Why do things go viral? Turns out there’s a pretty easy way to define a piece of content that has the potential to do so. It’s not random or mysterious, because there are real commonalities with posts that are shared widely across the internet. If you’re curious about what those commonalities are, then stick around and we’ll talk about what the actual research tells us. We’re all about science here, so let’s uncover the science of what makes things go viral. So I’m going to t

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WkEHy08vzbQ We need to talk about something really important, and it’s about why we’re all still 15 years old and standing in a row with our friends by the lockers, refusing to talk to anyone else, terrified to talk to anyone else, desperately trying to work up the courage to even imagine a world where we could ask our crush to the prom, while they’re across the hall in their own group, not even looking over here at all.  What does this have

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/K0CYwlPwftA There have been many moments in human history where authoritarianism and tyranny have popped up across nations and societies. Right now you may be wondering if that’s what we’re seeing in America today, if it’s as bad as those previous times, if it’s what your grandparents were thinking and feeling in 30s and 40s, or what they thought during the nineteen teens and 1920s in Russia or Spain, or the 1970s in Chile. There’s an easy w

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jAzp6voksWo Probably the single loudest argument against government benefits, welfare, food stamps, and the social safety net, is the idea that somehow we don’t need government to solve the problems of society because rich people will just do it for us. They give a whole lot of money away to charity, right? So therefore, they’ll voluntarily recreate a social safety net so that we don’t need a government benefits system. Billionaire philanthr

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/L1adZn9w6Lc You may have heard that the Pentagon just failed its eighth consecutive audit at the end of 2025. But good news, they’re aiming to pass one of these dang things by 2028, so don’t you worry. In the meantime, because we have a lot of time until then, let’s take a look at what’s going on here.  Because from the outside, you’re probably thinking that this is a prime example of the failure of government processes and the result of ove

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4-zUHQ9dVLQ You’re are very probably imagining that we’re communicating in English right now, or the native language of your people, whatever that may be, if you’re using some kind of translation device or subtitles, but we’re actually communicating wholly in snark. So grab a translator if you need it, because there’s just no escaping snark anymore. You might be wondering, like, why can’t things just be, like, nice? Without any irony or prot

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TjO0mq37KR8 Legs are one of the most overtly sexualized part of the human body outside of the primary reproductive organs. So how did we all come to the modern collective cultural decision that legs are attractive? Because research does back up the fact that we all seem to agree that legs are very nice, and that they make us feel certain things that we need to talk to an adult about. But these two weird spindly stalks of people flesh that ho

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/QegpR8kiCM4 I was sitting in my doctor’s office recently because I’ve been seeing a number of doctors recently, because I was diagnosed with asthma at the age of forty. Which is really weird and confusing for me, and after having such an active lifestyle for, well, ever, it just really doesn’t make a lot of sense. And I found a study recently so I brought that up, thinking that maybe it might be applicable to some symptoms I was having, and

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/NJna3nL73yQ Did Benjamin Franklin really want the noble turkey to be the symbol of our great American republic?  No, he did not.  Why does everybody say this, then? Why does this myth persist? Because we all know the story about how the bald eagle was put forward, and Ben Franklin is all like, “the bald eagle sucks, it’s a lazy scavenger, and we want a noble glorious bird that’s native to our nation.” Well there are a lot of issues with this

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/L1mspG_TRsg Cryonics is a process where we stick rich people into sealed thermoses and lower the temperature down to around -190 degrees Celsius. If you need the conversion, this is like negative 370 degrees in freedom units. One thing to highlight from the start is that cryonics is not what you’d call a standard science. Some of the first people who underwent this process had to be scraped off the bottom of their capsules. Make sure to watc