In 1987, thousands of people gathered in Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj pilgrimage. But what started out as a celebration led to a worldwide health crisis: more than 2,000 cases of meningitis broke out, spreading across Saudi Arabia...

Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, looking for hints of how hers evolved.

In 1937, in one of the worst civilian casualties of the Spanish Civil War, Fascist forces bombed the village of Guernica in Northern Spain. For Pablo Picasso, the tragedy sparked a frenzied period of work in which he produced a massive...

The tremendous complexity of the human brain makes it difficult for psychologists to pin down exactly how and why things go wrong, so how do we define and diagnose disorders?

There are natural poisons that lurk in bacteria, plants, and fungi pretty much everywhere, and they're there for good reasons (according to the organisms that produce them) - but what is it about their chemical make up that makes them so...

In a talk that's by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, writer and podcaster Nora McInerny shares her hard-earned wisdom about life and death. Her candid approach to something that will, let's face it, affect us all, is as liberating as...

Water is refreshing, hydrating, and invaluable to your survival. But clean water remains a precious and often scarce commodity - there are nearly 800 million people who still don't have regular access to it. Why is that? And how can you...

You know what starvation is, but do you know what it does to you? Hank walks you through the three major metabolic phases of starvation, from burning sugars to, basically, self-cannibalism.

Nothing is guaranteed in life except death, taxes, and entropy. What do other life forms have to teach us about staying alive as we get old, and will we ever conquer death?

Hank hates death, so he helps us understand the process of aging, informs us of how scientists are studying ways to prevent it and brings us the exciting news of current research in longevity... for mice.

Join Hank Green to learn ten weird, scary, and amazing things fungi can do!

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Conservationist and TED Fellow Moreangels Mbizah studied the famous Cecil the lion until he was shot by a trophy hunter in 2015. She wonders how things could've gone differently, asking: "What if the community that lived next to Cecil...

The Five Stages of Grief show up in media everywhere from The Simpsons to Robot Chicken, but scientists have long been working on better ways to think about grief.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail not only connected North and South Vietnam during a brutal war but also aided Vietnamese soldiers. The trail shaved nearly five months of time off of the trip and was used as a secret weapon of sorts. Cameron...

Michael Aranda walks you through the crime-fighting science of forensic entomology, the study of insects used in criminal investigations. As if you needed more reasons to love bugs. But be warned: You might not want to watch this during...

As anyone who's seen a mummy knows, ancient Egyptian priests went to a lot of trouble to evade decomposition. But how successful were they? Len Bloch details the mummification process and examines its results thousands of years later.

From lemurs to lizards, ants to amphibians, sharks to chickens, hundreds of animals "play dead" as a survival tactic. But how and why do animals do this? Tierney Thys explains how this curious behavior, known as tonic immobility or TI...

On January 16th, 1895, two men arrived at Liliʻuokalani's door, arrested her, and imprisoned her. The Missionary Party had recently seized power and now confiscated her diaries, ransacked her house, and claimed her lands. Liliʻuokalani...

Population ecology is the study of groups within a species that interact mostly with each other, and it examines how they live together in one geographic area to understand why these populations are different in one time and place than...

Why do we often wait so long to recognize each other's gifts? Why are the truest compliments for the people we love often said only after they're no longer around to hear and savor them? Andrea Driessen makes the case for writing...

In this episode of SciShow, we're going to investigate a murder. But first, we're going to have to learn all about forensics, the use of science in criminal law -- and the real-life version is a little different from what you might see...

It's 1762 BCE. As dawn breaks in the Babylonian city of Sippar, Beltani— a priestess and businesswoman— receives an urgent visit from her brother. He makes a troubling accusation: her tavern keeper has been undermining the business...

This week, we're continuing our discussion of heroes by talking about Gilgamesh, star of one of the earliest written hero stories, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was a terrible ancient king who left his kingdom seeking adventure, and...

Lakshmi Pratury remembers the lost art of letter-writing and shares a series of notes her father wrote to her before he died. Her short but heartfelt talk may inspire you to set pen to paper, too.