Biologist Sara Lewis has spent the past 20 years getting to the bottom of the magic and wonder of fireflies. In this charming talk, she tells us how and why the beetles produce their silent sparks, what happens when two fireflies have...

Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab, talks about his life as an inventor, starting with his high-school company selling solar energy plans and kits. Learn here about a groundbreaking system for solar cells -- and some questions we haven't...

In this collection of classic MinuteEarth videos, we answer the question "why are you the way that you are?"

Biologist Mark Pagel shares an intriguing theory about why humans evolved our complex system of language. He suggests that language is a piece of "social technology" that allowed early human tribes to access a powerful new tool:...

How does evolution really work? Actually, not how some of our common evolutionary metaphors would have us believe. For instance, it's species, not individual organisms, that adapt to produce evolution, and genes don't "want" to be passed...

This week on Crash Course Big History, Emily is talking about process of human evolution, and the knack for innovation that has allowed humans to become so dominant on the Earth. Human innovation, and the ability to build on those...

The human lifespan might be limited, in part, because natural selection just stops working late in life.

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Mortality plateau: the...

Paul Andersen introduces the topic of Biology. He covers each of the four main ideas that were developed by the College Board. These ideas revolve around the concepts of evolution, free energy, information and systems.

In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about evolution. So, in the last 3.8 billion years, life on Earth has evolved from single-celled prokaryotes to the dizzying array of life we have today. So how did all this...

Squeaks and Jessi have a story to tell you about the peppered moth, a special insect that taught us a lot about a process called natural selection.

Nina Jablonski says that differing skin colors are simply our bodies' adaptation to varied climates and levels of UV exposure. Charles Darwin disagreed with this theory, but she explains, that's because he did not have access to NASA.

Some of the biggest evolution questions finally answered.

Explore speciation with The Amoeba Sisters. This video discusses sympatric and allopatric speciation and covers several types of isolation types including behavioral, temporal, and habitat isolations. Table of Contents: Intro 00:00...

A common misconception is that evolution is a long chain of progress, where organisms gain cool, new features over time. However, if a trait doesn't help with survival or reproduction, eventually it can disappear. Here are a few...

In this video Paul Andersen explains the importance of social interactions and group behavior. Organisms live in groups because it overs them greater success and has been selected for through natural selection. Some groups are stable...

Paul Andersen defines microevolution as any change in the frequency of the allele pool. He then explains the five mechanisms of evolution; small sample size, non-random mating, mutations, gene flow and natural selection.

The human genome is 3.2 billion base pairs long and contains around 20,000 genes, but how much of that is garbage?

In this video Paul Andersen defines adaptations and explains how organisms can become better adapted to their surroundings using the process of natural selection. Specific examples of adaptations, like coat color in rock pocket mice, as...

Hank and his cat Cameo help teach us about animal behavior and how we can discover why animals do the things they do.

Hank explains speciation - the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise - in terms of finches, ligers, mules, and dogs.

Everyone knows the name Charles Darwin, but his lesser known frenemy, Alfred Russel Wallace, was developing a lot of the same ideas around the same time.

Hank gets down to the nitty gritty about meiosis, the special type of cell division that is necessary for sexual reproduction in eukaryotic organisms.

Paul Andersen explains the importance of selection in biology. Artificial selection occurs when humans choose traits that will be selected for or against. This has created the variety of domesticated animals and crops. He then...

Paul Andersen describes microevolution and macroevolution in the stickleback fish of Loberg Lake. He describes how anadramous fish repopulated the lake after poisoning and adapted to the new environment through natural selection. He...