MinuteEarth
How Fighting Wildfires Makes Them Worse
Today's wildfires burn, on average, twice the amount of land they did in 1970. The reason? We've been working too hard to put them out. Want to learn more about the topic in this week's video? Here's a keyword/phrase to get your googling...
MinuteEarth
How Do Trees Survive Winter?
Humans can go inside or put on clothes, but trees spend winter naked in the cold. Why don't they all die?
TED Talks
TED: How to live with fire | Oral McGuire
Uncontrolled fire threatens nature — but the right kind of fire can maintain the health and balance of the land, says fire management expert Oral McGuire. As a leader in the Nyungar community of southwestern Australia and a former...
TED Talks
TED: The luminous mystery of fireflies | Wan Faridah Akmal Jusoh
There are more than 2,000 firefly species, found on every continent except for Antarctica — an astonishing diversity of movement and light. Firefly scientist Wan Faridah Akmal Jusoh explores the mysteries of these little beetles that...
TED Talks
TED: How business can improve the world, not just the bottom line | Esha Chhabra
Sustainability has become more marketing than action, says environmental business journalist Esha Chhabra. Challenging conventional business models solely focused on profit, she shares how regenerative companies that embed purpose into...
TED Talks
TED: Meet mini-grids — the clean energy solution bringing power to millions | Tombo Banda
Hundreds of millions of people lack access to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa, relying on highly polluting diesel and firewood for power and light. Working to brighten the future in her home country of Malawi and beyond, energy access...
TED Talks
TED: Let your garden grow wild | Rebecca McMackin
Many gardeners work hard to maintain clean, tidy environments ... which is the exact opposite of what wildlife wants, says ecological horticulturist Rebecca McMackin. She shows the beauty of letting your garden run wild, surveying the...
TED Talks
TED: How poop turns into forests | Ludmila Rattis
Did you know the world's largest tropical forest is partly formed by seeds emerging from poop? Ecologist Ludmila Rattis reveals the surprisingly fruitful benefits of letting nature take care of its own business, sharing how the digestive...
SciShow
The 5,000-Year-Old Mystery of Ancient Egyptian Perfume
The ancient Egyptians were masters of embalming the dead, but they left no record of the ingredients in their balms and perfumes. Luckily, modern chemistry is unlocking those secrets. And it's telling us a lot more about their culture...
MinuteEarth
Why Do Weeping Willows Weep?
Most trees reach for the sun – but not the weeping willow. Why?
TED Talks
TED: How to stop the next pandemic? Stop deforestation | Neil Vora
Clearing tropical forests isn't just dangerous to the natural world — it's also a threat to human health and wellbeing, says physician Neil Vora. Tracing how environmental devastation led to deadly epidemics like Ebola, he presents three...
TED Talks
TED: The unexpected way spirituality connects to climate change | Gopal D. Patel
Environmental activist Gopal D. Patel thinks the climate movement could learn a lot from one of the longest-standing social initiatives in human history: religion. Exploring three areas where frameworks from faith traditions could...
SciShow Kids
Can You Guess These Fall Animals with Jessi and Sam? | SciShow Kids Compilation
Jessi and Sam face off to see who can figure out the clues and guess the right animal! ----------
PBS
How Did Our Most Famous Ancestor Really Die?
Did our most famous fossil ancestor, Lucy, die by falling out of a tall tree? The answer is part of a decades-long debate over how, exactly, our ancestors transitioned from life in the trees to life on the ground.
PBS
When the Rainforests Collapsed
The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse set the stage for a takeover that would be a crucial turning point in the history of terrestrial animal life. If it weren’t for that time when the rainforests collapsed - in an extinction event that...
PBS
When Giant Lemurs Ruled Madagascar
Just a few thousand years ago, the island of Madagascar was inhabited by giant lemurs. How did such a diverse group of primates evolve in the first place, and how did they help shape the unique environments of Madagascar? And how did...
PBS
The Bear-Sized Beaver That Couldn’t Build A Dam
It’s important to us that you understand how big this beaver was. Just like modern beavers, it was semiaquatic -- it lived both on the land and in the water. The difference is that today’s beavers do a pretty special thing - one that the...
PBS
A Short Tale About Diplodocus' Long Neck
Long necks gave sauropods a huge advantage when it came to food, but not in the way you think. And this benefit would allow them to become the biggest terrestrial animals of all time!
PBS
When Trees Took Over the World
420 million years ago, the forest floor of what's now New York was covered with a plant that didn’t look like a tree at all, except its roots were made of wood. Instead of looking up to learn about the evolution of trees, it turns out...
PBS
The Rise and Fall of the Tallest Mammal to Walk the Earth
It arose from rhino ancestors that were a lot smaller, but Paraceratherium would take a different evolutionary path. Believe it or not, it actually became so big that it probably got close to what scientists think might be the actual...
PBS
The Extreme Hyenas That Didn't Last
Hyenas weren’t always able to eat bones. In fact, only a few million years ago, they lived very different lives.
PBS
When Antarctica Was Green
Before the start of the Eocene Epoch about 56 million years ago--Antarctica was still joined to both Australia and South America. And it turns out that a lot of what we recognize about the southern hemisphere can be traced back to that...
Be Smart
Why do Trees Talk to Each Other?
Walk into any forest, and beneath your feet is an elaborate social network that helps make life on Earth possible. It’s called the “Wood Wide Web”, a massive and intricate network of fungi that exchange water, nutrients, and chemical...