Journey to the Microcosmos
These Squishy Dots Move So Fast You Might Miss Them
From our vantage point, as relatively large organisms, it can be easy to overlook the microcosmos, because it’s simply too small to see. It floats in front of our eyes at all times, and yet we cannot make out details until we turn to...
Journey to the Microcosmos
These Walking Ciliates Are Frustrating
The ciliates we’re going to talk about today are kind of…frustrating. At this point in our journey, we’ve gotten used to the fact that the microcosmos is an indecipherable mess at times, filled with organisms that look like each other,...
Journey to the Microcosmos
The Shared Doom of Microscopic Hitchhikers
Our oceans and lakes are filled with copepods, a myriad of small crustacean species that might float as plankton or infect other creatures1. And as they’re living in whatever manner best suits them, some copepods—like our friend...
Journey to the Microcosmos
Why Are These Single-Celled Organisms So Large?
One day, James—our master of microscopes—was cleaning the marine tanks that some of his organisms live in when he noticed this creature. It was hard to miss given that it was visible to the naked eye, thanks to both its bright red color...
Journey to the Microcosmos
The Collotheca Doesn’t Mind Eating Its Own Babies
Imagine that this is the beginning of the last thing you’ll ever see, an empty landscape with thin lines scratched across it. But those lines suddenly sharpen and gather into a dense mass that spreads from the crown that sits atop a...
Journey to the Microcosmos
The Microscope Upgrades We've Made Along The Way | Compilation
This channel wouldn’t be what it is if it weren’t for one very key invention: the microscope. Everything we see, we see with the aid of light and lenses, expertly deployed by our master of microscopes, James. And if you’ve been on this...
Journey to the Microcosmos
Can This Baby Rotifer Escape Before It’s Eaten Alive?
This Loxodes magnus is large, so large that it was able to eat a rotifer, those funny animals we often see getting bullied by their single-celled neighbors. Except, that rotifer is moving. It’s alive, twisting and turning inside of the...
Journey to the Microcosmos
Putting Coral Under the Microscope
James, our master of microscopes, recently received a package from a coral farm in Germany. We’ve explored some of the microscopic creatures and bristle worms that were living and thriving in those packages in previous videos. But today...
Journey to the Microcosmos
How Brownian Motion Helped Prove the Existence of Atoms
We’re going to see a type of motion over and over again because it’s all over the microcosmos, found in and around many different types of organisms. And this kind of random motion may seem almost too trivial to discuss, but this motion...
Journey to the Microcosmos
Kentrophoros: The Mouthless Ciliate With a Back Full of Snacks
This is kentrophoros, a ciliate that James—our master of microscopes—had been searching for, receiving samples from all over the world in the hopes of finding it gliding around. When you first look at it, it doesn’t seem particularly...
Journey to the Microcosmos
This Extremely Rare Ciliate Has Only Been Seen Four Times
If you’ve been following James, our master of microscopes, on some of his other platforms, then you know what’s coming. You know that James has published his first academic paper, it's about this extraordinarily rare ciliate that you see...
Journey to the Microcosmos
What Even Is A Species?
If you know about the species Lacrymaria olor, then you know what you’re getting when you see it under a microscope. It has a distinct shape, a distinct way of life—the combination of its own genetics and its surrounding environment.
Journey to the Microcosmos
The 18th Century Tardigrade Debate
If you’ve ever wondered what it might take to upset a microscopist, just ask James—our master of microscopes—his feelings about tardigrade legs. Yes, tardigrade legs. Those chunky, wiggly limbs that move their owner through meals of moss...
Journey to the Microcosmos
A Microscopic Tour Through A Norwegian Fjord
Sometimes our journey through the microcosmos feels like an expedition, a voyage filled with deep dives into the masses of organisms basking under the glow of our microscope. So what does it mean when you don’t find anything. When you...
Journey to the Microcosmos
Getting to the Root of Nitrogen Fixation
James, our master of microscopes, is not a farmer. He is, to put it simply, fascinated by microbes. And that may lead him to strange places and cause him to grow tanks full of weird things. But he is not a farmer.
Journey to the Microcosmos
A Two-Headed Ciliate and Other Adorable, Dead, and Extinct Things
The theme of today's episode is pretty simple: things we never thought we’d be showing you, but here we are.
Journey to the Microcosmos
There's More Than Coral at the Coral Farm
When you’re in the business of hunting for microbes, sometimes you have to send some weird emails. That’s why James, our master of microscopes, sat down one day to send his own strange request to the people at Coralaxy, a coral farm in...
Journey to the Microcosmos
Microbes Don’t Actually Look Like Anything
Microbes Don’t Actually Look Like Anything
Journey to the Microcosmos
How to Not Kill an Extremely Rare Microbe
For an activity that mostly involves sitting and staring, microscopy is a surprisingly high stakes task. On the other side of the lens are drops full of potential, a multitude of worlds to unravel and examine. But they’re also fragile...
Food Farmer Earth
The Art of Fermentation Sandor Katz Interview
In his most recent book, The Art of Fermentation, Sandor Ellix Katz considers himself a "fermentation experimentalist". That would appear to be an apt description for his evangelistic passion and encyclopedic knowledge of the...
Journey to the Microcosmos
Tardigrades: Chubby, Misunderstood, & Not Immortal
We know these cute little water bears can survive the vacuum of space but are they actually immortal? We'll explore that and other misconceptions about tardigrades in this week's journey!
Catalyst University
Hippurate Hydrolysis Test | Theory & Results
In this video, we explore the theory of the hippurate hydrolysis [hippuricase] test and how to interpret the results.