evolution

Daniel Dennett gives a Royal Institution talk toward a unified theory of information, tying together evolution, learning and engineering. He argues that design can arise bottom-up through small steps without a designer.

A two-minute time-lapse from the Kishony Lab showing bacteria spreading across a giant petri dish with increasing antibiotic doses, evolving resistance as they go.

Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky lectures on the evolution of behavior, including the Prisoner's Dilemma and tit-for-tat strategies in animals. It is part of his Human Behavioral Biology course.

An excerpt from Richard Dawkins's lecture on Climbing Mount Improbable demonstrating how a complex eye can evolve through incremental steps. It answers the creationist irreducible complexity argument.

Alan Kay's 1997 OOPSLA keynote argues that the computer revolution has not really happened yet, reflecting on how computing, objects and the web fall short of their potential.

Eric Weinstein interviews economist Timur Kuran on The Portal about preference falsification and how societies where people hide their real views can tip into revolutions.

The first episode of Crash Course World History, in which John Green covers the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture and how it shaped civilization. It is delivered fast and with jokes.

Energy scholar Vaclav Smil argues that global energy transitions are slow and that renewable targets should not rest on wishful thinking. He appraises how energy dependencies are likely to change and asks for using much less.

Revolution OS is a feature-length documentary on the history of free software and Linux. It covers Stallman and the GNU project, Torvalds and the kernel, and Raymond and Perens on open source, starting from the era of freely shared hobbyist code.

Ross Scott's Game Dungeon episode critiques Deus Ex: Human Revolution, looking at its design, politics and visual style. It is part of his series of opinionated game reviews.

A BSidesLV 2013 talk from the Sixteen Colors project on archiving the ANSI and ASCII art scene. It traces the scene's evolution from BBSs to the NFO and IRC era.

Alan Kay's 1997 OOPSLA keynote, preserved on YouTube after being lost from Google Video. He discusses what object orientation was meant to be, messaging, system design, and the state of computing practice.

A roughly ten-minute scene from the movie The Pentagon Wars showing how the Bradley Fighting Vehicle's requirements ballooned through committee demands into a compromised design. It is a satirical dramatization of military procurement.

David Sachs of InvenSense explains how gyroscopes, accelerometers and compasses work on their own and together, demonstrated on a modified Android handset. He covers sensor fusion algorithms and why rotation math such as Euler angles matters.

Lex Fridman interviews mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein about science, mathematics, and society. The conversation ranges across physics, academia, AI and job displacement.

Theo Jansen shows many of his Strandbeests, wind-powered walking kinetic sculptures, set to Khachaturian's Spartacus. It presents his work since 1990 on creating new forms of life on beaches.

A clip from Channel 4's Inside Nature's Giants in which Richard Dawkins shows the recurrent laryngeal nerve of the giraffe during a dissection. The nerve takes a long detour down the neck and back up.

A restored 1994 video of Karl Sims' research on evolved virtual creatures, where simulated block creatures are bred through artificial evolution to swim, walk, follow and compete. It is a landmark demonstration of genetic algorithms in physics simulation.

A Capella Science parody of Despacito that sings through evolutionary developmental biology, explaining how a single cell becomes a body, including body-axis genes and dormant snake leg DNA. It runs about four minutes.

Daniel Dennett's Royal Institution lecture on whether the brain is a computer and where its software comes from. He argues that minds are built by evolution and culture, with competence arising without comprehension.

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues in this TED talk that evolution shaped perception to track fitness rather than truth. He uses evolutionary simulations and the Australian jewel beetle as examples.

Stated Clearly explains the RNA world hypothesis, which resolves the chicken-or-egg problem of genes versus enzymes by proposing that RNA once did both jobs. It outlines how evolution could begin with RNA chains alone.

Kurzgesagt's animated overview of human origins and the vast prehistory before recorded history. It covers how modern humans emerged and spread.

A 92-minute RMIT University seminar in which Ken Stanley argues that setting an objective can block achieving it. He presents objective-less, novelty-driven search as an alternative approach to innovation and discovery, drawing on evolutionary computation.

Clinical psychologist Stephen Ilardi argues depression is a disease of modern civilization and presents a lifestyle-based program to treat it without drugs. Topics include exercise, sunlight, omega-3s and social connection.

Joseph Henrich's Talks at Google presentation of his book. He argues that human success comes from collective brains and cultural learning across generations rather than individual intelligence.

Nick Lane's Royal Institution lecture on the origin of life and why it is the way it is. It draws on his book The Vital Question and the alkaline hydrothermal vent theory of abiogenesis.

John Sotos, a physician and former Intel chief medical officer, argues at DEF CON 25 that genetic diseases are exploitable vulnerabilities in the genome. He warns that CRISPR and related tools will make malicious genome hacks and targeted bioweapons feasible.

A compilation of molecular animations of DNA replication and gene transcription by Drew Berry and Etsuko Uno at WEHI, made with no narration. It shows molecular machinery at work inside cells.

The Thought Emporium's host describes making and taking a DIY gene therapy to treat his own lactose intolerance. It uses an AAV virus to deliver DNA coding for the lactose-digesting enzyme, made with biohacker Gabriel Licina's help.

A short animation from the DNA Learning Center showing how mRNA carries a gene's message to the ribosome, where tRNA and codons are used to assemble amino acids into a protein.

Jack Szostak's lecture covers how cellular life could have arisen from chemistry on the early Earth, starting from the odds of life elsewhere in the galaxy. It is part of a series on protocells and the RNA world.

Shaun's roughly 2.7-hour video essay on The Bell Curve. It covers intelligence, the g factor, IQ tests, IQ versus environment and the politics behind the book, with a critical reading of the sources.

An excerpt of the 2005 Harvard debate in which Steven Pinker gives his prepared case on biological sex differences and the under-representation of women in science. It covers cross-cultural patterns in preferences and abilities and the overlap between male and female distributions.

David Epstein argues in this TED talk that improving athletic records owe much to technology, training and the selection of specialized body types, not just humans getting inherently better. He gives counter-intuitive examples across sports.

CGP Grey explains why horses could be ridden and why other animals like zebras and bears were never domesticated for war or riding. It is a follow-up on the topic of animal domestication.

Synthetic organic chemist James Tour gives a lecture arguing that origin-of-life research is far from explaining how life began. The talk was published by the Discovery Institute and drew sharp criticism.

Veritasium explains X-chromosome inactivation, where different cells in a woman's body switch off different X chromosomes, giving a mosaic pattern. It uses animation from the WEHI institute and connects to calico cat coloring.

First episode of the Norwegian documentary series Hjernevask, in which Harald Eia interviews researchers on the nature versus nurture debate. It focuses on the gender equality paradox and gender differences in career choice.

Kurzgesagt's animated explainer on CRISPR gene editing, covering how the technology works and what it could mean for curing disease, designer babies and aging. It frames genetic engineering as an irreversible change coming to humanity.