MinuteEarth
Why is the Number of Languages Increasing?
Lots of languages and species are going extinct, but because others keep getting found or described, the official counts of languages and species are still increasing.
MinuteEarth
Why Hurricane Paths Are Weird
Hurricane path prediction seems straightforward, until it is not – that’s because hurricanes can encounter atmospheric effects that turn their paths into erratic nonsense.
MinuteEarth
Why Haven't We Cured Cancer?
A person’s genes alone don’t tell us enough about how to most effectively treat their cancer.
MinuteEarth
Why Don't Electric Eels Shock Themselves?
Electric eels can emit some of the largest shocks in the animal kingdom - but why don't they shock themselves?
MinuteEarth
Why Don’t All Rivers Make Canyons?
The Grand Canyon is super-wide and super-deep, which might make you think that the Colorado River, which carved it, is particularly old or powerful. Or at least that's what I thought.
MinuteEarth
The Time I Was a Human Incubator
Premature babies majorly benefit from skin-to-skin contact with a parent –also known as “kangaroo care”– because it reduces infections and hypothermia and increases weight gain and parental involvement.
MinuteEarth
Memes Go Viral Cuz They're So Sick
When we say a meme goes “viral,” we aren't actually saying it's making people sick. But the math behind a meme’s spread suggests it's actually a pretty spot-on analogy.
MinuteEarth
How To Take A Dinosaur's Temperature
Despite the seemingly basic things we don't know about dinosaurs, we do know some surprising things – like their body temperatures.
MinuteEarth
How Much Gold is in Our Poop?
Because of the way digestion works, human poop not only contains dangerous microbes, it also contains a wide variety of other things, many of which we could potentially put to use.
MinuteEarth
The Species That Broke Evolution?
The ancestors of gars, horseshoe crabs and coelacanths looked almost the same as their modern relatives. Darwin called species like these “living fossils'' because they seem like they are evolutionarily frozen in time. But Darwin was wrong.
MinutePhysics
The Last Eclipse in History
We are in the Golden Age of Solar Eclipses, but only for the moment. In fact, I'd argue we're already past peak solar eclipse and it's all downhill from here.
MinutePhysics
Which Planet Has the Best Eclipse?
Solar eclipses don't just happen here on earth - moons of other planets also pass between those planets and the sun, resulting in various types of solar eclipses on Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and even non-planets like Pluto,...
MinutePhysics
Why Do Eclipses Travel West to East?
The sun rises in the east, the moon rises in the east, and the stars rise in the east... but solar eclipses, oddly, come from the west. If total eclipses are caused by the sun and the moon, why don't they behave like the sun and the moon?
MinuteEarth
Why Don't We Eat Carnivores?
Humans eat a lot of different animals, but almost none of them are carnivores - why?
MinuteEarth
What’s Eating The Titanic?
When a ship sinks, lots of factors, like the ship’s materials, the water quality, and the depth of the seafloor all play a role in determining how long the ship will last down there - as a result, the Titanic will be gone in fifty years,...
MinuteEarth
Weird Things Animals Do During Eclipses
For centuries, humans have reported animals freaking out during solar eclipses, like birds falling from the sky and bees hiding in their hives, but the animals most affected by eclipses might be us.
PBS
Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on their longer than expected stay in space
For NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, the long wait to return to Earth is almost over. They went to the International Space Station last June in a Boeing Starliner spacecraft. They were supposed to return a week later, but...
PBS
Community colleges gear up to train workers for America’s proposed manufacturing future
In the next decade, millions of manufacturing jobs will open up in the U.S. as workers retire. Meanwhile, the sector is also supposed to add more jobs with help from federal subsidies. But by some current estimates, only half of those...
PBS
Why engineers are turning to beavers for insights into managing water resources
Beavers and the dams they build are not always embraced in the areas where they do their work. But there's a growing recognition that they also are building a kind of natural infrastructure that helps with water management and the...
PBS
How human trafficking victims are forced to run ‘pig butchering’ investment scams
An investment scam called “pig butchering” has cost victims around the world an estimated $75 billion in just the last four years, and it's not just the targets who are being harmed. The imposters on the other end of the line are often...
PBS
Endometriosis affects millions, but can take years to diagnose. Here’s what to know
Worldwide, 1 in 10 women of reproductive age suffer from a condition known as endometriosis. It’s an illness where tissue similar to the uterine lining grows in places it’s not supposed to be, and can lead to infertility, debilitating...
PBS
‘The Power Pause’ aims to rebrand what it means to be a stay-at-home mom
For some women, leaving the workforce to care for children or family is a choice. For others, it’s a necessity. But Neha Ruch, founder of Mother Untitled, doesn’t think a career pause means putting aside professional ambitions. Ali Rogin...
PBS
Why the red state of Utah is going green and embracing electric vehicles
This past week, President Trump suspended a program to expand the country’s network of electric vehicle chargers. It’s the latest in his series of efforts to undo Biden-era policies encouraging EV adoption. But in some parts of the...
Be Smart
%$?# Allergies!
Springtime means the arrival of green grass, bright flowers, and buzzing bees. But for many of us, it's also about sneezing, watery red eyes, and a runny nose, thanks to allergies. In this week's video, you'll learn why we get allergies,...