China's Red Beach is a stunningly beautiful tourist destination. But the plants that make Red Beach red are hiding a secret -- one that could save other wetlands, if we can save this one first. Hosted by: Stefan Chin (he/him)

It's not just fictional sitcom characters who struggle with navigating an oversized sofa around a tight corner. Mathematicians have their own version of the problem, and have spent the last six decades trying to not just find the largest...

Today we're talking about the biggest snakes that ever lived -- like anacondas, pythons, and Titanoboa -- and how they evolved to be so big in the first place. Hosted by: Savannah Geary (they/them)

Antarctica probably isn't the first place you think of when you hear about volcanoes. But there's a lot happening under the icy tundra, and not all of it's a good thing. Here's how rising temperatures could lead to an even more explosive...

You may have heard some pretty bold claims about xylitol, a sugar substitute that's in a lot of things. And while it's definitely bad for dogs, it's great for people, and there's a lot of research out there about some surprising ways...

There's a complex, mysterious current running throughout the Atlantic Ocean, and it's in trouble. But to help save it, researchers need to understand it, and finding ways to study it has been a challenge. But it turns out that the secret...

Pamukkale, Turkey's Cotton Palace, is home to some of the most beautiful hot springs in the world. Located in the Denizli Basin, it's not only unique, but can tell us a surprising amount about the history of the site. Hosted by: Stefan...

How would you deal with sewage waste pollution? Here in Missoula, the answer was.... poplar trees. Here's the weird reason that these poplar trees are some of nature's best cleaners, and why our hometown heroes might not be so awesome...

On top of a volcano in Indonesia, there are three lakes. But these three neighbors couldn't be more different, since each of them is a different vivid hue. Let's talk about the weird chemistry atop Keli Mutu Volcano and the three...

Great white sharks have nothing on these terrifying jaws. Some marine animals have adaptations that turn their jaws into harpoons, fishing nets, claw machines, and more. Hosted by: Savannah Geary (they/them)

A biologist’s natural habitat is anywhere questions about life are being asked—whether the subject is a nematode or a narwhal, a single cell, or a whole ecosystem. In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’re flipping the microscope...

Science offers a way of discovering and understanding the world around us, driven by questions and tested with evidence. And it’s a twisty-turny team effort— you won’t find many lone geniuses out there, or straight lines from hypothesis...

Biology is the study of life—a four-letter word that connects you to 4 billion years worth of family tree. The word “life” can be tricky to define, but a shared set of characteristics helps biologists identify living things. In this...

If you were really into gift shops as a kid, you probably loved to look at all the shiny geodes. But those little geodes are nothing compared to the mother of all geodes, found is in Put In Bay, Ohio. So let's talk about how this geode...

In the early 1960s, NASA rolled up to a US Navy facility in Pennsylvania with one goal in mind: stick its newly-minted astronauts into one of the most extreme centrifuges that has ever been built, and whirl them around really fast to...

You can dye your hair, you can get a tan, but the color of your eyes is pretty much set in stone - or is it? From weird diseases to temper flare-ups and even iris implants, here are just a few ways that your eye color might not be so...

Your thyroid is a tiny gland in your throat, and what it lacks in size, it makes up for in power. This thing controls your metabolism, so you literally can't have power without it. And unfortunately, there's a lot that can go wrong with...

The Stern-Gerlach Experiment in lauded in textbooks around the world for its contributions to the world of quantum physics. But for a few years, scientists unknowingly praised it for proving the wrong thing! Because instead of proving an...

Diamonds are cool, but they form really far below the Earth's crust, and the main way they get to the surface(ish) is through rock formations called kimberlites. And these kimberlites are really rare and really weird. So let's talk about...

The New Jersey earthquake of 2024 might have felt bigger than ones of the same magnitude on a Richter scale or intensity in California. That's because earthquakes in the eastern US go farther and hit harder than their western...

Hosted by: Savannah Geary (they/them)

If all goes well, we'll be sending astronauts back to the Moon in just a couple of years. And scientists have a lot to figure out before then, including the answer to a seemingly simple question: What time is it up there? Hosted by:...

Everyone knows where Punt is, right? The Ancient Egyptians sure did — they traded with them for millennia. But apparently they were *so* familiar with its location, they never bothered to write it down for posterity. So archaeologists...

If someone (say, a small child) asks you why the sky is blue, you might dive into an explanation of Rayleigh scattering. But if you want to give them a way cooler explanation, you can tell them it's because of bacteria. Hosted by: Stefan...