Awesome Learning

(PG-13: Language) Long before the clothing store, wealthy plantation owners in Central America built massive empires on the backs of its people, all thanks to a little potassium-rich fruit we like to put in our cereal. Sam O’Nella Academy offers up a brief history lesson.

From Mickey Mouse to Bugs Bunny to Goofy to Marvin the Martian, many iconic cartoon characters wear gloves on their hands. Vox’s Estelle Caswell does her best to explain the reasons behind the odd choice of handwear.

Many scientists believe that the future of humanity lies somewhere outside of Earth. It’s just that escaping from our planet is literally rocket science. Kurzgesagt, that crying duck got to us harder than you probably thought it would.

Super Bowl ads cost up to $5 million for 30 seconds of air time. The Film Theory turns into to the Digital Marketing Theory to argue that those ads don’t work. So companies are better off spending their money on a spot where their ad can be on primetime all the time: YouTube.

(PG-13: Language) “I write people talking in rooms.” Lessons from the Screenplay dissects The Social Network to highlight some of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s strengths, and how he and director David Fincher worked together to keep the dialogue-heavy movie engaging.

The archerfish has both the name and the ability to fit right in Pokémon. It catches land-based critters by spitting on them, causing them to fall into the water. It’s so good at aiming that a scientist tested the extent of the archerfish’s intelligence.

Ingvar Cronhammar’s sculpture Elia squats on a field in the arts and trade city of Herning in Denmark. True to Cronhammar’s style, Elia is futuristic yet primitive, imposing yet alluring, and stoic yet bothersome. It emits a flame on random occasions and amplifies thunder.

YouTuber How to Make Everything’s latest project is a pair of prescription glasses. While gathering the raw materials needed for them is surprisingly easy, processing those materials is incredibly hard and time-consuming. Especially if you go it blind.

YouTuber Ahoy’s latest lecture is about one of man’s first and favorite weapons. The bow and arrow have persisted across changing needs, ages and cultures. As such, in video games it’s found not just in shooters but also in RPGs, RTS games and more.

Did you know that NASA wants to make an asteroid orbit the Moon so that astronauts can explore it? Or that it helped create The Learning Channel? Or that it had its budget cut multiple times? Okay maybe that last one isn’t a secret. More in Mental Floss’ video.

Why would we watch what’s essentially an orientation video for Sony’s new hires? Because YouTuber ColdFusion makes it interesting, thanks to old footage and pictures, and choice anecdotes about the house that radio built.

The title to RealLifeLore’s latest video is a trick question. Earth has been hit by many asteroids of varying sizes. If we’re talking about extinction-level space rocks… yes, there are many of those lurking near our planet. They won’t hit us though. Probably.

Animator Eoin Duffy teamed up with TedED to explore a classic thought experiment, in which we are forced to choose between two bad outcomes, one of which saves multiple lives by sacrificing just one, something that autonomous car makers are struggling with now.

Digiatalsoju TV provides a unique perspective on the isolation and anti-American propaganda served up to residents of North Korea as we meet four refugees as they try out some tasty barbeque dishes at a westernized restaurant in South Korea. Seriously, even our forks are evil.

(PG-13) Frame by Frame pays homage to filmmaker Bob Clark and his 1974 cult classic Black Christmas. Way ahead of its time, the film featured the main components of slasher films, including titillation, the holiday setting, the anonymous killer and even the phone gag.

In live action films, editors come in after (most of) the footage has been shot. But in general, it takes way longer to create additional animated sequences. So instead, animated film editors work before anything is “shot”, helping to polish the screenplay and storyboards.

For those of us who primarily speak English, languages without Latin characters in them are generally pretty daunting to learn. But Sam Gellman shows us a way to understand basic concepts of the Korean alphabet in a snap. We already feel so much smarter.

Wendover Productions goes over the most important factors that lead to successful cities, such as population, proximity to water and natural resources, and even the shape of continents. Now we want to play a 4X game.

The School of Life talks about the ways we deceive ourselves, whether it’s about our problems, beliefs, desires or insecurities. We may resort to distractions, being highly emotional or judgmental to avoid the initial pain and shame of self-awareness.

One of the nastiest insects around. The tiger beetle has an appetite for just about any other kind of bug it can get its gnarly pincers on, from happy little ladybugs, to spiders it has no business messing with. Some of these critters can run nearly 6mph, so there’s no escape.

Silje Ensby documented how ropemakers in Norway traditionally make rope out of the inner bark of the lime or basswood tree. The tedious process results in an inherently waterproof rope that also resists rotting.

RealLifeLore terrifies us with mind-boggling tsunamis. Imagine if the sky in that picture was a wall of water. That’s the smallest tsunami on the list. This summer, the wall is going to build itself. Nicholas Cage and Dwayne Johnson star in… Canary Islands.

YouTuber exurb1a waxes philosophical on entropy, complexity, and the mysterious interplay between order and chaos which have somehow made every single thing we know and are (including Hot Pockets) possible.