SciShow
Those White Crusts on Whales Are Alive and Full of Stories
You might think the white patches that grow on whale’s heads and faces are just weird skin growths, and you’re not wrong. But when you look closer, these patches are crawling with tiny stowaways!
TED Talks
Angela Belcher: Using nature to grow batteries
Inspired by an abalone shell, Angela Belcher programs viruses to make elegant nanoscale structures that humans can use. Selecting for high-performing genes through directed evolution, she's produced viruses that can construct powerful...
TED Talks
Dina Zielinski: How we can store digital data in DNA
From floppy disks to thumb drives, every method of storing data eventually becomes obsolete. What if we could find a way to store all the world's data forever? Bioinformatician Dina Zielinski shares the science behind a solution that's...
SciShow
What If All Viruses Vanished?
In the past couple years, you may have found yourself wishing that all the viruses in the world just disappear. But be careful what you wish for...
SciShow
Why Billions of Passenger Pigeons Died in Under a Century
How could the most abundant bird in North America go extinct so quickly? Short answer: us.
TED Talks
Jay Bradner: Open-source cancer research
How does cancer know it's cancer? At Jay Bradner's lab, they found a molecule that might hold the answer, JQ1. But instead of patenting it and reaping the profits (as many other labs have done) -- they published their findings and mailed...
TED Talks
Ellen Jorgensen: Biohacking -- you can do it, too
We have personal computing -- why not personal biotech? That's the question biologist Ellen Jorgensen and her colleagues asked themselves before opening Genspace, a nonprofit DIY bio lab in Brooklyn devoted to citizen science, where...
SciShow
Hospitals are Hotspots for Antibiotic-resistant Germs
While antibiotics have saved millions of lives, misusing them can speed up how fast bacteria evolve to resist them. And it turns out that one of the biggest hotspots for these antibiotic-resistant bacteria…is hospitals.
SciShow
The 2015 Nobel Prizes!
Over the past few weeks, the Nobel committees have been announcing the 2015 laureates. This year’s winners in the physics and chemistry categories made discoveries about the tiny neutrinos flying through all of us, and the ways our...
TED Talks
Juan Enriquez: The age of genetic wonder
Gene-editing tools like CRISPR enable us to program life at its most fundamental level. But this raises some pressing questions: If we can generate new species from scratch, what should we build? Should we redesign humanity as we know...
TED Talks
Cynthia Kenyon: Experiments that hint of longer lives
What controls aging? Biochemist Cynthia Kenyon has found a simple genetic mutation that can double the lifespan of a simple worm, C. elegans. The lessons from that discovery, and others, are pointing to how we might one day significantly...
TED Talks
Richard Resnick: Welcome to the genomic revolution
Cheap and fast genome sequencing is about to turn health care (and insurance, and politics) upside down. Richard Resnick shows how, in this accessible talk.
TED Talks
Wendy Chung: Autism — what we know (and what we don't know yet)
In this factual talk, geneticist Wendy Chung shares what we know about autism spectrum disorder — for example, that autism has multiple, perhaps interlocking, causes. Looking beyond the worry and concern that can surround a diagnosis,...
SciShow
The Tree of Life Is Messed Up
Taxonomy is a powerful tool, and one that modern biology wouldn't be able to function without. But trying to shoehorn the messy, complicated web of interrelationships that is biology into neat boxes has resulted in a pretty messy tree of...
TED Talks
Mina Bissell: Experiments that point to a new understanding of cancer
For decades, researcher Mina Bissell pursued a revolutionary idea -- that a cancer cell doesn't automatically become a tumor, but rather, depends on surrounding cells (its microenvironment) for cues on how to develop. She shares the two...
TED Talks
Emma Teeling: The secret of the bat genome
In Western society, bats are often characterized as creepy, even evil. Zoologist Emma Teeling encourages us to rethink common attitudes toward bats, whose unique and fascinating biology gives us insight into our own genetic makeup.
SciShow
DNA and Dung Beetles
Chapters View all CARL LINNAEUS 1:24 20% OF KNOWN SPECIES 1:38 NOT 100 MILLION 1:51 DEEP SEA LOBSTERS 2:25 VENEZUELAN SNAIL 2:28 FISH COUNT 2:39
TED Talks
Danny Hillis: Back to the future (of 1994)
From deep in the TED archive, Danny Hillis outlines an intriguing theory of how and why technological change seems to be accelerating, by linking it to the very evolution of life itself. The presentation techniques he uses may look...
SciShow
Secrets of the Vampire Squid
This week in SciShow News, Hank tells us about some weird science, including a squid that's not a squid, animals that can talk, and new insights into how you can mess up your body much faster and for much longer than you ever thought...
SciShow
Our Best Bets for Treating COVID-19
It will probably be at least a year before we have a vaccine for COVID-19. But in March, the WHO launched a megatrial tolook at four treatment options for the virus.
TED Talks
Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species?
Throughout human evolution, multiple versions of humans co-existed. Could we be mid-upgrade now? Juan Enriquez sweeps across time and space to bring us to the present moment -- and shows how technology is revealing evidence that suggests...
TED Talks
Juan Enriquez: The life code that will reshape the future
Scientific discoveries, futurist Juan Enriquez notes, demand a shift in code, and our ability to thrive depends on our mastery of that code. Here, he applies this notion to the field of genomics.
SciShow
The Strange Case of the Missing Sunscreen Gene
If you've ever spent too much time in the sun and forgotten to put on sunscreen, you know how painful a sunburn can be. But for some animals, forgetting the sunscreen wouldn't be a problem because they can just produce their own!
TED Talks
TED: What will humans look like in 100 years? | Juan enriquez
We can evolve bacteria, plants and animals -- futurist Juan enriquez asks: Is it ethical to evolve the human body? In a visionary talk that ranges from medieval prosthetics to present day neuroengineering and genetics, enriquez sorts out...