MinuteEarth
Eclipses Used To Be Terrifying
Because eclipses are powerful and frightening events, ancient cultures went to great lengths to understand eclipses, leading to remarkably accurate predictions and helping invent the science of astronomy.
MinuteEarth
Ancient Humans Made Millions Of These - We Don’t Know Why
The Acheulean handaxe was the most common tool of early humans, but we still don’t know what the heck they used it for.
TED Talks
TED: The Encyclopedia of Invisibility — a home for lost stories | Tavares Strachan
Conceptual artist Tavares Strachan creates the kinds of projects that make you stop in your tracks, like a 4.5-ton block of Arctic ice he brought back to his birthplace in the Bahamas or a gold, Egyptian-inspired sculpture he launched...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: A tour of the ancient Greek Underworld | Iseult Gillespie
Achilles, just slain in the Trojan War, arrives in the Underworld and is greeted by Sibyl of Cumae— a prophetess and also the realm’s local guide. Though it gets a bad rap, Sibyl is determined to prove to the newcomer that hell is...
TED Talks
TED: The power of unconventional thinking | David McWilliams
From World War I to the 2008 economic collapse and beyond, history shows that economists don't always see the future as clearly as they think they do, says economist David McWilliams. Using the words of W.B. Yeats, McWilliams makes the...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Japan's scariest ghost story | Kit Brooks
Oiwa’s only hope for ending her marriage to the cruel and dishonorable samurai, Iemon, was her father. But after he tried to end the union, Iemon murdered him in cold blood. With plans to marry another, Iemon conspired to poison his wife...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The gory history of barber surgeons | Stephanie Honchell Smith
It’s a cold morning in 15th century France and you’re off to the barber for a shave and haircut. You hear the familiar sound of singing inside and eye a bowl of blood in the window. You grab a cup of ale and examine the array of teeth...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What really caused the Irish Potato Famine | Stephanie Honchell Smith
For over 200 years, potatoes thrived in Ireland; roughly half the country’s residents lived almost entirely on potatoes. But when harvesting began in 1845, farmers found their potatoes blackened and shriveled. While this failed harvest...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The conspiracy to take down the Inca empire | Gabriel Prieto
It's daybreak in the city of Chan Chan, and former soldier Maxo has been up all night fretting. Last night, a friend stopped by and instructed him to go to the plaza at noon to receive an important message. But with the recent defeat of...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How did Apartheid happen, and how did it finally end? | Thula Simpson
For 46 years, South Africans lived under Apartheid, a strict policy of segregation that barred the country’s Black majority from skilled, high-paying jobs, quality education, voting, and much more. So, how did these laws come to be? And...
TED Talks
TED: How comedy helps us deal with hard truths | Roy Wood Jr.
There's a saying that comedy is tragedy plus time. Perhaps that's why some of our biggest problems feel easiest to manage with a dose of humor. Comedian, journalist and actor Roy Wood Jr. has spent his career finding the silly in the...
TED Talks
TED: Let's reframe cancel culture | Sarah Jones
Cancel culture launched a reckoning that was long overdue — but that doesn't mean it's getting everything right. Filmmaker and actor Sarah Jones slips in and out of various characters as she shares her personal experience with cancel...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The diseases that changed humanity forever | Dan Kwartler
Since humanity’s earliest days, we’ve been plagued by countless disease-causing pathogens. Invisible and persistent, these microorganisms and the illnesses they incur have killed more humans than anything else in history. But which...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why did the US try to kill all the bison? | Andrew C. Isenberg
By the mid-1700s, many Plains nations survived on North America’s largest land mammals: bison. They ate its meat, made the hides into winter coats and blankets, and used the bones and horns for tools. But in the following decades,...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What really killed the dinosaurs? (It wasn’t just the asteroid) | Sean P. S. Gulick
Sixty-six million years ago, near what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula, a juvenile sauropod feasted on horsetail plants on a riverbank. Earth was a tropical planet. Behemoth and tiny dinosaurs alike soared its skies and roamed its lands...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The dark history of werewolves | Craig Thomson
Stories of werewolves have existed for thousands of years and continue to live on today. They're especially prominent in European literature and folklore, and often found in cultures where the wolf is the largest natural predator. Over...
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
Have an Autoimmune Disease? Blame the Black Death
The bubonic plague killed so many people in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa that that natural selection event is still rippling through our genomes today. But the same genes that helped your ancestors survive the Black Death...
SciShow
The Science Behind Sleep & Love Potions
Sure, potions of invisibility and immortality may be a little hard to come by in the real world, but there's some legit science behind less fantastic ones. Historical sleep and love potions are grounded in science, even if some of the...
SciShow
The Electric Light Bulb Was Invented Centuries Before Edison
Thomas Edison often gets credit for the invention of the light bulb, but a good argument can be made that they were around centuries earlier in the form of barometric light.
MinuteEarth
Which Will Kill You First?
The body can get a whole lot colder - but not a whole lot hotter - before we die. Why is that?
SciShow
The Human Era Has an Official Start. It’s a Lake in Canada
Recently, a group of scientists have declared that the start of the Anthropocene, the time of outsize human influence on Earth, to be Crawford Lake in Canada. But how can a time be a place? We'll explain, and maybe grab some maple syrup.
MinuteEarth
Why Is There So Much Land In The North?
Most of Earth’s land is currently in the northern hemisphere because we happen to exist in a time where uneven heating in the mantle has pushed many continental plates northward.
SciShow
How to Move the Sky
The earth is always moving, and our view of the night sky is slowly but surely changing.