ most advanced creations like Kevlar and steel. So how do these awesome arachnids weave such an incredible substance using nothing but their rear ends?

Why Is Blue So Rare In Nature?

S5 E45 / 7m 39s

Among living things, the color blue is oddly rare. Blue rocks, blue sky, blue water, sure. But blue animals? They are few and far between. In this video, we'll look at some very cool butterflies with Bob Robbins, Ph.D. from Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History to help us learn how living things make blue, and why this beautiful hue is so rare in nature.

De-Extinction: A Mammoth Undertaking

S5 E50 / 4m 42s

De-extinction, or using the power of modern biotechnology to bring back extinct species like mammoths and dinosaurs, would be cool. But is it really as easy as the movies make it look? Or do the cruel hands of time make it impossible? This week we look at the technical and ethical hurdles behind the science of de-extinction and reverse engineering species that are no longer around.

ЩΉӨ BЦIᄂƬ ƬΉΣ PYЯΛMIDƧ - Who Built The Pyramids

S5 E53 / 4m 47s

when the pyramids were built, the ancient Egyptians hadn’t invented the wheel, developed bronze tools, or discovered pi. How were they able to stack two million stone blocks, each weighing more than two tons, into precise geometric alignments that would survive more than 4,000 years and capture the imaginations of explorers throughout history? They did it the same way we always have: by trial and

How Ingenious Animals Have Engineered Air Conditioning

S5 E54 / 3m 54s

Are humans nature’s greatest architects? When we look elsewhere in nature, we find some pretty amazing animal architects. Species like ants, termites, prairie dogs, birds, and more have engineered some incredible structures. This week we look at how a few of these species have mastered physics to install air conditioning in their homes!

Is Space A Thing?

S5 E57 / 7m 14s

Since the days of Ancient Greece, philosophers and scientists have been wondering: What is space? Is the absence of things… a thing? These questions continued to fascinate physicists in the modern era, leading Isaac Newton, Ernst Mach, and Albert Einstein to wonder about the true nature of the fabric of the cosmos. The search for an answer led them to some of the greatest theories in physics.

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