planet earth

A three-minute clip from BBC's Planet Earth narrated by David Attenborough about Cordyceps, the fungus that infects insects and takes over their behavior. It shows an infected ant and its demise.

A short BBC Planet Earth clip from the Pole to Pole episode showing the courtship displays of birds of paradise.

An animated Kurzgesagt explainer on bacteriophages, viruses that kill bacteria, covering how they infect and burst cells and their potential as therapy against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

hbomberguy investigates the modern flat earth movement and why people come to believe it. The video treats the community with a measured, humorous tone and looks at the social causes behind the belief.

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.

NASA Goddard recreates the Apollo 8 Earthrise moment using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data, narrated by Andrew Chaikin and synced with the astronauts' recorded conversation. It marks the flight's 45th anniversary.

An undercover report from the 2019 Flat Earth Conference by the comedy channel All Gas No Brakes, which interviews attendees on camera.

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.

Kirsten Dirksen tours new Earthships, homes built from tires, bottles and cans that generate their own energy, collect water and grow food. The video covers the newer, cheaper Encounter model and its passive systems.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains what flat earthers believe and why, arguing that their reasoning is wrong but not stupid. She suggests scientists should take such believers more seriously.

A BBC Earth clip from Inside the Animal Mind in which a crow named 007 solves an eight-step puzzle to get a reward. It showcases crow problem-solving.

A BBC Earth clip from The Hunt showing Portia jumping spiders, which leap many times their body length and ambush prey larger than themselves.

A BBC Earth clip from The Hunt showing an octopus species from northern Australia that leaves the water at low tide to hunt crabs on land.

BBC Earth shows killer whales working as a pod to create waves that wash seals off ice floes, with the producer explaining how the crew captured behavior once thought a myth.

Explains the proposed NASA JPL plan to use the Sun as a gravitational lens, sending solar sail craft to its focal region to image an exoplanet's surface. It covers the distances involved, how imaging with the Sun would work and the mission design.

PBS Space Time explains the proposal to use the Sun's gravity as a giant lens, sending a train of small light-sail spacecraft to the focal point roughly 550 AU out. It covers how such a telescope could image exoplanets in surprising detail and the engineering challenges involved.

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.

David Kipping presents his proposed Terrascope, a telescope that uses Earth's atmosphere as a lens to achieve enormous magnification. He covers the history of telescopes and his path to the idea, plus Sol-scope and Jupiter-scope variants.

Kirsten Dirksen profiles Steve Rees, who buried two shipping containers to build an earth-cooled, off-grid 640 sq ft home in Northern California for about $30,000, solar included.

Dan Olson's 76-minute essay on flat earth belief, built around a hike to a lake to test earth's curvature. It examines the community, how YouTube promoted it, and how it connects to wider conspiracy thinking and QAnon.

Kirsten Dirksen visits retired mailman Russ Finch in Alliance, Nebraska, who grows oranges, figs and pomegranates in a backyard greenhouse without paying for heat. The greenhouse uses the stable temperature of the earth, with underground earth tubes, to heat and cool itself.

Kirsten Dirksen tours the underground ferro-cement dome home of Paula and Bill Lishman, the family behind the geese-led flight story. The skylit earth-sheltered house stays warm below the frost line.

A short explainer from Nat and Friends on where Google Earth's 3D imagery comes from, how it is stitched together, and how often it is updated. It describes aircraft carrying camera rigs and photogrammetry that turns the photos into 3D models.

Elon Musk's 2016 IAC presentation on the technical challenges and architectures for building a self-sustaining human presence on Mars.

An animated Gabbard diagram of objects in low Earth orbit from 1959 to 2021, showing altitude over time. It highlights major debris-generating events and how low-altitude debris decays out of orbit.

A short BBC Earth clip from David Attenborough's Life of Birds showing a lyrebird imitating sounds, including a chainsaw and camera shutter, so accurately it is hard to tell from the real thing.

Aamer Rahman of Fear of a Brown Planet delivers a stand-up routine on so-called reverse racism, arguing about power imbalance and why criticism of a dominant group is not equivalent to racism.

Short BBC Earth clip from Life of Mammals in which David Attenborough shows orangutans imitating human behaviors like washing clothes with soap and using tools.

Practical Engineering explains Mechanically Stabilized Earth, where layers of reinforcement make soil strong enough to hold heavy loads, shown with a sand structure supporting a car. It notes that MSE walls are everywhere in infrastructure.

George Carlin's stand-up routine arguing the planet will be fine and it is people who are in trouble. It mocks the idea of saving the planet.

An 8-minute clip of George Carlin's 1992 stand-up bit on the environment, arguing the planet will be fine and it is people who are in trouble. It leans on the contrast between Earth's 4.5 billion years and humanity's 200,000.

A short George Carlin bit on the Earth and plastic, in which he suggests the planet may have let humans evolve just to make plastic. The upload is edited to be more safe for work.

A clip from Attenborough's Life of Mammals following a San tribesman in the Kalahari on an eight-hour persistence hunt, running down a kudu through harsh heat. It shows tracking, endurance running and the hunter's reaction after the kill.

A BBC Earth clip from Super Powered Owls in which the team uses sensitive sound equipment to compare owl flight with other birds. It shows why owls fly almost silently.

Planet of the Humans, a full documentary by Jeff Gibbs presented by Michael Moore, arguing that the green movement has been co-opted by corporate and wealthy interests and that techno-fixes are not enough.

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.

A short clip from Carl Sagan's Cosmos in which he explains how Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the Earth using shadows in two Egyptian cities. It is a clear, visual account of an ancient scientific feat.

Veritasium visits Chernobyl, Fukushima and other places to find who on Earth is exposed to the most ionizing radiation. The answer turns out to be surprising and puts radiation risk in context.

The secret project cutscene for The Planetary Datalinks from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, featuring a quote about free information flow as the safeguard against tyranny.

Planets is a track from the audiovisual album Oscilloscope Music, in which the audio signal drives an analog oscilloscope directly. The left channel sets horizontal deflection and the right sets vertical, so the sound draws vector graphics.