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Video games are important. They are a storytelling medium, a place for self-expression, a sandbox for the human imagination, and an extension of an ages old tradition of gaming. We play out some of the most essential aspects of our culture in games, and we learn more about ourselves and the world around us in the process.

Creativity depends on the cooperation of two competing networks: one that generates spontaneous thoughts (the default mode network) and the executive control center of the brain that governs everything else. Our random, free-flowing thoughts that are worthy of further exploration pop into our consciousness when they're recruited by the executive control network.

The video game industry is now bigger than Hollywood, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent developing these interactive experiences. But there are also small-scale developers working in the indie game realm, creating unique and experimental video games. Much like indie music or indie film, the indie gaming movement provides a creative outlet for game designers outside of the mainstream.

Bees and flowers have an amazingly close relationship. Flowers need bees in order to reproduce, and bees need flowers to feed their colonies. Take away one, and the other would disappear too. It begs the question: When it comes to evolution, which came first, the bees or the flowers?

Neutron stars are made of a substance known as Neutronium. It was thought that this was the densest form of matter possible but some theoretical physicists believe that at the core of some neutron stars the Neutronium breaks down even further, into quark matter. It may even evolve one step further into “strange matter", the densest and most stable substance in the universe.

It’s one of the most annoying sensations our bodies can feel, but does anything feel better than when you scratch an itch? Ok, maybe *some* things. But itching and scratching are up there. How does this weird sensation work? And what is itching for?

How successful are we compared to other species? It turns out that biomass, or what things weigh, can be more important than how many of something there are. Find out how our numbers stack up against everything from bugs to bacteria, and get ready for some mind-blowing numbers!

What's the key to happiness and life satisfaction? One study followed a group of people for more than seventy years to find out. Watch this video and find out what they discovered! Can you think of one thing that could make you happy over the course of your life, which does not include tacos and Harry Potter. Think of something that could actually sustain your happiness for many years. You can say anything you like, but to measure it scientifically we would have to study your regular integrals for most of your life. Luckily, that study has already been done. The Harvard Grant Study began in 1938 and it followed 268 male undergraduate students for more than seventy years. They planned to track them over their entire lives, so they can measure a lot of psychological and physiological traits like their personality, IQ, and the function of their major organs. Because it was so huge it had so many findings like your financial success is more dependent on the warmth of your relationship than intelligence. And cigarette smoking was the single greatest factor that contributed to the men’s deaths. When George Vaillant, the lead researcher of this study for more than 30 years, was asked what was the single greatest finding from it, he said it was the capacity of the intimate relationships that predicted flourishing in all aspects of the men’s lives, concluding that happiness is <a href="https://rumble.com/v46tyd-i-love-you-do-you-love-me.html" target="_blank">love</a>. What these seventy years of research suggest is ‘love is all you need’, which is what The Beatles sang about, but it doesn’t necessarily mean having a long relationship or marriage with a partner. The study looked at the men’s relationship with their parents and how that affected them over the course of their lives. The men who had a <a href="https://rumble.com/v3ow89-5-relationship-myths-and-what-the-reality-looks-like.html" target="_blank">warmer relationship</a> with their mothers as a child earned an average of $87,000 a year more than those who had an uncaring mother. Those with an uncaring mother were more likely to develop dementia later in life. The warmth of the men’s relationship with their fathers was correlated with enjoying vacations more and having a life satisfaction at age 75. These findings are super-interesting. Of course correlation doesn’t equal causation. Watch this video and share your comments on this topic below!

The trillions of bacteria in your gut have more of a relationship <a href="https://rumble.com/v4eeep-our-brain-takes-shortcuts-all-the-time-how-to-communicate-like-a-mind-reade.html" target="_blank">with your brain</a> than you may realize. Not the one in your head but the ‘second brain’ as it is called. The second brain isn't really a brain at all. It's more of a 'brain' that happens to live in our stomach and helps regulate an amazing number of feelings and emotions. Known as the enteric nervous system, this is the mechanism behind all those ‘I'm going with my gut on this’, ‘I'm having a gut reaction’ - phrases that have become so much a part of our everyday parlance. You probably already know that we have a whole lot of neurons - nerve cells that form the basis of our central and peripheral nervous systems - in our spine, but did you know that we have the same number lining the long tube of our gut? The complex make-up of our gut means it's able to create intense cravings - why do I suddenly need a cheeseburger immediately? - without even communicating with <a href="https://rumble.com/v4luxe-its-good-for-your-brain-to-know-random-stuff.html" target="_blank">our actual brain</a>. And it's not just the neurons packed into our stomach that pretty much tell us what to do, the buzzing microcosm inside is also busy exerting its influence. Called the microbiome, this colony of bacteria is determined by many factors, such as how old you are, where you live, what you eat, and even how stressed-out you are, and it can communicate with our central nervous system to control everything from how anxious you are about a particular task, to how likely you are to approach things with positivity. Watch the video to find out what's actually going on down there, and if you happen to be craving chicken nuggets dipped in Sprite, you now know what part of you is to blame.

Texting is simultaneously the most efficient and less effective way to communicate, and these days everyone does it, including your uncle on his flip phone and your grandma with all that weird spacing and random periods and all caps messages that make you think like your nanny is yelling at you! So these two are about to send you one <a href="https://rumble.com/v44iai-baby-flying-fox-with-an-important-message.html" target="_blank">important messages</a>, recent studies have found out that A few research centers from 2011 have found out that Americans send or receive an average of 41.5 messages a day, assuming that includes messages with no clear ending like ‘i’ll pick you up at’, or ‘i think we should’. This points out to the crazy amounts of text messaging, accounting to over 15,000 messages a year! With all those amounts of texting it may surprise you to find out that you are doing it wrong! Texting was originally called SMS, standing for short messaging service, developed in 1984 by the German GSM corporation. The very first message that was send out in the UK on December 3rd 1992 read ‘Merry Christmas’. Unfortunately the second message ever sent was ‘new phone, who dis’, and a lot of our bad texting habits can be traced back to 1997 when Nokia became the first manufacturer to produce a mobile phone with a full keyboard. However, it was in 2007 with the birth of the iPhone that helped create the BRB, OMG, LOL world that we live in now! That is one of the ways that people text wrong! Actually, <a href="https://rumble.com/v30pu0-world-texting-championships.html" target="_blank">texting</a> has created a new language where fingers are speaking in text lingo. Moreover, not understanding the abbreviations can end up in you sending out the wrong text or message! Watch this video to find out more!

Imagine a world where all voices sound the same.

What really happens when you approach the event horizon of a black hole?

Can you see what I see? We all experience things subjectively, including how we perceive optical illusions. Back in the 1800’s, American psychologist Joseph Jastrow illustrated an animal. Some of them saw a duck, and some a rabbit- but not both at once. The image itself allows for both interpretations and switching between them involves some mental effort. And when you see the duck, do you see the same duck we see? Researchers suggest the differences in our subjective experiences are tied to the different sizes of a certain area in our brain. It’s difficult to say why exactly the size of one brain area leads to people being more easily tricked by optical illusions. It could have to do with the concentration of chemical messengers inside the visual cortex. Other studies have found that the magnitude of optical illusions differs in people with <a href="https://rumble.com/v4de91-simple-weaving-shapes-for-children-with-autism.html" target="_blank">autism</a> or in people from different cultures. Things can be constructed in many different ways. When children were shown the duck-rabbit illusion on Easter Sunday (rabbit season) more children saw the rabbit, where on other Sundays they were more likely to see the duck (duck season). Sure, what you see is what you get, but remember that things may be preserved through different lenses. <a href="https://rumble.com/v3dd3p-10-best-optical-illusions-that-will-bend-your-brain-a-listicle-of-mind-tric.html" target="_blank">Optical illusions</a> don't “trick the eye” nor “fool the brain”, nor reveal that “our brain is not working”, but they are fascinating! They also teach us about our visual perception and its limitations.

Let’s look further into what we don’t yet know about the Big Bang, and how the theory could progress in the future. Since there is a discrepancy between general relativity and quantum mechanics, we continue to search for a grand unifying theory... one which may finally lead to a description of the actual moment of the Big Bang!

Our universe is not a very diverse place when it comes to shapes. Large celestial bodies become spheres, galaxies become discs, and there is little room for variation. Why is this? Well it turns out physics has some pretty strict rules when it comes to creating new planetary bodies.

The act of reading actually has proven impacts on your intelligence.

Plants are the most important source of nutrients for pretty much all of Earth's animals, and many of the planet's bacteria and fungi too. Humans like them so much that we line them up in salad bars so we can feast upon their crunchy cronch by the plate full.

Try to solve this famous thought experiment.

when the pyramids were built, the ancient Egyptians hadn’t invented the wheel, developed bronze tools, or discovered pi. How were they able to stack two million stone blocks, each weighing more than two tons, into precise geometric alignments that would survive more than 4,000 years and capture the imaginations of explorers throughout history? They did it the same way we always have: by trial and

We all know that exercise is good for your health. That is no great secret. But what about our mental health? Can exercising help us with our emotional problems, our intellectual problems or our addictions? The answer to all of these is a resounding YES. Exercising is one of the best things you can do for yourselves, not only for the sake of your physical body, but for your mind as well. In this video you will be provided with a couple of clues as to why exercising a few times a week will help your overall your mental health. If you happen to be one of those people that just cant seem to make them self get off the couch and do something that evolves physical progress, you might want to take a look as to how important <a href="https://rumble.com/v42fhd-improve-your-memory-with-simple-exercises.html" target="_blank">exercise</a> actually is. Not only that it provides you with a healthier life and a more fit looking body but it also has a big effect onto your mental capacity. This video is bound to show you a very interesting example of this girl explaining her <a href="https://rumble.com/v2zukb-extreme-human-achievements-break-records.html" target="_blank">achievements</a> and upgrade if you will before and after exercise. So, yes it might be a stretch some days to get out of bed or even find the time to exercise, but this video may change your mind no matter what kind of job you work. Take a look as here is one of the amazing powers of exercise.

The speed of light is often cited as the fastest anything can travel in our universe. While this might be true, the speed of light is the EFFECT and not the CAUSE of this phenomenon. So what's the cause? On this week's episode of Space Time, Matt helps explain what the speed of light REALLY is and why it’s the cosmic speed limit of our universe!

Lots of people believe the Universe is infinite, but there's a good possibility that might not be the case. Which means that there would be an actual edge of the Universe. What happens at that edge? Is there a restaurant?

We are sure you all have experienced jet lag before. Studies have shown that people experiencing jet lag have trouble learning and recalling memories. A study suggests that jet lag is simply a math problem and you can solve it by controlling your exposure to light or darkness. <a href="https://rumble.com/v3bqqk-bye-bye-jetlag-3-travel-comfort-necessities.html" target="_blank">Jet lag</a> is a question that comes out of biological rhythms. You have probably heard of circadian rhythms before - the roughly 24-hour biological rhythms that influence when you sleep or wake up. The lady in the video, Olivia, developed a schedule of exposure to light and darkness that allows your circadian rhythms to adjust to new time zones as quickly as possible. She figured this out by thinking of us as robots and it is connected to your body temperature. Your alertness and body temperature parallel each other. When your body temperature is rising you become more alert and when it is falling, you are getting closer to the bottom and you become less alert. When you travel to a new time zone, you can speed up the process of entrainment - a scientific term for fully adjusting to a new <a href="https://rumble.com/v47q00-flat-earth-proof-time-zones.html" target="_blank">time zone</a> by timing your exposure to light. In your eyes, cells sense a light and send that information to your brain’s internal clock. To adjust the clock you have, you need to experience one block of the brightest light and one block of the dimmest darkness each day. What you really have to worry about is dawn and dusk. Now, you don’t have to do the math since there is an application for that called “Entrain” available on AppStore and you can use it to see your light and dark schedules. The app was developed in collaboration with Danny Forger from University of Michigan and Kirill Serkh from Yale.

The science behind procrastination.

Do you know brain facts from fiction?