Today Hank is building on last week’s exploration of identity to focus on personal identity. Does it in reside in your body? Is it in the collective memories of your consciousness? There are, of course, strengths and weaknesses to both...

In order to truly understand differences among animal lifespans, we need to stop thinking about a specific number and start thinking about a distribution.

Sunscreen comes in many forms, each with its own impacts on your body and the environment. With so many options, how do you choose which sunscreen is best for you? To answer that question, Mary Poffenroth explains how sunscreens work and...

During World War I, scientists were trying to develop an antidote to the poisonous yellow cloud known as mustard gas. They discovered the gas was irrevocably damaging the bone marrow of affected soldiers. This gave the scientists an...

What can you do to build a better world? Sharing stories from her pioneering career dedicated to tackling poverty, Jacqueline Novogratz offers three principles to spark and sustain a moral revolution. Learn how you can commit (or...

A few days before she turned 61, writer Anne Lamott decided to write down everything she knew for sure. She dives into the nuances of being a human who lives in a confusing, beautiful, emotional world, offering her characteristic...

There’s a huge seasonal difference in death rates that is propelled by a variety of factors including pathogen behavior and anatomical response to temperature changes.

Imagine you're watching a runaway trolley barreling down the tracks, straight towards five workers. You happen to be standing next to a switch that will divert the trolley onto a second track. Here's the problem: that track has a worker...

For the microscopic lab worm C. elegans, life equates to just a few short weeks on Earth. The bowhead whale, on the other hand, can live over two hundred years. Why are these lifespans so different? And what does it really mean to 'age'...

Poet Suheir Hammad performs two spine-tingling spoken-word pieces: "What I Will" and "break (clustered)" -- meditations on war and peace, on women and power. Wait for the astonishing line: "Do not fear what has blown up. If you must,...

At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? For many, it's simply comfort, respect, love. BJ Miller is a hospice and palliative medicine physician who thinks deeply about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his...

Can you literally "die of fright?" Turns out, you can! In this episode of SciShow Hank explores the mechanisms in your body that activate when you get scared, and how they can sometimes get out of hand.

Dieting and exercise can be good for you, but just because something’s healthy, that doesn't mean more is even healthier.

Hank scares our pants off with a tale of the five deadliest infectious diseases in the world.

It turns out this common phrase might have more of a basis in truth than you thought!

As a police officer, Jeremy Brewer interacts with individuals experiencing trauma and loss on a daily basis. Giving us a peek into this little-discussed aspect of the job, Brewer shares thoughtful insights on why respecting people's...

Please Note: This episode contains post-mortem photographs: those of people taken after their death. If you would prefer not to see those images, please feel welcome to look away from the screen at 0:17 to 0:27 and listen...

Death is what fungi are all about. By feasting on the deceased remains of almost all organisms on the planet, converting the organic matter back into soil from which new life will spring, they perform perhaps the most vital function in...

In 1815, Lord Byron proposed a challenge to a few literary guests he had gathered in his house on Lake Geneva: Who could write the most chilling ghost story? This question sparked an idea in eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley who, over the...

Exoplanets have taught us a lot more about planets than our solar system could ever teach us, from what happens when they’re born, to what happens when their stars die.

Sebastian Seung is mapping a massively ambitious new model of the brain that focuses on the connections between each neuron. He calls it our "connectome," and it's as individual as our genome -- and understanding it could open a new way...

Do you know what you want when you die? Do you know how you want to be remembered? In a candid, heartfelt talk about a subject most of us would rather not discuss, Michelle Knox asks each of us to reflect on our core values around death...

Most of us experience specific fears at one point or another, like of death or the future, but psychologists believe there might be one underlying fear from which all others originate.

If you find some trees with little apple-like fruits by the ocean, beware! It might be a Manchineel, the world's most dangerous tree.