PBS

As the world figures out how to live with a rapidly changing climate, traditional knowledge from indigenous cultures could help us understand just how things are transforming.

About half the world has internet access. That’s 3.6 billion people surfing the web. How much energy is that using? And what is our online world doing to our planet’s climate?

Deforestation is a big problem for the climate. This kind of land use releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any single country, besides the United States or China. And most of the deforestation in the world today happens because people want to put farms where forests are. So, figuring out how to farm with trees instead of just chopping them down could help us fight climate change.

Trilobites are famous not just because they were so beautifully functional, or because they happened to preserve so well. They’re known the world over because they were everywhere!

For years, astronomers have been unable to find up to half of the baryonic matter in the universe. We may just have solved this problem.

If vacuum energy really does have the enormous value predicted by quantum field theory then our gently expanding, geometrically flat universe shouldn’t exist. This is the vacuum catastrophe.

Sometimes intuitive, large-scale phenomena can give us incredible insights into the extremely unintuitive world of quantum mechanics.

We were recently visited by a traveler from outside our solar system. This is the first time we’ve ever seen an object that came to us from interstellar space. It's name is 'Oumuamua.

Find out about the last time and the next time the Earth will be hit by a Gamma-ray Burst.

We can now map the interiors of stars by “listening” to their harmonies as they vibrate with seismic waves.

Learn about Horizon radiation and why it's essential for us to understand as we continue our journey towards the Unruh Effect and Hawking Radiation.

The Sun is getting brighter and the planets in our solar system that are habitable are changing.

What happens when a star eats its planets? Find out on today’s Space Time Journal Club.

The Andromeda galaxy is heading straight toward our own Milky Way. The two galaxies will inevitably collide. Will that be the very last night sky our solar system witnesses?

We’ve all heard that Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but where does that idea come from? And is it true? On today’s episode, Vanessa Hill joins us to uncover the history of breakfast and whether or not we can truly determine if it is the day’s most important meal.

When we talk about the 2nd amendment today, we talk almost exclusively about the “right to bear arms” and individual gun ownership. But whatever happened to a “well-regulated militia?” In today’s episode we dive deep into the Supreme Court cases that shaped our understanding of the 2nd amendment and frames the way we still talk about the meaning and limits of “gun control.”

When you think of high heels, your first thoughts almost certainly center around women. But for much of their history high heels were seen as a marker of an epic masculinity, worn by warriors, kings and noblemen as a sign of strength and virility. Which is bit awkward for the modern mind. So how did this style of shoe go from being for manly men to a fashion accessory exclusively for women?

Do standardized test help or harm students? And is the US actually over testing students when compared with other nations? In this episode of Origin of Everything, we ask the big question about why do some American students take an average 112 standardized tests between Kindergarten & Grade 12?

The word “GAY” has a long history in the English language, but why did “GAY” stop meaning “happy” and start referring “same sex relationships?” Watch this week’s episode of Origin of Everything to find out.

What do World War I, a 16th Century Italian Doctor, Coca-Cola, and a Chicago sausage maker have to do with Birth Control? Well, let’s just say the history of birth control is very long and very odd.

68% of American families have a pet friend living with them. But why did humans start domesticating animals as pets and not livestock?

Why do we think there are only two genders? Because there are cultures that believe there are many more than two genders. And what’s the difference between sex and gender?

The Minimum Wage is a wildly important and contentious aspect of modern economic life. But whether you believe it needs to go up or be eliminated altogether there’s an important question to ask, why does it exist at all?

When did tattoos shift from counterculture to mainstream? Are they okay? At what point is your tattoo considered cultural appropriation? Explore these questions and more as Danielle dives into the origin of tattoos around the world.

Hijabs, yarmulkes, habits, and dastars — why do so many religions have rules about hair? The practice of covering hair is common across many faiths, so today we're talking about various types of head coverings, their significance, and their use throughout history.