TED Talks
TED: With spatial intelligence, AI will understand the real world | Fei-Fei Li
In the beginning of the universe, all was darkness — until the first organisms developed sight, which ushered in an explosion of life, learning and progress. AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li says a similar moment is about to happen for computers...
PBS
How We Identified One of Earth’s Earliest Animals
Scientists had no idea what type of organisms the life forms of the Ediacaran were—lichen, colonies of bacteria, fungi or something else. It turns out, the key to solving the puzzle of Precambrian life was a tiny bit of fossilized fat.
PBS
These Fossils Were Supposed To Be Impossible
Hidden in rocks once thought too old to contain complex life we may have found the animal kingdom’s oldest known predator.
PBS
The World Before Plate Tectonics
There was a time in Earth’s history that was so stable, geologists once called it the Boring Billion. But the fact is, this period was anything but boring. In fact, it set the stage for our modern version of plate tectonics - and...
TED Talks
TED: The "adjacent possible" -- and how it explains human innovation | Stuart Kauffman
From the astonishing evolutionary advances of the Cambrian explosion to our present-day computing revolution, the trend of dramatic growth after periods of stability can be explained through the theory of the "adjacent possible," says...
SciShow
Is the Mystery of Earth's 1.2 Billion Missing Years Solved? | SciShow News
For the last hundred and fifty years or so, geologists have been trying to wrap their heads around the mystery: in some places, the geologic record just seems to jump by over billion years. And last week, a paper was published that may...
Crash Course
The Modern Revolution: Crash Course Big History
In which Hank and John Green teach you a Crash Course on the modern revolution, and the upside of the progress that humanity has made in the last 500 years or so. And while there are two sides to every history, and many of these changes...
SciShow
A Brief History of Life: When Life Exploded
Right at the beginning of the Paleozoic, there was a huge explosion of more complex life. And that’s when things started to get really interesting. This is our second installment on the history of life, but you can watch in any order you...
TED Talks
Ray Kurzweil: The accelerating power of technology
Inventor, entrepreneur and visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why, by the 2020s, we will have reverse-engineered the human brain and nanobots will be operating your consciousness.
Crash Course
The Modern Revolution Crash Course Big History 8
In which Hank and John Green teach you a Crash Course on the modern revolution, and the upside of the progress that humanity has made in the last 500 years or so. And while there are two sides to every history, and many of these changes...
PBS
The Other Explosion You Should Know About
Fossils found around the world suggest that multi-cellular life was not only present before the Cambrian Explosion, it was much more elaborate and diverse than anyone thought. This is the story of the sudden burst of diversity that...
SciShow
Where Are All the Dinosaur Brains?
We've found plenty of dinosaur bones all around the world, but is it possible to find any fossilized soft tissues from ancient animals?
SciShow
Without Volcanoes, Earth Might be Dead
You might think of plate tectonics as destructive since it's the ultimate force behind earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. But the slow movement of our planet's surface does a lot more than shake things up now and then. Some...
Crash Course
Why the Evolutionary Epic Matters: Crash Course Big History
Today we're talking about evolution_basically the history of all life on Earth. The thing is, why are we talking about this. Well, the story of life, all the way back to single celled microbes billions of years ago, is all part of our...
Crash Course
The History of Life on Earth - Crash Course Ecology
With a solid understanding of biology on the small scale under our belts, it's time for the long view - for the next twelve weeks, we'll be learning how the living things that we've studied interact with and influence each other and...
Crash Course
Simple Animals: Sponges, Jellies, & Octopuses - Crash Course Biology
Hank introduces us to the "simplest" of the animals, complexity-wise: beginning with sponges (whose very inclusion in the list as "animals" has been called into question because they are so simple) and finishing with the most complex...
PBS
From the Cambrian Explosion to the Great Dying
The first era of our current eon, the Paleozoic Era, is probably the most deceptively fascinating time in Earth's history. With near constant revolutions in life, punctuated by catastrophic extinctions, it is also one of the most chaotic.
Bozeman Science
Animals
Paul Andersen briefly surveys members of the Domain Animalia. He begins with brief description of the phylogeny of animals. He then describes the characteristics of all animals, heterotrophy, multicellularity, motility and blastula. He...
Wonderscape
Exploring the Paleozoic Era: From Cambrian Explosion to the Great Dying
Journey through the Paleozoic era, a transformative period in Earth's history marked by the emergence of complex life and culminating in the largest mass extinction ever. Learn about the rise of diverse life forms, from the Cambrian...
AllTime 10s
10 Unsolved Mysteries Of Science
There are some mysteries that not even the greatest scientists of all time have been able to explain!
A Capella Science
Evo-Devo (Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee Parody)
An exploration of the origin and workings of the biological information-processing systems involved in embryonic development, to the tune of Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee's "Despacito"
Professor Dave Explains
The Origin of Multicellular Life: Cell Specialization and Animal Development
Alright, so we've learned a lot about the origin of life. We learned about how the first organic molecules can have formed spontaneously, and how they might have assembled into the first protocell. From there, endosymbiotic theory tells...
Professor Dave Explains
History of the Earth Part 1: Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic Eons
If we are going to learn about the Earth, we had better start from the beginning! The Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic eons will take us all the way from the formation of the Earth, 4.6 billion years ago, until about half a billion years...
Professor Dave Explains
Phylogeny and the Tree of Life
Alright, we've learned about how unicellular organisms came to be, how they became multicellular, and then from those how evolution by natural selection produced all the species in the world today. But there are so many! Millions and...