MinuteEarth

Minute Earth

From the creators of the popular science show with millions of YouTube subscribers comes the MinuteEarth podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know you had - but once you hear the answer, you’ll want to share it with everyone you know. Our team of scientists digs into the research and breaks it down into a short, entertaining explanation jam-packed with science facts and terrible puns. We’ll tell the incredible story of how monkeys crossed the Atlantic ocean on natural rafts, and we’ll explain why it gets hotter the deeper you dig underground.

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540 episodes
Updated Today

Episodes540

Newest first

February 22 · 1 min
Weight Dispute
What’s heavier, the Humongous Fungus or Pando the quaking aspen?
February 21 · 1 min
Tallest Organism
What’s the tallest living organism?
February 16 · 3 min
Three Specific Ways AI Could Kill Us All
Ok so “misaligned AI” is dangerous. But if it does decide to kill us, what SPECIFICALLY could it do?
February 15 · 1 min
Immortal Jellyfish
The tiny jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii can age in reverse.
February 14 · 1 min
Telomeres
Do we have to get old and die?
February 9 · 3 min
How Deep Can Caves Get?
Krubera Cave, one of our planet’s deepest known caves, extends 2200 meters into the earth – that’s a depth of nearly six Empire State Buildings. Or at least, that's as far down as humans have been able to explore; there might be other undiscovered chambers that go down even farther. But the cave can't be that much deeper, because there's a limit – actually, three limits – to how deep caves on Earth can get.
February 8 · 1 min
Scavenging Hyenas
Spotted hyenas are known for being skulking, sneaky scavengers...but there’s one problem: hyenas are actually brave, capable hunters.
February 7 · 1 min
Hyena Families
Hyenas look a lot like dogs, but evolutionarily, they’re more closely related to cats
February 2 · 3 min
Why Grass Grows Better Under Trampolines
If you’ve ever owned a backyard trampoline –or jumped on someone else’s– you might have noticed that the grass underneath it is longer and lusher than the grass in the rest of the yard. It’s not just that that grass isn’t getting mowed… in fact, when it does get mowed, you can see the weird effect even better! Instead there's something else –something shadier– going on here.
February 1 · 1 min
Hyena Poop
Poop across the animal kingdom takes lots of forms - deer poop out jelly beans, wombats make cube-shaped poops, birds poop and pee in one convenient package, and certain mites never poop.
January 31 · 1 min
Young Earth
The moon is old - at least, it looks old, since its entire surface is strewn with the rubble of broken down rock and pockmarked with scars from ancient asteroid impacts.
January 30 · 3 min
What Happens When Scientists Work With Unexpected Experts
In the 1960s, NASA’s engineers were building the Apollo spacecraft. But they ran into a major problem that almost prevented them from getting to the moon. To solve it, they brought in some unexpected help: expert weavers.
January 28 · 3 min
You've Been Misled About The Water Cycle
In school, you probably learned about the water cycle with a diagram. The problem is…it’s wrong – or at the very least, pretty misleading.
January 26 · 4 min
What I Learned on Monkey Island
Monkey Island is, perhaps unsurprisingly, home to thousands of monkeys. And when a major hurricane blew directly across the island, the researchers who study those monkeys thought that they were going to return to a scene of mass tragedy. But only two monkeys died during the storm. It wasn’t until long after the skies cleared that the bodies started piling up.
January 25 · 1 min
Bats and Viruses
Nasty as they are, most viruses are also extremely finicky — in order to thrive, they require the perfectly controlled climate inside a normal, resting, on-the-ground mammal.
January 24 · 1 min
Sugar Dust
Something really strange caused this factory to explode.
January 23 · 11 min
ALL THE DOGS, EXPLAINED
The canine family is a hugely diverse group of foxes, wolves, and –yes– doggos that have spread all over the world. MinuteEarth explains who they are and how they’re related.
January 21 · 3 min
Why Coyotes Are IMPOSSIBLE To Exterminate
Despite the fact that we've been trying to exterminate coyotes for hundreds of years, the species is thriving because of a special trait that causes their population to grow whenever one gets killed.
January 19 · 3 min
The Problem with Antivenom
Venomous snakes kill nearly 100,000 people a year. Which is weird, because we have a pretty effective treatment for venomous snake bites; it’s actually been around for more than a hundred years. So why are so many people still dying?
January 18 · 1 min
TNT vs Dynamite
TNT is also known as dynamite….except TNT is not dynamite.

MinuteEarth

Weight Dispute

Tallest Organism

Three Specific Ways AI Could Kill Us All

Immortal Jellyfish

Telomeres

How Deep Can Caves Get?

Scavenging Hyenas

Hyena Families

Why Grass Grows Better Under Trampolines

Hyena Poop

Young Earth

What Happens When Scientists Work With Unexpected Experts

You've Been Misled About The Water Cycle

What I Learned on Monkey Island

Bats and Viruses

Sugar Dust

ALL THE DOGS, EXPLAINED

Why Coyotes Are IMPOSSIBLE To Exterminate

The Problem with Antivenom

TNT vs Dynamite