As the year 1905 began, Albert Einstein faced life as a "failed" academic. Yet within the next twelve months, he would publish four extraordinary papers, each on a different topic, that were destined to radically transform our...

Although one third of the population suffers from motion sickness, scientists aren't exactly sure what causes it. Like the common cold, it's a seemingly simple problem that's still without a cure. And if you think it's bad on a long...

Black holes are the result of absolute gravitational collapse of a massive body: a point of hypothetical infinite density surrounded by an event horizon. At that horizon time is frozen and the fabric of space itself cascades inwards at...

How does a robin know to fly south? The answer might be weirder than you think: Quantum physics may be involved. Jim Al-Khalili rounds up the extremely new, extremely strange world of quantum biology, where something Einstein once called...

Hank gives us the specifics on the "discovery" of the elusive Higgs boson. It is, at the very least, a victory for the scientific method!

About 10% of the world population is left-handed. But why does handedness exist and what determines which hand is dominant? Scientists have suggested several theories, but the answer may well lie with evolution.

Difficult emotions can get under your skin if you're not careful. Sport and performance consultant Jessica Woods calls this the "jumping cholla effect," inspired by a sneaky kind of cactus that detaches and burrows its spines into...

Today we’re talking about how we actually DO sociology. Nicole explains the research method: form a question and a hypothesis, collect data, and analyze that data to contribute to our theories about society.

When you think about math, what do you think of? Numbers? Equations? Patterns maybe? How about.... knots? As in, actual tangles and knots?

Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities -- that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city's population. In...

The toughest, most dominant canine gets the resources and respect - or at least that's the idea that caught on culturally. Turns out, that's not necessarily how it works.

Nowadays, we're pretty confident about how the dinosaurs died out, but there are still other extinctions throughout Earth's history, some big, some small, that remain unsolved.

From shipping routes to airplane traffic to even the Internet, transportation planning is all about designing optimal transportation networks to move goods, information, and people around the globe. Today, we're going to discuss...

Crash Course Big History is back! It turns out, we couldn't tell all of the 13.8 billion years of the history of the universe in 10 Crash Course Episodes. So, Big History host Emily Graslie has returned to add 6 more episodes that look...

Only if you are truly open to the possibility of being wrong can you ever learn, says researcher Alex Edmans. In an insightful talk, he explores how confirmation bias -- the tendency to only accept information that supports your personal...

Hank profiles this year's Nobel laureates in science, whose achievements have helped us understand questions as small as how our cells transport materials, and as big as why matter exists at all.

In today’s episode, Hank asks you to consider all the ways people talk about justice and what we really mean when we use that word. We’ll explain various theories of justice, just distribution, and different approaches to punishment.

Learn about the Greek physician and philosopher Galen of Pergamon, whose experiments and discoveries changed medicine. -- In the 16th century, an anatomist named Andreas Vesalius made a shocking discovery: the most famous human anatomy...

Inspired by Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, physicist Miguel Alcubierre set out to transform one of the cornerstones of science fiction iconography, the Warp Drive, into reality. But is it even possible? Can we "warp" the fabric of reality...

Investigate the theories surrounding cosmic dust bunnies and discover how the tiny particles could hold the key to the formation of life on Earth. -- Consider the spot where you’re sitting. Travel backwards in time and it might’ve...

Why are babies cute? Why is cake sweet? Philosopher Dan Dennett has answers you wouldn't expect, as he shares evolution's counterintuitive reasoning on cute, sweet and sexy things (plus a new theory from Matthew Hurley on why jokes are...

The Higgs Boson. What more need be said?

The equations of quantum field theory allow us to calculate the behaviour of subatomic particles by expressing them as vibrations in quantum fields. But even the most elegant and complete formulations of quantum physics - like the Dirac...

Is there more than one universe? In this visually rich, action-packed talk, Brian Greene shows how the unanswered questions of physics (starting with a big one: What caused the Big Bang?) have led to the theory that our own universe is...