Original Title: We’re Drowning in Plastic Pollution. Can We Actually Fix It? There’s been a lot of talk on YouTube lately about ocean plastic pollution and #TeamSeas. But there hasn’t been enough talk about the **ridiculously unthinkable scale of the ocean plastic pollution problem** or how it intersects with other environmental issues like climate change. And here’s a big spoiler alert: Nearly all environmental scientists agree that ocean plastic pollution isn’t a problem we can clean our way out of. So what CAN we do? That’s what this video is about.

Original Title: Here's What I Learned... I’m vaccinated. I’m boosted. And I still got infected with the omicron variant of COVID-19. Here’s what I learned, and what it means for the possible end of this pandemic.

Original Title: Why Every Video Is An Illusion Movies. Video games. YouTube videos. All of them work because we accidentally figured out a way to fool your brain’s visual processing system, and you don’t even know it’s happening. In this video, I talk to neuroscientist David Eagleman about the secret illusions that make the moving picture possible.

Reading. You’re doing it right now. I bet you don’t even have to think about it. But have you ever wondered what’s happening in your brain to turn all these weird symbols into meaning? This video will teach you how to read all over again. What you’re doing right now is way more amazing than you ever realized.

How many times do you look in a mirror every day? Have you ever stopped to wonder how they actually work? Mirrors do strange things to our world, seemingly flipping everything so that what was right is left and what was left is right. But what if I told you that mirrors don’t actually flip the world left to right? The real magic of mirrors is far stranger and more interesting, as you’re about to learn.

Why do whales, elephants, and other large animals not get cancer? Logically, the larger an animal is, and the longer it lives, the more likely it should be to get cancer. But these giants don’t. Why is that? And can the answer help humanity?

Original Title: What Is Life? I recently got to sit down with physicist and science communicator extraordinaire Prof. Brian Cox. Did we talk about black holes, the Big Bang, or alien worlds? Nope! We talked about biology. Specifically, what is “life” and how did it begin? You might not expect it, but looking at life through the lens of physics can teach us a lot about why interesting groups of atoms like you and me exist.

Optical illusions are fun, but they can also teach us a lot about how our brains work. In particular, how our brains accomplish the incredible feat of constructing a three-dimensional reality using nothing but 2-D images from our eyes. A young artist and psychology researcher named Adelbert Ames, Jr. developed a series of illusions that help us understand how this process of constructing reality actually works. Sometimes we need to be fooled in order to gain understanding.

We’re living longer. Dying less. Human life expectancy has doubled in just a couple centuries. Machines and meals and medicines keeping us alive long past the age where we can make babies. Does this mean our species is no longer under the influence of natural selection? Have humans stopped evolving?

Hurricanes, typhoons, and tropical cyclones are Earth’s most powerful storms, capable of unleashing destruction and death on coastal areas worldwide. As climate change warms Earth’s oceans, we face more risk of storms rapidly intensifying into category 5, sometimes in less than a single day. Being able to predict these rapidly intensifying storms will save lives, but studying hurricanes in detail is difficult and dangerous. So in order to improve our understanding of hurricanes, scientists have built a machine that can create hurricane conditions indoors.

There is an absolutely weird, but surprisingly common phenomenon called sensory adaptation that you experience every day in countless ways without even realizing it. Without this very strange phenomenon, you would be lost, overwhelmed, and completely unable to navigate the external world. In this episode, we’ll explore the many ways your brain “tunes out” most of what’s going on around you so that you can be the high-functioning smart people that we know you are.

You may not be an expert, but perhaps you feel pretty confident that you could ride a motorcycle, or give someone a decent haircut - if you absolutely had to - right? Not so much, according to the psychological phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Turns out we’re all at risk of being overconfident about something. Watch Joe put this theory to the test as he tries to land a 737 (in a simulator, of course). Oh, did we mention Joe's not a pilot?

What's the tallest mountain on Earth? It might seem like an easy question to answer, but in reality it's one that brings up more NEW questions than answers. It turns out that the way we measure mountains rests on a lot of approximations, assumptions, and averages. And when you dig into those, there's several contenders for the tallest mountain, each with their own good case for the title. So, which mountain do YOU think should take the throne?

There is no phase of a human’s lifetime that is as strange and disgus....er....magical as the transition from childhood into adulthood - that handful of years that we call . . . PUBERTY. Why does it happen? How does it work? Why is it so weird? Join Joe in this whirlwind tour of the endocrine system to find the answers.

There’s a crime wave sweeping the world right now. A new kind of theft that takes just minutes to carry out. These criminals are on the hunt for something that fetches big bucks on the black market. Numbers are skyrocketing, and public officials are scrambling for answers. Turns out, we can blame it all on neutron stars and some oddities of the periodic table. When it comes to neutron crime, it's hard to get a charge to stick… heh heh

You’ve seen it in the comment section before: “Climate change is natural. It’s happened before and it will keep happening”. In reality, comments like these are the newest kind of climate change denial. In this video we’re going to learn about all the reasons that Earth’s climate changes, natural and otherwise, and then how we know that modern climate change can’t be blamed on natural forces. Maybe we can finally put this biggest myth about climate change in the trash.

One day around 15,000 years ago, a wall of ice 2,000 feet tall and 30 miles wide suddenly broke wide open, and it unleashed the largest flood that we know of in the history of Earth. Come and hit the road with me as we search for the geologic fingerprints of the Missoula Ice Age Floods, and learn the story of one of the worst natural disasters that’s ever happened!

All of modern society relies upon a seemingly simple but surprisingly complex unit of measurement: the second. But knowing exactly what a “second” is is more complicated than you might think!

There are some startlingly black animals out there, whether they’re in the deep ocean or in the darkest corners of the rainforest. But humans have created some stunningly black substances too, using science and engineering. So who wins, nature or humans? In this video, I go in search of the blackest black things on Earth to see what’s really the blackest… and why.

Embarrassment. Awkwardness. Cringe. No matter what you call it. it’s one of the most unique human emotions, and one that’s particularly hard to figure out. But if a feeling exists and has lasted through evolution, then it probably has a purpose!