Be Smart.

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate Leave it to beavers! Don’t miss our next video! SUBSCRIBE! ►► http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub ↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓ Beavers have done more to shape North American landscapes than any animal beside humans. We don’t notice them much today because there aren’t many left, bu...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate This episode is brought to you by Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/ Follow me to Gross Science: https://youtu.be/kRUt9pqMCSg and BrainCraft: https://youtu.be/Joalg73L_gw ↓ More info and sources below ↓ Tweet ⇒ http://bit.ly/OKTBSmourn Share on FB ⇒ http://bit.ly/OKTBSmournFB We...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate This episode is brought to you by Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/ Tweet ⇒ http://bit.ly/OKTBSplacebos Share on FB ⇒ http://bit.ly/OKTBSplaceboFB ↓ More info and sources below ↓ How does the placebo effect work? Here's how your brain tricks itself when it comes to medicine Fol...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate Think you know the difference? Don’t miss our next video! SUBSCRIBE! ►► http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub ↓ More info and sources below ↓ Some people try to attack things like evolution by natural selection and man-made climate change by saying “Oh, that’s just a THEORY!” Yes, they are...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate How do we protect what we don’t know exists? Don’t miss the next video! SUBSCRIBE! ►► http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub ↓ More info and sources below ↓ How many species are there on Earth? In biology, this is one of a fundamental question that we still don’t have a very good answer for....

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate Check out Squarespace: http://squarespace.com/itsokaytobesmart Don’t miss our next video! SUBSCRIBE! ►► http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub ↓ More info and sources below ↓ The ABSOLUTE best place to learn more about atmospheric optics: http://www.atoptics.co.uk/ Excellent resource on ice...

To learn more about Brilliant, go to https://brilliant.org/BeSmart/ and sign up for free. First 200 people will get 20% off the annual Premium subscription. ↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓ You can be a human computer too. Our cheat sheet: http://bit.ly/2rftqkv Want to go NEXT LEVEL? Learn how to adjust for Julian calendar and BC dates You might think that computers are the only things that run...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate Check out “Venomous” by Christie Wilcox: http://bit.ly/VenomousBook Help us translate this video! http://www.youtube.com/timedtext_video?ref=share&v=Qd92MuVZXik ↓ More info and sources below ↓ Get yourself an awesome IOTBS shirt! http://dftba.com/besmart Learn more: LD50’s of...

Life, uh… finds a way Don’t miss our next video! SUBSCRIBE! ►► http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub ↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓ What have we learned from exploring Earth’s harshest locations? That pretty everywhere we look for life, we find it. From smoking hot hydrothermal vents to icy deserts, up in clouds and inside rocks, extremophiles have found a way to survive. These survivors and adapters are n...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate Don’t miss our next video! SUBSCRIBE! ►► http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub Read “Soonish” by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith! https://smbc-comics.com/soonish/ ↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓ Try 23andMe at: http://www.23andme.com/okay Asteroid mining sounds like something out of a bad sp...

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. Support your local station at: http://to.pbs.org/DonateOKAY ↓ More info and sources below ↓ In case you have a strange new desire to get an IOTBS shirt: http://store.dftba.com/collections/its-okay-to-be-smart#_=_ See if you share a famous birthday (I got Tom Hiddleston): http://www.buzzfeed.com/kimberleydadds/which-celebrity-shares-your-birthday#.mnPkn...

Try Skillshare at http://skl.sh/besmart Help us build something great and SUBSCRIBE! ►► http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub ↓↓↓More info and sources below ↓↓↓ You asked for it, so here’s the follow-up! Just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Over the past centuries, archaeologists, historians, and engineers have reconstructed a great deal of the technology and science used to build t...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate Try 23andMe at: http://www.23andme.com/okay Part 2 of our special series on Human Ancestry. Watch it all: http://bit.ly/OKTBSHuman ↓↓↓More info and sources below ↓↓↓ In part 2 of our special series on human ancestry, we ask why we are the only surviving branch on the human evo...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate This episode is brought to you by Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/ Tweet ⇒ http://bit.ly/OKTBShotair Share on FB ⇒ http://bit.ly/OKTBShotairFB ↓ More info and sources below ↓ We uploaded another version of this video on 11/9 but it had a big mistake in it. So we fixed it. This...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate This episode brought to you by Squarespace: http://squarespace.com/itsokaytobesmart PBS Idea Channel goes to Area 51: https://youtu.be/WCFJh0fdlD8 ↓ More info and sources below ↓ **Check out these books: “The Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark” by Carl Sagan...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate They have some of the best caterpillars in Peru. The best. Follow all of our Peru adventures on this playlist: http://bit.ly/SmartPeru ↓ More info and sources below ↓ Special thanks to Andy Warren, David Pfennig, Alex Wild, and Gustavo Londoño for helpful discussions for this...

SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss a video! ►► http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub ↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓Have you ever looked at the front of a car and seen a face? Or an electrical outlet and seen a face? You definitely have. We all see faces everywhere we look thanks to a fun quirk of the human brain called facial pareidolia. Here's the neuroscience and psychology of how this weird brain phenomenon wo...

Welcome to… Jurassic Pluck Subscribe: http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub Twitter: @DrJoeHanson @okaytobesmart ↓ More info and sources below ↓ Most people are taught that dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago when a giant meteor crashed into the Yucatan peninsula. I'm here to tell you that's wrong. Dinosaurs are alive and well today, and you don't have to go to Jurassic World to see them (although hangi...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate Who knew there was so much science in a bowl of cereal? Don’t miss our next video! SUBSCRIBE! ►► http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub ↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓ Ever notice how cereal clumps up in your bowl, or how cereal sticks to the edges of the bowl? Bubbles in beverages do th...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate This episode is brought to you by Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/ Tweet this ⇒ http://bit.ly/OKTBSbase Share on FB ⇒ http://bit.ly/OKTBSbaseFB ↓ More info and sources below ↓ We’ve got t-shirts! Get yours here: http://store.dftba.com/collections/its-okay-to-be-smart DISCLAIME...

The science of-- OH GOD IS THAT A SPIDER?! Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate Subscribe to It's Okay To Be Smart: http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub I'm scared of spiders. I'm not afraid to admit it. I love them in a scientific sense, or from a "let me look at you from way over here" sense, but that's as close as I get. H...

You can learn more at https://curiositystream.com/smart Give us a hand and SUBSCRIBE! ►► http://bit.ly/iotbs_sub ↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓ Farting is hilarious and gross and everyone is doing it so why can’t we talk about the science of it?! Flatulence, passing gas, cutting the cheese, toots… whatever you call it, it's natural and here's how it works. References: Does it Fart? By Nick Ca...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate Check out #BigBlueLive! http://pbs.org/bigbluelive Share on FB ⇒ http://bit.ly/OKTBSriseFB ↓ More info and sources below ↓ Before people came to Monterey Bay to watch fish, they came here to catch them. And they caught a LOT of one fish: the sardine. But when you empty one spe...

We’re on PATREON! Join the community: https://www.patreon.com/itsokaytobesmart ↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓ Scorpions have been terrorizing other creatures on Earth for hundreds of millions of years. They’ve evolved a perfect cocktail of venom that can mess up both predators and prey. But they are also an evolutionary marvel that could show us the way to some powerful new life-saving medici...

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/PBSDSDonate What can you do to make the oceans plastic-free? (HINT: Hitting the subscribe button uses zero plastic) ↓↓↓Check the resources below ↓↓↓ Ocean plastic pollution is a massive environmental problem. Millions of tons of plastic waste enter the ocean every year, even plastic that...