Awesome Learning

(SPOILERS, Gore) ScreenPrism explores how Donald Glover’s Atlanta is driven more by themes of helplessness and the absurdity of reality, rather than a forward-moving plot, escalating stakes or likable characters, even though it has those as well.

TierZoo takes on a question from one of Jim Halpert’s many jokes on Dwight Schrute: Which bear is best? Most bears are at once cute and deadly, but it seems Dwight Jim was right. Only one bear is suited for today’s rapidly changing meta.

Most years, trees produce a pretty consistent quantity of seeds. But once in a while, the trees in a region go crazy, and crank out many times their normal amount of offspring. MinuteEarth explains a bit about the phenomenon know in arboreal circles as “masting.”

Tim from Grand Illusions shows off a desktop plaything that statistics and math geeks will love. It uses a funnel, pegs, and hundreds of tiny steel beads to demonstrate the nature of probability and randomness. You can buy one for yourself here or on Amazon.

(Gore) Nope, not the good boys. TierZoo’s latest look at the players of the game we call life looks not at domestic dogs, but the world’s wild canines. Cover your best bud’s eyes and learn more about five of the best hunters – and a gatherer – in the meta.

Director, writer, producer, and explorer James Cameron recently sat down with WIRED to answer questions posted on Twitter about the technology found in science fiction, how close some of these are to becoming reality, and the ethical questions they pose.

Did you know that nobody was actually burned at the stake during the Salem witch trials? Sam from the Sam O’Nella Academy sets us straight on this and nine other historical misconceptions, told with his usual mix of veracity, humor, and primitive drawings.

“They are short, stocky, and scaleless, and often look like little pieces of garbage.” We haven’t heard from ZeFrank in eons, so we were thrilled to see he dropped a new nature video for us to enjoy. Here, he introduces us to some weird looking, camouflaging ambush predators.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield knows a thing or two about space exploration. So who better to trust when it comes to separating reality from myth when it comes to floating around above the Earth? This 11-minute video from WIRED is packed with nifty facts about space.

CGP Grey narrates and animates Nick Bostrom’s brilliant 2005 paper – a fable about a dragon that reflects humanity’s progress in extending our lives through medicine. It speaks to how adversity drives ingenuity and the tenuous equilibrium between faith and science.

In theory, energy consumed by a black hole is trapped forever. But it turns out it might be possible to harness the rotational energy of a spinning black hole to do everything from powering civilization to creating the biggest explosive device ever. Kurzgesagt explains.

(PG-13: Language) If you can believe it, YouTube has only been around since 2005. Lots of things have changed with the service since then, and Casually Explained is here to casually explain the history of Google’s video juggernaut, and what its changes have meant for creators.

Life Noggin explores another one of life’s imponderables – what would have to happen for it to be possible for humans to move through solid objects? Even though there’s lots of empty space between the atoms everything is made of, it’s highly unlikely.

In this clip from Adam Ruins Everything‘s episode An Ancient History of Violence, the show points out that gladiators were actually treated and governed much like today’s combat athletes. Still, a small percentage of them did meet their end in the arena.

How to Make Everything is making a series of videos about currency. For his first video, he briefly talks about the history of money, then at 4:40 he goes out with a gold panning enthusiast to try his hand at extracting gold in the simplest way possible.

Real Life Lore simplifies the reasons why time travel to the past is impossible, or rather philosophically unsound. Traveling to the past most likely means destroying your own present, which is either impossible or makes your journey impossible in the first place.

Kurzgesagt dusts off their 2013 video The History & Future of Everything and gives it a shiny coat of paint, with updated animations, and references to events of the last 5 years. Every time we hear about the Middle Ages, we feel much better about today’s problems.

Ever wondered who’s in charge of deciding what emojis make their way onto your phone, and which ones work across all devices? Half as Interesting introduces us to emoji expert Jeremy Burge, the vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji subcommittee. Yep, that’s a thing.

After Skool reminds us how world leaders can and should inspire humanity, taking President John F. Kennedy’s impressive and memorable 1962 speech about science, discovery, and enlightenment, and illustrating some of its many highlights.

(PG-13: Language) Think you’re hungry? Sam O’Nella Academy introduces us to Tarrare, an 18th century Frenchman known for his never-ending hunger and uncanny ability to eat inhuman amounts of food. ‘Twas no man. ‘Twas a remorseless eatin’ machine!

Engineer Mark Rober and teacher Al “Doc Fizzix” Balmer explain the physics of these primitive race cars that get their power solely from the energy stored in a mousetrap’s spring. Along the way, you’ll learn about the principles of mechanical advantage, levers, and wheels.

Nerdwriter reminds us to be vigilant and read text before clicking links when we’re browsing online or playing games. He points us to “dark” patterns – bad user experiences that are designed to manipulate an outcome. For more, there’s a helpful awareness website.

Nintendo’s puffy pink ball of goo is so fun to play with because of all the crazy things his (or her?) body can do. But what would a creature like Kirby be like if it actually existed? Play Noggin answers another question that nobody was asking.