Steel and plastic are essential to much of our infrastructure and technology. Steel is strong and hard, but difficult to shape intricately. Plastic can take on just about any form, but it's weak and soft. Wouldn't it be nice if there...

How to think about matrix multiplication visually as successively applying two different linear transformations.

The decisions we make while we browse the internet are suprisingly similar to the ones animals make as they forage for food...here's why.

Sorting organisms into categories seems pretty simple at first, but look a little closer and things get weird.

For millennia, we mostly had to make do with natural pigments and dyes, but in the last 300 years or so, chemical synthesis has revolutionized the colors of our world.

Jessi and Squeaks have talked about how wells move water from one place to another before; now they're going to show you how to build your very own so you can see for yourself!

Racism morphs, spreading and hiding behind numerous half-truths and full-blown falsities about where it lives and who embodies it. In this actionable talk, political scientist Candis Watts Smith debunks three widely accepted myths about...

The shape, contents and future of the universe are all intricately related. We know that it's mostly flat; we know that it's made up of baryonic matter (like stars and planets), but mostly dark matter and dark energy; and we know that...

It's not just chlorine that irritates your eyes in a pool. It's actually something a lot more disgusting

"The bends" is one of the biggest risks that humans have to deal with when diving, but why don't marine animals, which are diving all the time, get them?

China has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2060 -- and its citizens are helping industries across the country reach that goal. Environmentalist Ma Jun introduces the Blue Map, an app that empowers people to report pollution violations in...

You’re probably aware that your blood can be A, B, AB or O, but it turns out that blood types can get a lot more complicated than that!

Scientists were able to measure the emission lines of antimatter! And we may have some new clues about how dinosaurs lost their teeth on the way to becoming birds.

If you’ve heard anything about pesticides, it’s probably about how toxic they are. But they make growing food more cost-effective, so when some make it into your groceries, how bad can they be?

We've all seen and shared a few LOLCats and Internet Memes in our time, but is it possible that these images and videos are actually a new form of art? Idea Channel takes a closer look at how memes function in our new interconnected...

Researchers have found ancient communities of microbes that have been buried deep, for a hundred million years! This discovery might be the oldest living thing on Earth, and could even expand the search for life on other planets.

People have a lot of ideas about how they can protect themselves from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, but many of those ideas just don’t hold up, and some make things worse!

Carbon dating transformed fields like archeology and paleontology, but its use might be in danger.

It is time for a gender reckoning, beginning with men authentically confronting our internal selves and each other, says essayist and intersectional justice advocate Jimmie Briggs. In this call to action for gender equity, he unpacks how...

This episode of Space Time is actually about Spacetime, so pull up a chair, grab your favorite snack, and buckle up, because this episode is going to be a TRIP. Gabe explores what reality is, what "time" is, and why what you think those...

We're headed towards a global food crisis: Nearly 3 billion people depend on the ocean for food, and at our current rate we already take more fish from the ocean than it can naturally replace. In this fact-packed, eye-opening talk,...

The researchers have found that almost all the illegal ivories are from recent poaching. Meanwhile, humans are not only animals that are farsighted!

The Deep Space Network is a special network of radio dishes for tracking and talking to spacecraft, and it contributes some cool scientific observations of its own too.

You might be concerned with your kids talking to their invisible friends, but those imaginary friends might have some positive impacts on your kids.