Do All Animals Play?
Animals as simple as bees and as complex as you and me… like to have fun. But what’s the point of fun? Do all animals have fun? And for that matter, what is fun?
The Dark Origins of the Scientific Method
500 years before the Scientific Revolution, the mathematician Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham spent hours in a dark room studying the light that filtered in. Not only did he revolutionize how we literally see the world, he pioneered the scientific method that is now the backbone of modern science.
What Makes Birds, Beetles, and Bubbles Shine So Beautifully?
Why is a soap bubble rainbow? What makes an oil slick beautiful? Iridescent colors, which transform depending on the angle you look at them, are all over nature. How does physics make these shifting rainbows? We’re going to find out with the help of the National Museum of Natural History's most spectacular specimens – from bird feathers and beetle wings to fossils and gemstones.
Can We Solve the Air Conditioning Paradox?
As Earth warms, billions of people in the developing world will face life-threatening heat waves, raising demand for air conditioning. But powering all that cooling is going to take more energy, which will, paradoxically, require more fossil fuels burning, creating more carbon and more warming. So scientists are developing new kinds of air conditioning, including solid, refrigerants.
Why Does Every Animal Look Like This?
In the race to survive, both predators and prey use visual tricks to get ahead. One nearly universal trick is countershading, a color pattern that helps animals erase their own shadows or blend into different backgrounds. It’s worked well enough that nature has produced this pattern over and over again, all over Earth, for at least tens of millions of years.
The Mystery Behind Earth’s Most Epic Migration
Nothing can travel faster than light — in a vacuum. But when light slows down, sometimes matter can blaze past that speed limit, creating a stunning glow called Cherenkov radiation. We can see this glow in a nuclear reactor as high-energy particles speed by. It offers us a window into a realm of the universe that is usually invisible to us.
How To Go Faster Than Light Speed
Nothing can travel faster than light — in a vacuum. But when light slows down, sometimes matter can blaze past that speed limit, creating a stunning glow called Cherenkov radiation. We can see this glow in a nuclear reactor as high-energy particles speed by. It offers us a window into a realm of the universe that is usually invisible to us.
Why Y Is a Vowel According to Physics (and so is W)
Human language is an incredible thing: a combination of mouth sounds that we combine into words, sentences, poems, and constitutions. They carry meaning, emotion, and power. But underneath it all, language is really just physics. In this episode, we explore how physics is at the core of every syllable, starting with the first word most of us ever speak.
How the CIA Secretly Spied On Climate Change
A few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, US spy satellite program was declassified, leading to the unexpected story of how former enemies would become scientific allies, and technology was repurposed to study the greatest threat to human civilization: Climate Change. The thumbnail for this episode includes a picture of Joe Hanson created with a text-to-image generative AI tool.
The Deadly Chemistry That Made Life Interesting
Life’s been around on Earth for at least 3.7 billion years. But for most of that time, it was incredibly boring — just simple little cells squirming around in water. It only got interesting in the last few hundred million years. And that might never have happened without the help of a deadly, but also life-giving, element.
Lab-Grown Meat is Here… and I Taste-Tested It!
Our appetite for meat is one of the greatest environmental challenges we face. Join me on a mind-blowing visit to UPSIDE Foods, the world's most advanced cultivated meat production facility, as we ask whether cultivated meat can deliver on its promises to help the environment while keeping meat on our plates.
How Scorpions Became Earth’s Ultimate Survivors
Scorpions are a frightening and deadly group of animals. But their venom is one of nature's most unique chemical cocktails. Here’s how scientists are using it for inspiration to design new medicines and pain killers.
The Truth About Butterfly Metamorphosis (It's Very Weird)
Does any other creature on Earth undergo a life transformation as dramatic as the butterfly? I think not. Unfortunately, children's books about very hungry caterpillars skip all the COOL and WEIRD and GROSS stuff that happens along the way. It's time to dig into all the mind-blowing biology behind metamorphosis!
Why Some of the Rainbow is Missing
Over 200 years ago, scientists were looking at sunlight through a prism when they noticed that part of the rainbow was missing. There were dark lines where there should have been colors. Since then, scientists have unlocked the secrets encoded in these lines, using it to uncover mind-boggling facts about the fundamental nature of our universe and about worlds light-years away.
The Biggest Myth About Innovation
The idea of the lone genius creating everything isn’t just misleading. It’s harmful and wrong. Innovation thrives when people work together, and rather than nice linear paths, new ideas come from chance events and unexpected connections. This video tells the story of one such invention, and offers a new idea about how new ideas are really born.
What Is The Most Average Thing?
The universe is full of stuff, ranging from huge things like stars all the way to tiny particles you can’t see with the naked eye. But what is the most average thing in the universe? We’re on a mission to uncover it with a combination of math, physics, and a little calculator wizardry. The answer is more surprising than you’d think!
How Did X Become the Unknown (and so much else)?
Despite being one of the rarest letters in English, the letter X is everywhere. We sign letters with it, we rate movies with it, we name all sorts of things after it. We’re kind of obsessed with it. And that’s probably all thanks to math, where x stands for the unknown. But how x took on this role is a bit of an unknown itself, and the theories that are out there are truly bizarre.
The Strange Psychology of Superfans
Humans can develop intense relationships, even obsessions, with the things we’re fans of. A huge part of our identities, our emotions, and our lives get tied up in these things. Why is that?
Crash Test Science! (Hacking Physics To Save Lives)
Crashing a car is usually a terrible accident. But in this episode, we’ll meet four engineers who crash cars for a living. They do it to understand the physics behind a dangerous crash… so they can hack those same physics principles to protect drivers and passengers instead of endangering them.
Can a Billion Oysters Save New York City?
The Big Apple is really a seaside city built on an archipelago. In the wake of a century of industrial pollution and climate change-fueled superstorms like Hurricane Sandy, New York’s waterways need help. Learn how Billion Oyster Project is working to restore one of the world’s greatest lost ecosystems in order to clean up New York’s water and protect it from an uncertain climate future.
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