geology

Geologist Nick Zentner of Central Washington University gives an hour-long public lecture on the great earthquakes of the Pacific Northwest, including the Cascadia subduction zone and the evidence for past megaquakes. It is part of his Downtown Geology Lecture Series, recorded in Ellensburg in 2016.

PBS Space Time examines the Silurian hypothesis, the idea that an industrial civilization could have existed on Earth before humans. It looks at what traces such a civilization might leave in the geological record.

A three-hour Joe Rogan podcast with Randall Carlson, builder and geomythologist, on catastrophic geological events, cosmic impacts and climate at the end of the last glacial period.

Curious Droid asks what traces human civilization would leave in the geological record 65 million years from now. It considers how thin the fossil record of humanity might be.

Soup Emporium's deep dive argues that Yellowstone is not a ticking timebomb. It goes through uplift and subsidence, earthquakes and what the caldera really is, to rebut supervolcano doom claims.

Practical Engineering explains why San Francisco's Millennium Tower is sinking and tilting, covering how geology and foundation design (friction piles in the Colma Formation) affect skyscrapers. It also covers the fix being attempted.

Kurzgesagt asks whether advanced civilizations could have existed on Earth in the deep past and left little evidence. It looks at time as a dimension for searching for alien civilizations and the limits of the geological record.

Kurzgesagt's hour-long animated film that compresses Earth's 4.5 billion year history into one hour, roughly a million years per second. It follows the evolution of life through to humanity's tiny final stretch.

A three-hour Joe Rogan Experience conversation with Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson about lost civilizations, the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis and Earth's cataclysmic history.

Footage from the Chasing Ice project of the largest glacier calving event ever filmed, at Greenland's Ilulissat Glacier in 2008. A 75-minute event is condensed to a few minutes of cameras watching ice collapse.

Tourist footage of the 660-ton tuned mass damper in Taipei 101 swaying during tremors from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The damper hangs from the 92nd floor.

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison visits the village of Garavadi in Maharashtra, India, which took part in the Paani Foundation's Water Cup competition. It shows the water harvesting structures the villagers built in 45 days and how they restored groundwater and the local economy.

Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths asks whether a country's reported land area accounts for hills and mountains, working through how surface area depends on the resolution of elevation data. It follows up on a question from a viewer and work by researchers who measured it.

Dan Britt lectures on the history of climate, covering orbital cycles, ice ages and conditions millions of years ago. It frames current climate debate with deep-time context.

Five hours of the late-night BBC Radio 4 Shipping Forecast, uploaded to mark its 150th anniversary. It can be used as sleep audio or to learn the sea areas named in the broadcast.

Practical Engineering explains what a 100-year flood actually means, combining statistics, hydrology and how society treats risk. Grady walks through local drainage infrastructure and the caveats in estimating flood probability.

Tom Scott visits Onkalo in Finland, the planned deep geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste intended to be sealed for 100,000 years.

A short documentary about the 1980 Lake Peigneur accident in Louisiana, where an oil rig drilled into a salt mine beneath the lake. The lake drained into the mine, creating a whirlpool that swallowed barges.

Tom Scott explains how decades of deep coal mining sank parts of Germany's Ruhr Valley and changed its drainage. Pumps run by Emschergenossenschaft must now work permanently to keep towns and cities from flooding.

Associate Professor Simon Michaux presents estimates of the metals needed to build one generation of renewable technology to replace fossil fuels. He argues current production and reserves fall far short, with copper a key shortfall.

Al Baydha project co-founder Neal Spackman gives a final update nine years in, explaining how desertification followed the loss of indigenous land management and how the land has changed since inputs stopped in 2016. It lists which species worked best.

A one-minute clip from a cat cafe in Japan where sleeping cats wake and look around just before an earthquake begins shaking the room.

Tom Scott visits the Strid at Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire, a deceptively narrow stretch of river with dangerous currents. He covers its reputation and the 12th-century legend of the Boy of Egremont.

Amateur footage of a Japanese coast guard boat riding up and over large tsunami waves after the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake. It is short and unedited.

A Discovery Channel computer simulation of a large asteroid impact on Earth, showing the scale of the devastation. It sits in a broader context of early Earth impacts and the moon-forming collision.

Amateur footage from 2014 of small airplanes being lifted and blown around during a microburst. It is a three-minute clip showing how violent the gusts can be.

Excerpts from Nick Breeze's 2012 interview with researcher Natalia Shakhova about methane release from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. She discusses the risk of abrupt methane emissions.

Home video of the 11 March 2011 Japan earthquake, filmed as an early warning system detected the P wave and gave seconds of notice before the shaking began. The raw footage shows the warning in action.

A Last Week Tonight segment on the tension between public and private weather forecasting, including NOAA data and AccuWeather's lobbying against free public weather data.

Veritasium shows an experiment from Prof. Dan Lathrop's lab with a spinning sphere of molten sodium, used to study how turbulent convection in Earth's core generates a magnetic field. It is a short demonstration of dynamo physics.

NFPA video in which wildfire researcher Jack Cohen explains that embers (firebrands), not the flame front, are the main cause of homes igniting in wildfires. He shows how landscaping and removing debris around the home reduce risk.