Stop watching football. Yes, I know this is ‘Merica, it’s November, and football watching is what we do. But for just a few minutes pause your TV, move your brain downfield and … okay, that metaphor is totally not going to work. Just go with me here.
This week, I’m not abbreviating science articles from journals because I’m not here. There’s not even a Heisenberg-level of uncertainty about that: I am on vacation. But I’ll be spending a big part of that vacation watching these videos over slices of pumpkin pie. Except I’m lying. Because I prefer sweet potato.
This Thanksgiving, don’t just microwave that casserole. Put your mind in the toaster with some of these. Because here, in this very first video, is an experiment you can conduct yourself, with a couple of pairs of sunglasses, that demonstrates how jaw-droppingly weird things really are.
Your universe is profoundly odd. And also genuinely entertaining. Stick around and see.
Space Time
Here’s the thing I love about PBS Space Time … it’s not easy. It’s so, so not easy. It’s as if somewhere, in a meeting room at PBS, people had a meeting where they said “You know, instead of a science show where we try to dumb things down and make them accessible to someone who was paying absolutely no attention while playing Candy Crush, we just say ‘Screw you, colorful phone games, because people who try to watch this without devoting every last brain cell—and maybe kicking in a few volunteers from their liver and spleen—aren’t going to understand a thing.’” Like this example video, which is about a theory that every electron in the entire universe is actually just a single electron traveling through time. It’s physics, damn it! But mostly it’s the history of physics, and if the phrase the history of physics makes your eyes roll back into your skull, you’re almost ready to watch. There are also diagrams.
It’s really, really good in a low-key, Australian physicist kind of way. Matt O’Dowd not only hosts, but writes most episodes, and while he doesn’t immediately give the “Man in love with the Universe” vibe that you might get from a Sagan or a Tyson, hang in there. He plants just enough pop-culture references, in-jokes, and puns in the videos to make them very watchable. Stick around for the Q & A at the end of most episodes, and you’ll get a feel for the wry, and often insightful community that’s built up around this long-running series.
And yes, there are many episodes of this series that are much easier to interpret than the one above. I tossed you into the deep end because I wanted to watch the splashes. Here, have a video about the solar system’s robot graveyard as lighter fare.
The Royal Institution
When it comes to making science explicable to average folk, these guys are the true experts. They should be, because this London-based non-profit has been engaged in the task for better than two hundred years. They have videos on every topic, including some that include things going boom or bang … for science! So why, with every topic in the world to choose from, am I making you watch this bit of basic physics oddness? Because this is the oddness. Like the sunglasses experiment, this is another expression of why common sense, and how the universe actually operates, are not even kissing cousins.
minutephysics
If you want your physics entertainingly explained with intentionally crude drawings and a hint of snark—and if you don’t want those things, it’s only because you’ve not realized they’re available—minutephysics is the primary supplier. You will learn new facts. You will be amused. You will not have to pick up the quivering fragments of your brain with a teaspoon the way you must after some episodes of Space Time.
Infinite Series
What could be more exciting than a PBS series about physics? I know, a PBS series about math! That’s right. It’s all math, all the time. But there are large (though not infinite) number of reasons to love this series. Some of the mathematics concepts
As with Space Time, Infinite Series is both written and hosted by the same person, in this case Cornell grad student Kelsey Houston-Edwards. Houston-Edwards loves her math, but she’s not really a great presenter. Except that she is. It doesn’t take two minutes of watching to determine that she’s not, and never has been, a professional entertainer. And she doesn’t want to be. She simply loves numbers. She loves numbers so much that Infinite Series is not infinite. Houston-Edwards left the series to finish up her PhD, and while she was replaced with a pair of perfectly fine presenters, it just did not work without her somewhat ear-grinding central California accent to walk everything through why it’s easier to understand eight dimensions than seven. So watch this, but know that while mathematical series may be infinite (and come in different sizes of infinity) this show is a limited run.
Rinoa Super-Genius
Honestly, I can not tell you what you’re supposed to learn from this series. Possibly you might pick up tips on removing old rusty nails from barn wood—there’s not just a video on the subject, but an entire livestream of Rinoa doing nothing but … pulling rusty nails from barn wood. You can learn how not to restore a tiny 1976 electric car. You can certainly watch Rinoa nonchalantly deal with hazardous chemicals or construct a rocket engine with a casual disregard for the genuine possibility that she’s about to blow herself to bits, or at the very least, burn off something she will miss. Or you can see how Rinoa builds a workshop out of mostly stuff she just found lying around. Or maybe you will just learn that on YouTube, 75,000 people will subscribe to watch a young transgender woman stare into the camera for long minutes as if she forgot it was turned on. I know I did. The single most under-produced videos possible.
The Great Courses
And now, in the most neck-snapping transition possible, from Rinoa to … the Great Courses. The Great Courses is, of course, a set of lectures on everything from photography and cooking to history and philosophy. With plenty of science wedged in between—all for the low, low price of several hundred dollars a year. Which I pay. Because I can’t get enough of sitting through college lectures. However, in addition to those lecture series, they also have a lot of free content in science, history and other topics. Such as the one above, explaining why we’re screwed.
Vi Hart
I love Vi Hart. I’ve never seen her above the wrists, but her videos of "recreational mathematics" in which she explains complex ideas by building on simple concepts of sketching or folding paper are absolutely endearing, as well as sneaking in some cool concepts. However, when I say that I love Vi Hart, I feel a little squi about it, because I once heard an interview in which she pointed out that many men posted comments on her videos asking her to marry them. Which sounds kind of charming, except that it wasn’t dozens or men, or hundreds of men, but thousands of them. And as Hart started reading through these comments one after another, it finally dawned on me just how intrusive, demanding, presumptive, and ultimately painful even these supposedly nice comments really were. So, Vi, I love … your work. Many of my favorite Vi Hart videos are several years old, but not all of them.