PBS
How Did Dinosaurs Get So Huge?
Part of why we're so fascinated with extinct dinosaurs it's just hard for us to believe that animals that huge actually existed. And yet, they existed! From the Jurassic to the Cretaceous Periods, creatures as tall as a five-story...
PBS
An Illustrated History of Dinosaurs
Our image of dinosaurs has been constantly changing since naturalists started studying them about 350 years ago. Taken together, these pictures can tell us a whole lot about just how much we have learned. Let's explore the history of...
PBS
What Was the Ancestor of Everything?
The search for our origins go back to a single common ancestor -- one that remains shrouded in mystery. It's the ancestor of everything we know and today scientists call it the last universal common ancestor, or LUCA.
PBS
The Whole Saga of the Supercontinents
The study of natural history is the study of how the world has changed but Earth itself is in a constant state of flux -- because the ground beneath your feet is always moving. So if we want to know how we got here, we have to understand...
PBS
When Birds Had Teeth
Experts are still arguing over whether Archaeopteryx was a true bird, or a paravian dinosaur, or some other kind of dino. But regardless of what side you're on, how did this fascinating, bird-like animal relate to today's birds? It turns...
PBS
When Giant Fungi Ruled
420 million years ago, a giant feasted on the dead, growing slowly into the largest living thing on land. It belonged to an unlikely group of pioneers that ultimately made life on land possible -- the fungi.
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.
PBS
Why Do We Love Zombies?
Zombies are EVERYWHERE!! Wait, don't panic- we mean in pop culture, not outside your window. But why is that? Bad guys and monsters seem to go through phases: one decade there's a dozen movies about aliens, ten years later it's vampires....
PBS
The Age of Reptiles in Three Acts
Reptiles emerged from the Paleozoic as humble creatures, but in time, they grew to become some of the largest forms of life ever to stomp, swim, and soar across the planet. This Age of Reptiles was a spectacular prehistoric epic, and it...
PBS
Does Math Really Exist?
Math is invisible. Unlike physics, chemistry, and biology we can't see it, smell it, or even directly observe it in the universe. And so that has made a lot of really smart people ask, does it actually even EXIST?!?!
PBS
The Eye of Sauron Reveals a Forming Solar System!
Fomalhaut is a massive young star surrounded by a ring of dust debris that can tell us a great deal about the formation of our own solar system.
PBS
Native American imagery is everywhere but understanding lags behind
Native imagery is embedded in the national subconscious, whether we're paying attention or not. A new exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian is titled simply "Americans" and shows how all aspects of life have been touched...
PBS
The Multiplication Multiverse
What happens if you multiply things that aren't numbers? And what happens if that multiplication is not associative?
PBS
The Honeycombs of 4-Dimensional Bees ft. Joe Hanson
Why is there a hexagonal structure in honeycombs? Why not squares? Or asymmetrical blobby shapes? In 36 B.C., the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro wrote about two of the leading theories of the day. First: bees have six legs, so they...
PBS
How to Break Cryptography
Only 4 steps stand between you and the secrets hidden behind RSA cryptography. Find out how to crack the world's most commonly used form of encryption.
PBS
Is Community a Postmodern Masterpiece?
Though the TV show Community has never achieved huge ratings, it has a passionate cult following, including us here at Idea Channel. The show plays with genre and narrative in such a creative way that it brings to mind the cultural and...
PBS
Remembering Rosa Parks
Following the death of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks at age 92, two civil rights leaders discuss her life and legacy.
PBS
Defining Infinity
Set theory is supposed to be a foundation of all of mathematics. How does it handle infinity?
PBS
Ocean clean-up
About 9 million tons of plastic are dumped into the world's oceans every year -- enough to fill a football stadium 23 miles high. But a project dubbed the Ocean Cleanup aims to eliminate it with a method that researchers are testing in...
PBS
Your Place in the Primate Family Tree
Purgatorius, a kind of mammal called a plesiadapiform, might've been one of your earliest ancestors. But how did we get from a mouse-sized creature that looked more like a squirrel than a monkey -- to you, a member of Homo sapiens?
PBS
Is Developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) Ethical?
From R2-D2 to the Jetsons, our future robot companions promise to be helpful and handy! But many people have their concerns: will the development of artificial intelligence end up REPLACING humans in the work force, pushing already high...
PBS
Could NASA Start the Zombie Apocalypse?
We're just as fascinated as the rest of you with predicting how the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE will start. One surprisingly real scenario is that it could start in SPACE! Especially given the crazy effects space has on bacteria and viruses, and...