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America grew from a colony to a superpower in 200 years. Help us make more ambitious videos by joining the Vox Video Lab. It gets you exclusive perks, like livestream Q&As with all the Vox creators, a badge that levels up over time, and video extras bringing you closer to our work! Learn more at http://bit.ly/video-lab 2:07 Correction: Cuba seceded from the US in 1902. With over 800 military bases around the globe, the US is easily the most powerful nation on earth. But it wasn't always this way. The US once played an insignificant role in global affairs. In this 8-minute video, you can see the transformation. Military budget data: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/ca... US foreign bases based on David Vine's book, "Base Nation" http://www.davidvine.net/base-nation.... Troop numbers: "Total Military Personnel and Dependent End Strength By Service, Regional Area, and Country". Defense Manpower Data Center. November 7, 2016. Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com

Here are all the photos flying through interstellar space on Voyager's Golden Record. http://www.vox.com/2015/11/11/9702090... Help us make more ambitious videos by joining the Vox Video Lab. It gets you exclusive perks, like livestream Q&As with all the Vox creators, a badge that levels up over time, and video extras bringing you closer to our work! Learn more at http://bit.ly/video-lab Sources: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraf... http://www.amazon.com/Pale-Blue-Dot-V... http://www.amazon.com/Murmurs-Earth-C... When Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched into space in 1977, their mission was to explore the outer solar system, and over the following decade, they did so admirably. With an 8-track tape memory system and onboard computers that are thousands of times weaker than the phone in your pocket, the two spacecraft sent back an immense amount of imagery and information about the four gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. But NASA knew that after the planetary tour was complete, the Voyagers would remain on a trajectory toward interstellar space, having gained enough velocity from Jupiter's gravity to eventually escape the grasp of the sun. Since they will orbit the Milky Way for the foreseeable future, the Voyagers should carry a message from their maker, NASA scientists decided. The Voyager team tapped famous astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan to compose that message. Sagan's committee chose a copper phonograph LP as their medium, and over the course of six weeks they produced the "Golden Record": a collection of sounds and images that will probably outlast all human artifacts on Earth. /// Make sure you never miss behind the scenes content in the Vox Video newsletter, sign up here: http://vox.com/video-newsletter Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com

NASA says the first humans will set foot on Mars in the mid-2030’s. It will be the most dangerous mission any human has ever taken. Glad You Asked host Cleo Abram wants to know: What comes after that? Not how do we get there, but how will we survive once we do? Note: There are several Fahrenheit measurements in this piece. The metric conversions are: At 7:53: 212 degrees Fahrenheit = 100 degrees Celsius At 8:04: 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit = 37 degrees Celsius At 8:45: -81 degrees Fahrenheit = -62.8 degrees Celsius Key sources: International Space Station Integrated Medical Group Medical Checklist https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/... Examining Psychosocial Well-Being and Performance in Isolated, Confined, and Extreme Environments https://ston.jsc.nasa.gov/collections... Mars Exploration Program, NASA https://mars.nasa.gov/all-about-mars/... NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.go... “The Great Salt Lake Desert: Exploring the Habitability of Paleolakes on Earth and Mars” https://www.researchgate.net/publicat... “Inventory of CO2 available for terraforming Mars” https://www.nature.com/articles/s4155... “A future Mars environment for science and exploration” https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/V20... “The human factor in a mission to Mars” https://sci-hub.tw/https://link.sprin... 0:00 Intro 1:02 Life On Mars 4:20 Surviving The Planet 6:57 The Deadly Red 10:27 Terraforming 13:43 Surviving The People 19:01 NASA’s Crisis Checklist

The Concorde gave us supersonic transport. But why did this supersonic plane fail? The answer is complicated. Follow Phil Edwards and Vox Almanac on Facebook for more: https://www.facebook.com/philedwardsi... Follow to our channel Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com

The conflict is really only 100 years old. Follow to our channel One of the biggest myths about the Israel-Palestine conflict is that it's been going on for centuries, that this is all about ancient religious hatreds. In fact, while religion is involved, the conflict is mostly about two groups of people who claim the same land. And it really only goes back about a century, to the early 1900s. At its heart, it is a conflict between two self-determination movements — the Jewish Zionist project and the Palestinian nationalist project — that lay claim to the same territory. Read more about the Israel-Palestine conflict on Vox: http://bit.ly/2S7gFlT Your basic questions about Israel and Palestine answered: – What are Israel and Palestine? Why are they fighting? http://bit.ly/2NKJPcd – What is Zionism? http://bit.ly/2G549P6 – How did Israel become a country in the first place? http://bit.ly/2xFdAjN – What are settlements, and why are they such a big deal? http://bit.ly/30pSRfZ – What were the intifadas? http://bit.ly/2NInMm9 – How does the world feel about Israel/Palestine? http://bit.ly/2JprIEh – What is the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? http://bit.ly/2XIRzQB Further reading on the Israel-Palestine conflict: http://bit.ly/2XBrIFf

Making accurate world maps is mathematically impossible. Follow Johnny on Instagram www.instagram.com/johnny.harris/ Help us make more ambitious videos by joining the Vox Video Lab: http://bit.ly/video-lab Maps are flat representations of our spherical planet. Johnny Harris cut open a plastic globe to understand just what it takes to turn a sphere into something flat. His struggle to make a flat map out of the plastic globe is indicative of a challenge mapmakers have faced for centuries: It is mathematically impossible to translate the surface of a sphere onto a plane without some form of distortion. To solve this problem, mathematicians and cartographers have developed a huge library of representations of the globe, each distorting a certain attribute and preserving others. For instance, the Mercator projection preserves the shape of countries while distorting the size, especially near the north and south pole. For a more accurate view of land area look at the Gall-Peters projection, which preserves area while distorting shape. In the end, there's not "right" map projection. Each comes with trade-offs, and cartographers make projection decisions based on the particular tasks at hand. But if you are interested in seeing an accurate depiction of the planet, it's best to stick with a globe. Interact with projections: http://metrocosm.com/compare-map-proj... Mercator tool: http://thetruesize.com/ Mike Bostock Map Transitions: http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/3711652 Mercator Puzzle: http://hive.sewanee.edu/ldale/maps/10... Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com

And why the disease first appeared in China. NOTE: As our expert Peter Li points out in the video, “The majority of the people in China do not eat wildlife animals. Those people who consume these wildlife animals are the rich and the powerful –a small minority.” This video explains how the people of China are themselves victims of the conditions that led to coronavirus. The virus is affecting many different countries and cultures, and there is never justification for xenophobia or racism. You can find further reading on this on Vox: https://www.vox.com/2020/2/7/21126758... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi... https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/3... As of early March 2020, a new coronavirus, called COVID-19, is in more than 70 countries and has killed more than 3,100 people, the vast majority in China. That's where the virus emerged back in December 2019. This isn't a new phenomenon for China; in 2003, the SARS virus also emerged there, and under similar circumstances, before spreading around the world and killing nearly 800. Both SARS and COVID-19 are in the "coronavirus" family, and both appear to have emerged from animals in China's notorious wildlife markets. Experts had long predicted that these markets, known to be potential sources of disease, would enable another outbreak. The markets, and the wildlife trade that supports them, are the underlying problem of these pandemics; until China solves that problem, more are likely to emerge. Follow our reporting on coronavirus on vox.com: Our updated guide to Covid-19: http://bit.ly/3cGvqpU 11 questions about the coronavirus outbreak, answered: http://bit.ly/3cHFSgT Why washing your hands is so important: http://bit.ly/39vOaGy Watch our Netflix episode "The next pandemic, explained" https://www.netflix.com/watch/81062202 Further reading: Peter Li: https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/... Peter Daszak, EcoAlliance: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/sc... WildAid: https://wildaid.org/chinese-citizens-... On the animal source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158... Support Vox by joining the Video Lab at http://vox.com/join or making a one-time contribution here: http://vox.com/contribute Note: The headline has been updated. Previous headline: Why new diseases keep appearing in China Note: A previous version of this video incorrectly colored Crimea as part of Russia on the map. While it has been occupied by Russian forces since 2014, it is still legally a territory of Ukraine. We've corrected the error. Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.

Many have tried to keep a white shark in captivity. Here's why that's so difficult. ✉️ Sign up for our newsletter: http://www.vox.com/video-newsletter There are several aquariums around the world, including one in Georgia, that house whale sharks, the biggest fish in the sea. But not one has a great white shark on display. Aquariums have made dozens of attempts since the 1970s to display a captive great white shark. Most of those attempts ended with dead sharks. By the 2000s, the only group still trying was the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which spent a decade planning its white shark program. In 2004, it acquired a shark that became the first great white to survive in captivity for more than 16 days. In fact, it was on display for more than six months before it was released back into the ocean. In the following years, the Monterey Bay Aquarium hosted five more juvenile white sharks for temporary stays before ending the program in 2011. It was an expensive effort and had come under criticism due to injuries that some of the sharks developed in the tank. Responding to those critics, Jon Hoech, the aquarium's director of husbandry operations, said: "We believe strongly that putting people face to face with live animals like this is very significant in inspiring ocean conservation and connecting people to the ocean environment. We feel like white sharks face a significant threats out in the wild and our ability to bring awareness to that is significant in terms of encouraging people to become ocean stewards." Check out the video above to learn why white sharks are so difficult to keep in captivity and how the Monterey Bay Aquarium designed a program that could keep them alive.

Nearsightedness is on the rise worldwide. How did that happen? Follow so you don't miss any videos Over the past few decades, children around the world have been diagnosed with nearsightedness at increasingly high rates. Nearsightedness, or myopia, can stabilize over time, but it doesn’t get better — meaning that myopes will rely on glasses, contact lenses, or corrective surgery to see for their entire lives. The blurriness associated with myopia is caused by eyeballs that have grown too long; in a stretched-out shape, eyes aren’t able to properly focus images onto the retina. Researchers believe that two culprits are to blame: the lack of outdoor play, and prolonged time doing up-close activities like using digital devices. In some countries — like Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, where over 80 percent of students graduating high school are myopic — intervening the progression of myopia has become a nationwide effort. Read more about... The global prevalence of myopia: https://www.aaojournal.org/article/s0...) How time outdoors reduces myopia risk: https://bjo.bmj.com/content/104/5/593... Intervention programs in Taiwan: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat... And intervention in Singapore: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

The features that make your voice unique. Follow so you don't miss any videos. Most of us use our voices every day to communicate one way or another, but the way we produce sound is so much more than the words we say. Our voices are about as unique as fingerprints — similar instruments, but with endless variations. As humans, we each essentially produce sound in the same physiological way, but it’s not as simple as plucking a guitar string. And when we talk we’re dropping clues about who we are, what we do, and where we’re from. A dialect can hint where a person is from. An expressive range might suggest a person is a singer or actor. A slow and quiet tone could mean a person is feeling sad or tired. Check out the video above to learn more about the ins and outs of how we produce sounds and why no one else sounds like you. For more on the ins and outs of how we produce sound: https://asa.scitation.org/doi/full/10... For more on how puberty changes a person’s voice, including what we do and don’t know about why our voice boxes are so sensitive to sex hormones: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... You can find Justin Stoney’s website here: https://newyorkvocalcoaching.com/

You have your mom's smile, your dad's eyes, and the ear muscles of a Triassic mammal. Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos. Vestigial structures are evolution's leftovers — body parts that, through inheritance, have outlived the context in which they arose. Some of the most delightful reminders of the common ancestry we share with other animals, they show that the building blocks of the human body predate our species by hundreds of millions of years. Forty-two percent of Americans say that humans were created in their present form within the past 10,000 years — a percentage that hasn't changed much since 1982, when Gallup started polling views on evolution. Several lines of evidence, from the fossil record, comparative anatomy, and genetics, tell another story. But you don't have to read all the research to find signs of our evolutionary history — you can see it in the vestigial structures in each of our bodies, like the third molars that no longer fit in our mouths. For a few other examples, check out the video above.

One man cracked his knuckles in one hand for 60 years and not the other. Watch the video to see what he found out. Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos. There's a long-held myth that cracking your knuckles can damage your hands. The sound definitely might make people around you cringe, but what's making those noises, and is it actually bad for you? There's a space in your joints filled with synovial fluid, a liquid that reduces the friction in your joints when you move. It contains gases (oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide). When you pop a joint, you stretch out that space between the bones. That expanding space creates negative pressure, like a vacuum, that sucks in the synovial fluid. It forms bubbles, which then collapse, and that's what you hear. Most medical sources agree that unless you experience pain when you pop your joints, you're probably fine to keep doing it. Researchers (including one man who cracked his knuckles on just one hand for 60 years) haven't established a connection between cracking your knuckles and arthritis. One 1990 study of 300 people did find that cracking knuckles over a long period of time led to hand swelling and decreased grip strength, but there hasn't been any follow-up research on that. Read it here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

And why that’s a big deal. Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos. For the first time in six decades, China’s population is shrinking, and it’s predicted it could create a demographic crisis. That’s because China isn’t just shrinking, it’s also aging. And the majority of Chinese couples are not considering having more than one child. Because of this, China is predicted to lose nearly 50 percent of its population by 2100. China’s population decline can be traced back to the restrictive family-planning policies launched in the 1970s and an impressive economic boom fueled by China’s huge labor force. China’s modernization brought rapid urbanization, rising income levels, and better education to large parts of China. Combined, these policies and growth have given China one of the lowest birth rates in the world. Today, China is trying to reverse its population decline. Not just because an aging population is hard to sustain economically, but because China’s impressive economic growth, until now, has relied on its people. As China’s population challenges deepen over time, it might have to rethink how to grow its economy and care for its citizens. You can explore China’s birth and death rate data via the United Nations Population portal, here: https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/... https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/... As well as the country’s total population and predictions here: https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/... Here are some key facts about China’s declining population from Pew Research: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank... You can read some surprising details about China’s family planning policies — for example, the One-Child Policy was actually less impactful than the Later, Longer, Fewer campaign — here: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mar... Here’s an overview of China’s economic development from the World Bank: https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/... And a report on China’s income gap: https://www.aeaweb.org/research/chart... For an in-depth look at the cruelty and human cost of China’s One-Child policy, I recommend the documentary One Child Nation by Nanfu Wang: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/d... You can explore population pyramids from across the world on the US Census Bureau’s website: https://www.census.gov/data-tools/dem... Finally, our expert, Professor Wang Feng, believes China’s population growth can be framed in a positive light. To understand how, read this piece he wrote for the New York Times: https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commen...

Non-photorealistic rendering has opened up an alternative to the ubiquitous “Pixar look.” Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos. When you think of CGI animated films, you likely think of Pixar. The studio practically invented the genre with 1995’s Toy Story — the first CGI animated feature film. After Toy Story, almost all animation studios wanted to follow in Pixar’s successful footsteps, straight down to their style. Many studios sought out “The Pixar Look”: extremely high quality, physically based, and in some cases almost photorealistic. It’s an appealing approach that remains popular at the box office — but animated movies started looking kind of homogeneous. And while studios and independent artists tested out more stylized approaches in short films, no studio would commit to a feature-length animated movie that looked so different. That is, until Sony Pictures/Imageworks took on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Instead of chasing the look everyone was after, the team wanted to create something visually new. They did it with “non-photorealistic rendering.” And since Spider-Verse, non-photorealism has taken off, with almost every studio set to incorporate it in the next five years. Check out our video to learn more about how non-photorealism works. Note: A version of this was previously published with a spelling error. The error has since been corrected.

It's not you — the dialogue in TV and movies has gotten harder to hear. Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos. Have you ever been watching a show or movie, and then a character delivers a line so unintelligible you have to scramble to find the remote and rewind? For me, this moment came during the climax of the Pete Davidson film “The King of Staten Island,” where his most important line was impossible to understand. I had to rewind three times — and eventually put subtitles on — to finally pick up what he was saying. This experience isn’t unique — gather enough people together and you can generally separate them into two categories: People who use subtitles, and people who don’t. And according to a not-so-scientific YouTube poll we ran on our Community tab, the latter category is an endangered species — 57% of you said you always use subtitles, while just 12% of you said you generally don’t. But why do so many of us feel that we need subtitles to understand the dialogue in the things we watch? The answer to that question is complex – and we get straight to the bottom of it in this explainer, with the help of dialogue editor Austin Olivia Kendrick.

Inside the Wagner Group’s playbook. On January 10, 2023, the Ukrainian town of Soledar was reportedly captured. But it wasn’t captured by the Russian army under Vladimir Putin’s command. The announcement came from a relatively unknown man, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who said his troops now controlled the town. The troops are part of the Wagner Group, a private army that has become a prominent force alongside Russian troops in the war against Ukraine. But they aren’t new. They've been secretly fighting for Russia around the world since 2014. In this video, we take a look at their playbook and examine the three main steps they use to spread Russian influence around the world in brutal ways. We also look at how they’ve transformed from a ghost army to a recognizable private military group with insignias and an online brand, changing the nature of this secret group and its role in the world.

Extreme meteorologist Reed Timmer captured these videos of a tornado approaching Rolling Fork, Mississippi, and some of the first views of its devastating aftermath.

How dyslexia is a differently organized brain. The brain isn’t naturally wired to read. It’s a task that requires explicit instruction for our brains to activate different areas, including those that control vision, sound, and meaning. For fluent readers, the result is a complicated reading circuit — connected by neural pathways of white matter — to allow us to process words within milliseconds. But this reading circuit looks different for people with dyslexia. For decades, the research was largely focused on how this different brain organization often resulted in delays and difficulty in areas like reading, spelling, and grammar. And today, there continues to be stigma and misconceptions around a dyslexia diagnosis. But the challenges of dyslexia often overshadow another part of the picture. Research has repeatedly shown dyslexia is also associated with specific cognitive strengths. These include visuo-spatial processing, narrative memory, problem-solving, and reasoning. While there is still a lot to learn about these advantages and how they work, in the piece above we unpack what we know about dyslexia, and what many studies have concluded about these strengths. This perspective could be critical — not just for the roughly 20 percent of people who have dyslexia — but for the colleagues, peers, and educators who can better empower dyslexic thinking and better understand neurodiversity.

And why the US and China are fighting over silicon in the first place. In October 2022, the Biden administration placed a large-scale ban on the sale of advanced semiconductor chips to China. They also implemented a series of other rules that prevents China from making these chips on their own. These chips are used in everyday technology, like our mobile phones and computers. They’re also crucial to military and intelligence systems, which is one of the main reasons they're at the center of a feud between the United States and China. Microchips were first invented in the US in the 1950s, after which their use rapidly expanded worldwide. Since then, the supply chain for these chips has grown and spread to include countries in Europe and Asia. And while some countries have caught up to the US's edge in making these advanced chips, China still falls far behind despite multiple attempts to gain an advantage. Watch the latest episode of Vox Atlas to understand why China is losing a new cold war with the US over microchips. Sources and further reading: We found this book written by Chris Miller very helpful for understanding the history of chip development in the US and the foreign policy behind its competition and feud with China:

And how the US influences which weapons they get, and which ones they don't. When Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, the US was hesitant to send more than supplies to the Ukrainian army. But when Russia launched a full-scale invasion in 2022, the US changed its tune. President Joe Biden quickly began approving huge packages of weapons to help Ukraine stymie the Russian attack. And for the first couple of weeks, it worked. The Ukrainian army used weapons from the US and its Western allies to stop Russia from capturing Kiev. As the war progressed, so did US help. It sent heavy artillery in the spring, and then agreed to eventually send tanks in winter 2023. But each time, it deliberated over whether Ukraine can effectively use the weapons, and whether they'll provoke Russia to escalate the conflict. So far, that hasn’t happened, and the US and its allies are now considering sending Ukraine very advanced long-range missiles and F-16 fighter jets. Both would be game-changers for Ukraine.