SciShow
You Went Through Puberty as a Baby
We all remember the woes and trials of our adolescence. But what you may not have realized is that your middle-school bout with surging hormone's wasn't the first time you went through a sort of puberty. From surging hormones to hair...
SciShow
The Island Made Of Gemstones
Zabargad Island in the Red Sea is so crusted with peridot that it's fair to say the place is literally made of it.
SciShow
Do Animals (That Aren’t Us) Procrastinate?
Are there any non-human animals that take a task they don't want to do and think to themselves "Eh, I'll do it tomorrow"? Even if they know the task will be harder and/or more unpleasant by putting it off? One of our Patreon subscribers...
SciShow
We Finally Landed on the Bottom of the Moon!
Humans have been hurling spacecraft at the Moon for over 60 years. But even with all that practice, it's still quite the challenge to successfully land something on the surface. Case in point: in August 2023, two missions attempted to...
SciShow
The Snail We Misidentified More Than 100 Times
Everyone makes mistakes, but misidentifying a species more than 100 times? It happened. In this List Show, we tell the tale of the periwinkle snail and other creatures scientists confused for someone else.
SciShow
How Many Suns Can One Planet Have?
Earth and the other seven planets in our solar system have only one star: the Sun. Years ago, astronomers found the first exoplanet that had two stars. They also found one with three stars. And four. Just how many stars can one planet have?
SciShow
The Spiders That Turn Stars into Planets
Neutron stars, are some of the most extreme phenomenon in the universe. It's doubly so for a subset known as pulsars. Some are spinning so fast, and are so massive, that astronomers aren't entirely sure how they got to be that way. One...
PBS
What Makes The Strong Force Strong?
Quantum mechanics gets weirder as you go to smaller sizes and higher energies. It’s strange enough for atoms, but positively bizarre when we get to the atomic nucleus. And today we’re going nuclear, as we dive into the weird world of...
PBS
When the Sahara Was Green
The climate of the Sahara was completely different thousands of years ago. And we’re not talking about just a few years of extra rain. We’re talking about a climate that was so wet for so long that animals and humans alike made...
PBS
When Antarctica Was Green
Before the start of the Eocene Epoch about 56 million years ago--Antarctica was still joined to both Australia and South America. And it turns out that a lot of what we recognize about the southern hemisphere can be traced back to that...
PBS
How Blood Evolved (Many Times)
Blood is one of the most revolutionary features in our evolutionary history. Over hundreds of millions of years, the way in which blood does its job has changed over and over again. As a result, we animals have our familiar red blood....
SciShow
Corn Shouldn't Be Food, But It Is
You probably have a bag of frozen corn in your freezer, or have chowed down on a buttery ear of corn at a cookout. But not only did it take thousands of years for humans to domesticate teosinte to corral it into what we now know as corn,...
SciShow
Why Astronauts Need Farm-to-Table
Growing food in space will be necessary to support the future of space exploration. And it won't be monoculture, either. Here's why astronauts will be growing whole ecosystems in space.
SciShow
You Suck at Skipping Rocks
Most of us are stoked if we can get a stone to skip more than 3 or 4 times. The world record holder at skipping stones has 88 skips. Here's why science says that number is way too low.
SciShow
Why Teeth Make The Best Fossils
Teeth are so well preserved in the fossil record that they make the best, most informative fossils we can find, from phylogenetic studies to learning about the evolution of the human brain.
SciShow
The Wildest Noises in Wildlife… and Dunes
Nature can be pretty noisy, but there's some stuff that's just quiet all the time - right? Well, thanks to advances in audio equipment, researchers are finding out that everything from plants to bacteria have a lot more to say that we...
SciShow
What Do Parrots Think They’re Saying?
You ever see a parrot mimicking humans words, and wonder if they really get what they're talking about? They're smarter than they look - there's a lot of meaning in every squawk and chirp that parrots make. Not bad for a bird brain.
SciShow
Why Can’t We Scoop All the Plastic Out of the Ocean?
Lots of people want to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and plastics have a huge impact on ocean environments. But marine wildlife are already adapting to our plastic waste, which means cleaning it up isn't as simple as just......
SciShow
Why Are Saturn’s Rings Younger Than Saturn?
Saturn's rings are younger than Saturn, and the most spectacular sight in the Solar System is also disappearing. How do we know? By running our finger through some cosmic dust.
SciShow
Even Locusts Hate Plagues of Locusts
Plagues of locusts have been documented since ancient times, and they affect the food supply of one in ten people today. How can we stop them? Well, computer models of locusts swarms tell us every locust is scared to death of its neighbors.
SciShow
Adorable Dolphin Kiddos Play Like Us
Whether it's solo or with a friend, young dolphins love to partake in a bit of play.
SciShow
Chemo Sucks. Science Is Changing That
We use chemotherapy because it works, but no one has ever come home from chemo treatment and gone "That was fun!" Let's look at the new targeted therapies and personalized treatments for cancer that doctors are developing for clinical use.
SciShow
Why Flies Die When They See Dead Flies
You're lucky you don't literally age faster and drop dead when you see a dead person... because fruit flies do. Here's what researchers are learning about the connection between perception, aging, and mood disorders like depression.
SciShow
You're Basically A Mushroom
The tree of life you learned in school is wrong, even if you just graduated. We like to sort eukaryotes into big kingdoms or supergroups, but scientists can't agree what those groups should be. Here's why that's a good thing.