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If you tried to sum up the last 150 years or so in one image, a chart of exponential growth would be a good place to start. It shows that some things change faster over time. You could apply it to life expectancy. Or compound interest. Or any number of things. But especially population growth. Back in 1798, a guy named Thomas Malthus noticed that not everything grows this way. And this caused people to worry because they were sure it would lead to massive death and starvation and famine. But that didn’t happen, thanks to something called the Green Revolution and a guy named Norman Borlaug. As we face a future population of ten billion and a world impacted by climate change, how will we do a Green Revolution 2.0? #GatesPartner

References: https://sites.google.com/view/....cansciencefeed10bill

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The largest pterosaurs like Quetzalcoatlus were closer in size to airplanes than birds. No flying animal alive today comes close to their huge size. So did giant pterosaurs actually fly? I went to see the fossil bones of the largest pterosaur that ever lived so I could learn how these winged giants actually took to the skies.

Special thanks:
Michael Habib, Ph.D. https://twitter.com/aeroevo
Matthew Brown/University of Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collection

References: https://sites.google.com/view/....giant-pterosaurs-ref

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If bees go, will they take us with them?
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Bees, wild and domesticated, are in big trouble. Bee colonies are dying off at alarming rates, and the cause isn't clear. Pesticides, habitat loss, disease… there's a laundry list of likely culprits. We rely on these tiny pollinators for a majority of our fruits, veggies, and nuts… if they disappear, could we be next?

LINKS/SOURCES:
Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers (Science, 2015) http://www.sciencemag.org/cont....ent/347/6229/1255957

What's killing America's bees? http://journals.plos.org/plosb....iology/article?id=10

Anand Varma's TED talk on saving bees: http://www.ted.com/talks/anand...._varma_a_thrilling_l

The White House's 2015 Pollinator Action Plan: http://journalistsresource.org..../studies/environment

Colony collapse disorder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C....olony_collapse_disor

Report of the commissioner of agriculture (1868): https://archive.org/details/reportofcommis00unit

Summary of colony collapse disorder: http://journalistsresource.org..../studies/environment

Have an idea for an episode or an amazing science question you want answered? Leave a comment or check us out at the links below!
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It's Okay To Be Smart is written and hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.DFollow me on Twitter: @jtotheizzoe
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Theme music: "Ouroboros" by Kevin MacLeod

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Last week's video:
The Energy Series! https://www.youtube.com/playli....st?list=PLsmqeqKj7M-

More videos:
Why Does February Have 28 Days? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgKaHTh-_Gs
Why Vaccines Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aNhzLUL2ys
Why Are Some People Left-Handed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPvMUpcxPSA
Where Does the Smell of Rain Come From? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGcE5x8s0B8

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Your love life would be WILD
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Special thanks to Jurgen Otto and Brave Bison for that great peacock spider video! Check out https://www.youtube.com/user/Peacockspiderman

Get a sneak peek of the Maker Box I'm curating for Quarterly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vit_ozLnHmA
Order yours by Feb. 22, 2017! ttp://on.qrtr.ly/ItsOKtoMake

Ever find yourself wishing for relationship advice and have no one to turn to? Looking for the secrets to a long and happy relationship but can’t find the answers? Maybe you just want to know how to tell that certain someone that you like them, but don’t know how to make the first move? Have no fear, Mother Nature is here! Other animals have millennia worth of mating experience, maybe they can teach us a thing or two?

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It’s Okay To Be Smart is hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
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For centuries, diamonds were one of the most mysterious materials on Earth. They were beautiful, indestructible, and completely unexplained. Today, we’re exploring how scientists unlocked their secrets, and how one lab recreates the extreme conditions in Earth's mantle to make diamonds… out of dead people.

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Duh, except for the sky… and the ocean…
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Among living things, the color blue is oddly rare. Blue rocks, blue sky, blue water, sure. But blue animals? They are few and far between. And the ones that do make blue? They make it in some very strange and special ways compared to other colors. In this video, we'll look at some very cool butterflies to help us learn how living things make blue, and why this beautiful hue is so rare in nature.

SPECIAL THANKS:
Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History
Bob Robbins, Ph.D. - Curator of Lepidoptera
Juan Pablo Hurtado Padilla - Microscope Educator

Richard Prum, Ph.D. - Yale University
Vinothan Manoharan, Ph.D. - Harvard University

SOURCES:

Bagnara, J. T., Fernandez, P. J., & Fujii, R. (2007). On the blue coloration of vertebrates. Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research, 20(1), 14-26.

Cuthill, I. C., Allen, W. L., Arbuckle, K., Caspers, B., Chaplin, G., Hauber, M. E., ... & Mappes, J. (2017). The biology of color. Science, 357(6350), eaan0221.

Kinoshita, S., Yoshioka, S., & Miyazaki, J. (2008). Physics of structural colors. Reports on Progress in Physics, 71(7), 076401.

Kinoshita, S. (2008). Structural colors in the realm of nature. World Scientific.

Prum, R. O., Quinn, T., & Torres, R. H. (2006). Anatomically diverse butterfly scales all produce structural colours by coherent scattering. Journal of Experimental Biology, 209(4), 748-765.

Vukusic, P., & Sambles, J. R. (2003). Photonic structures in biology. Nature, 424(6950), 852-855.

Vukusic, P., Sambles, J. R., Lawrence, C. R., & Wootton, R. J. (1999). Quantified interference and diffraction in single Morpho butterfly scales. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 266(1427), 1403-1411.



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It's Okay To Be Smart is hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
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It never gets dark anymore. Not REALLY dark, anyway. Not like it used to. Light pollution is not only making it more difficult to see the night sky, but it's also affecting our health. For the past century and a half, since the dawn of electric light, we’ve been losing our connection to the night. We need artificial light for modern society, of course. The problem is, we need darkness for our health, and for the health of wildlife and ecosystems, and we’re not getting enough of it. I traveled to McDonald Observatory in far west Texas, one of the darkest places in North America, to learn what people are doing in order to preserve dark skies, and to see truly dark skies for myself (and so I could show them to you!). This video features time lapse night sky images that I’ve been collecting for the past few years, and I hope they make you feel something special. Turn out the lights, keep looking up, and don’t be afraid of the dark.
#lightpollution #darkskies #astronomy

SOURCES/MORE INFO: https://sites.google.com/view/....light-pollution-sour

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Dorothy went over one. LeVar Burton read to us under one. In a song, Kermit the Frog connected us to one. Even Mork's suspenders were made of them.

Our culture, and our skies, are full of rainbows, but do you know how they form? Do we all see the same rainbow? Could cyborg-enhanced mantis shrimp eyes someday see a bigger rainbow?

The answer to all these questions involves a little physics, and the number 42.

Written and hosted by Joe Hanson
Produced by Painted On Productions (http://www.paintedon.com/)

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Our lizard friend the Gila monster probably has no idea that a chemical in its spit inspired one of the most important medical advancements of the 21st century. But this story is really about something bigger. Something deeper, beneath the surface. About why we do science in the first place. And about what kind of questions are the best ones for scientists to ask.

References: https://sites.google.com/view/....useless-knowledge-re

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What do raindrops look like? Exactly how we drew them as kids, right? Wrong! Teardrop-shaped rain is physically impossible. This week I went inside a vertical wind tunnel to bring you the true shape of rain.

Special thanks to iFly Indoor Skydiving in Austin, TX! Learn more about their STEM field trips: https://www.iflyworld.com/prog....rams/stem-field-trip

REFERENCES:

Dr. Scot Martin, Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry at Harvard University https://www.seas.harvard.edu/directory/smartin

Terminal Velocity of Raindrops Aloft
https://journals.ametsoc.org/d....oi/10.1175/1520-0450

The Terminal Velocity of Fall for Water Droplets in Stagnant Air
https://journals.ametsoc.org/d....oi/pdf/10.1175/1520-

Single-Drop Fragmentation Determines Size Distribution of Raindrops
https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys1340



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It’s Okay To Be Smart is hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
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Visit https://vote.gov/ to learn how and when to register and vote.
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In this episode we're joined by a leading political scientist to help us figure out the complex psychological and social factors that motivate us to vote… or not to. We discuss how and why our decision whether or not to vote might not be a rational one. And why it is important to understand that. And why it’s important to vote!

Visit Vote.gov to learn how and when to register and vote.

References and further reading: https://sites.google.com/view/....why-do-we-vote-refer

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Building a perfect igloo takes cool science!
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If you ever find yourself stranded in the snowy Arctic (or bored in Minecraft), you’re gonna need to know how to build an igloo. But how can building a house made of ice keep you warm? The science behind building an igloo is the same reason that otters and reindeer don't freeze to death!

LEARN MORE:

There really ARE 50 Eskimo words for snow: http://wapo.st/2iwThf3

PBS Idea Channel - An Infinite Number of Words for Snow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX6i2M4AoZw

Why there’s no such thing as cold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akd7MMRKDwc

How early humans settled the Arctic: https://uaf.edu/files/olli/Den....bigh-Slides_lowres.p

How to build a scientifically perfect igloo: http://www.popsci.com/how-to-build-an-igloo


It’s Okay To Be Smart is hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.D.

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Across life on Earth, blood comes in red, blue, green, purple, even clear. But why? And what makes your blood different from mine? This video will teach you everything you need to know about the strange world of blood—what it does, why it varies, and why we can’t live without it.

References: https://sites.google.com/view/....be-smart-blood-types

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It sounds like such an incredible fact. “Our own cells are outnumbered by our microbes 10 to 1!” I don’t remember where I first heard it. But I read it in science papers and articles by journalists, so I believed it without question. I even made one of my first videos based on this fact. Problem is, this fact is not true. So how did it remain firmly planted in our common knowledge for almost four decades without any scientific scrutiny? And how can you prepare yourself to not be fooled by other scientific urban legends? I look at a few of the most famous incorrect factoids in science, and give a few suggestions for how to make our common knowledge more correct.

References: https://sites.google.com/view/....7-scientific-urban-l

Please do not watch this old video, it is wrong and my hair is awful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BZME8H7-KU


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I’ve explained a lot of weird bodily functions on this show but there’s one that we haven’t covered that’s always confused me: Tickling. What are you for, tickling? What’s the point of you? Why do you exist? Why do you make us laugh even though we hate you? Let’s dig into our evolutionary past to try and find an answer.

References:

Laughing, tickling, and speech http://untiredwithloving.org/dhahak.pdf
Pathogenic laughter https://n.neurology.org/content/64/12/2154.short
Tickling review http://charris.ucsd.edu/articl....es/Harris_EHB2012.pd
Darwin-Hecker http://charris.ucsd.edu/articles/Harris&Christenfeld_CE1997.pdf
Early thoughts https://www.jstor.org/stable/1....411471?seq=1#page_sc
Neural correlates of laughter https://academic.oup.com/cerco....r/article/23/6/1280/
Neural correlates of laughter https://academic.oup.com/brain..../article/126/10/2121 Experience of pleasure https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6877978
Tickling and laughter https://www.sciencedirect.com/....science/article/pii/
Ticklish rats https://science.sciencemag.org..../content/354/6313/75
Social laughter and pain https://royalsocietypublishing.....org/doi/full/10.109


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Laughing is a universal human behavior, one that transcends borders of language and culture. But it's also REALLY WEIRD. Why do we do it? The answer has less to do with humor than you might think
Learn more:
"Laughter: A Scientific Investigation" by Robert Provine http://amzn.to/1fzZQLy

"Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why" by Scott Weems http://amzn.to/1etLLyv



Have an idea for an episode or an amazing science question you want answered? Leave a comment or check us out at the links below!
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-----------------
It's Okay To Be Smart is written and hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.DFollow me on Twitter: @jtotheizzoe
Email me: itsokaytobesmart AT gmail DOT com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/itsokaytobesmart
Google+ https://plus.google.com/+itsokaytobesmart
For more awesome science, check out: http://www.itsokaytobesmart.com
Produced by PBS Digital Studios: http://www.youtube.com/user/pbsdigitalstudios

Joe Hanson - Creator/Host/Writer
Joe Nicolosi - Director
Amanda Fox - Producer, Spotzen IncKate Eads - Producer
Andrew Matthews - Editing/Motion Graphics/Animation
Katie Graham - Camera
John Knudsen - Gaffer


Theme music: "Ouroboros" by Kevin MacLeod

Other music via APM
Stock images from Shutterstock, stock footage from Videoblocks


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More videos:
Why Does February Have 28 Days? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgKaHTh-_Gs
Why Vaccines Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aNhzLUL2ys
Why Are Some People Left-Handed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPvMUpcxPSA
Where Does the Smell of Rain Come From? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGcE5x8s0B8

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Are humans nature’s greatest architects? When we look elsewhere in nature, we find some pretty amazing animal architects. Species like ants, termites, prairie dogs, birds, and more have engineered some incredible structures. This week we look at how a few of these species have mastered physics to install air conditioning in their homes!

Special thanks to Dianna Cowern AKA Physics Girl for helping us get the physics right in this video! https://www.youtube.com/user/physicswoman

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REFERENCES:

Gould, James L., and Carol Grant Gould. Animal architects: building and the evolution of intelligence. Basic Books (AZ), 2007.

Hansell, M. (2007). Built by animals: the natural history of animal architecture. OUP Oxford.

Cosarinsky, M. I., & Roces, F. (2012). The construction of turrets for nest ventilation in the grass-cutting ant Atta vollenweideri: import and assembly of building materials. Journal of Insect Behavior, 25(3), 222-241.

Kleineidam, C., Ernst, R., & Roces, F. (2001). Wind-induced ventilation of the giant nests of the leaf-cutting ant Atta vollenweideri. Naturwissenschaften, 88(7), 301-305.

King, H., Ocko, S., & Mahadevan, L. (2015). Termite mounds harness diurnal temperature oscillations for ventilation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(37), 11589-11593.

Vogel, S., Ellington, C. P., & Kilgore, D. L. (1973). Wind-induced ventilation of the burrow of the prairie-dog, Cynomys ludovicianus. Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology, 85(1), 1-14.

Bahadori, M. M. (1978). Passive cooling systems in Iranian architecture. Sci. Am.;(United States), 238(2).

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It’s Okay To Be Smart is hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
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You’ve probably heard of Ben Franklin and the kite. But do you know the TRUE story of how his famous experiment changed the world? Here’s the tale of how one person’s quest for scientific knowledge altered the direction of history.

References:

Dray, Philip. “Stealing God's Thunder: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod and the Invention of America.” Random House, 2005.

Franklin, Benjamin. “Experiments and observations on electricity, made at Philadelphia in America” 1769. https://archive.org/details/ex....perimentsobser00fran

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How many times do you look in a mirror every day? Have you ever stopped to wonder how they actually work? Mirrors do strange things to our world, seemingly flipping everything so that what was right is left and what was left is right. But what if I told you that mirrors don’t actually flip the world left to right? The real magic of mirrors is far stranger and more interesting, as you’re about to learn.

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Gardner, Martin - The New Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry from Mirror Reflections to Superstrings

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Earth’s climate is changing in a big way, and it’s because there's more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any point in our species’ history. But Earth’s climate has changed before. How do we know that this time we’re the cause? We know thanks to tiny bubbles of ancient atmosphere trapped in ice. #climatechange #globalwarming

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