What can we learn from people with the genetics to get sick — who don't? With most inherited diseases, only some family members will develop the disease, while others who carry the same genetic risks dodge it. Stephen Friend suggests we...

HOMUNCULUS! It's a big and weird word that you may or may not have heard before, but do you know what it means? In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank gives us a deeper understanding of this weird model of human sensation.

The brain is incredibly complex and things just go wrong sometimes, but scientists have managed to create effective medications... with the help of a few happy accidents.

Hank responds to viewer questions, and explains what the Higgs boson particle actually IS.

When a very young child looks at a picture, she can identify simple elements: "cat," "book," "chair." Now, computers are getting smart enough to do that too. What's next? In a thrilling talk, computer vision expert Fei-Fei Li describes...

Today Hank gains insight from that most philosophical of figures...Leonardo DiCaprio. In this episode, we’re talking about the process of philosophical discovery and questioning the relationship between appearance and reality by taking a...

Earlier this week, a team of researchers announced that they’d made a discovery about how we inherit mitochondrial DNA from our parents that could change what we know about not only disease inheritance, but human history as a whole.

Fossils can provide clues to the conditions that ancient species lived in, like what their environments felt like, how deep in the water some species lived, or even how long the Sun was out!

When you think of a brain, you probably imagine that pink, wrinkly organ in your skull, but we don’t have to stop there! Neither the brain’s functions, nor its cells, are confined to the organ we normally think of as the brain.

Robert Gupta, violinist with the LA Philharmonic, talks about a violin lesson he once gave to a brilliant, schizophrenic musician -- and what he learned. Called back onstage later, Gupta plays his own transcription of the prelude from...

Internet fandoms can get... sort of intense, but is an unwavering devotion to your Hogwarts house an unhealthy fixation or a way to reach out to others and engage in the world around you?

At the turn of the 20th century, scientists thought that insects were nothing more than tiny reflex machines. But Charles Henry Turner, who was possibly America’s first Black entomologist, ran some groundbreaking animal behavior studies...

Severine Autesserre studies the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is in the middle of the deadliest conflict since World War II; it's been called "the largest ongoing humanitarian crisis in the world.” The conflict seems hopelessly,...

Paralyzed by a stroke, Henry Evans uses a telepresence robot to take the stage and show how new robotics, tweaked and personalized by a group called Robots for Humanity, help him live his life to the full. He shows off a nimble little...

The formula for the cross product can feel like a mystery, or some kind of crazy coincidence. But it isn't. There is a fundamental connection between the cross product and determinants.

Today we are moving on from the existence of God to look at the philosophical debate surrounding the traditional divine attributes - omnipotence, omniscience, omnitemporality, and omnibenevolence. We are exploring the puzzles that these...

Bivalves—animals like mussels, clams and oysters—might be a more familiar sight in a restaurant than a lab. But it turns out that studying them might help us learn more about our own health.

The origin story of turtles is a mystery that has perplexed many for centuries, but thanks to more recent studies, we might be one step closer to figuring out their lineage.

There’s a big difference between the number of satellites that simulations predict, and the number we’ve actually seen with telescopes, but why?

You may have thought that crocodile tears were just a figure of speech, but it turns out they're real, and may help those of us with dry eyes.

Astronomers have theorized about an invisible star made up of theoretic particles in the past, but did we recently detect the gravitational waves of two of them colliding? Plus, extraterrestrial rocks from a decades-old mission keep...

There are exoplanets out there that seem very Earth-like, but if you look out and see liquid metal instead of liquid water, you might be in the Venus zone.

When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. What's going on? Anita Collins explains the fireworks...

Knots are everywhere in our daily lives, but a new branch of mathematics is taking things to the next level.