The value of money is determined by how much (or how little) of it is in circulation. But who makes that decision, and how does their choice affect the economy at large? Doug Levinson takes a trip into the United States Federal Reserve,...

The North American Great Lakes - Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior - are so big that they border 8 states and contain 23 quadrillion liters of water. They span forest, grassland, and wetland habitats, supporting a region...

Paul Andersen defines the major elements of feedback loops. The receptors and effectors both sense and respond to changes in their environment. The following examples are used to illustrate the importance of feedback loops in...

There aren't many creatures as safe and chill as the humble sea sponge, right? Well, not so fast! It turns out there's a whole family of carnivorous sponges that trap and eat small animals using spines and migrating stomaches!

Why does February only get 28 days when all the other months get 30 or 31? The answer is part superstition, part politics, and parts astronomy. Basically, it's the Romans' fault.

Trusting your gut may not sound like a reliable way to make decisions, but the research points to some times when you might want to listen to it!

TESS found 3 new exoplanets around a strangely calm m-dwarf star, and it's possible they could be habitable!

Cybersecurity is a set of techniques to protect the secrecy, integrity, and availability of computer systems and data against threats. In today’s episode, we’re going to unpack these three goals and talk through some strategies we use...

In this video Paul Andersen explains that entropy is simply the dispersion of matter or energy. He begins with a series of video that show the natural direction of processes. According to the second law of thermodynamics the entropy...

Forests don't usually come to mind as a habitat for sharks. But marine forests provide a home for 35% of the world's sharks. Mangrove forests in particular function as an essential bridge between land and sea and have evolved various...

Using robotics, laser rangefinders, GPS and smart feedback tools, Dennis Hong is building a car for drivers who are blind. It's not a "self-driving" car, he's careful to note, but a car in which a non-sighted driver can determine speed,...

What if, this holiday season, instead of saying "thank you" to your aunt for her gift of a knitted sweater, the polite response expected from you was to show up at her house in a week with a better gift? Or to vote for her in the town...

It's a standard assumption in the West: As a society progresses, it eventually becomes a capitalist, multi-party democracy. Right? Eric X. Li, a Chinese investor and political scientist, begs to differ. In this provocative,...

Beer goes in, pee comes out. It's a simple equation, right? In today's SciShow Quick Questions, Hank goes a little deeper to find out why beer makes you pee!

4,300 years ago in ancient Sumer, the most powerful person in the city of Ur was banished to wander the vast desert. Her name was Enheduanna, and by the time of her exile, she had written forty-two hymns and three epic poems— and Sumer...

Jane Poynter tells her story of living two years and 20 minutes in Biosphere 2 -- an experience that provoked her to explore how we might sustain life in the harshest of environments.

From being able to eat grass, to changing the weather with their burps: Cows are incredible creatures!

Hank takes you on a tour of your two-part autonomic nervous system. This episode explains how your sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system work together as foils, balancing each other out. Their key anatomical...

Today we explore the penultimate ethical theory in this unit: contractarianism. Hank explains Hobbes’ state of nature, and implicit and explicit contracts, as well as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and the benefits, and costs, of violating...

In this video Paul Andersen introduces electric charge. Electric charge has been studies by humans and was generalized by scientists such as Benjamin Franklin. The amount of charge in a system is conserved but individual charges can move...

Most of the time you probably don’t have to think too much about your toilet, but billions of people don’t have access to safe sanitation. So, engineers are working on new kinds of toilets that could help solve that!

In this video Paul Andersen explains how energy can enter and leave a system. The amount of energy a substance can receive through heating or lose through cooling is measured using the specific heat capacity. Phase changing energy from...

In this video Paul Andersen explains how the activation energy is a measure of the amount of energy required for a chemical reaction to occur. Due to the collision theory the activation energy requires proper energy and orientation of...

In this video Paul Andersen explains how the conservation of charge applies to objects in a system. When a charged object induces charge or conducts charge to a neutral object the net total of charge will not change. Grounding allows...