MinuteEarth

By Minute EarthScience Earth Sciences

MinuteEarth episodes

May 09, 2025How Much Air Can A Tree Hold?
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
carbon: element that makes up half of tree wood by weight.
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
⁠⁠⁠https://neptunestudios.info⁠⁠⁠
If you like what we do, you can help us!
- Become our patron: ⁠⁠⁠https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth⁠⁠⁠
- Buy our merch: ⁠⁠⁠http://dftba.com/minuteearth⁠⁠⁠
- Buy our book: ⁠⁠⁠https://minuteearth.com/books⁠⁠⁠
- Sign up to our newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠http://news.minuteearth.com⁠⁠⁠
- Share with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
3 min
May 08, 2025Why Are Adults So Bad At New Languages?
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Second-Language Acquisition: The process of a language that’s not the speaker’s native language.

Bilingualism: The ability to speak and understand two languages.

Monitor Model: A group of hypotheses that propose that linguistic competence is only advanced when language is subconsciously acquired.

Sociolinguistics: The study of language in relation to all sorts of social factors.

Linguistic Investment: A motivation to learn a language based on the understanding that the speaker will acquire a wider range of symbolic and material resources, which will in turn increase the value of their cultural capital and social power.

Hyperpolyglot: A person who can speak and understand more than six languages.
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
⁠⁠⁠https://neptunestudios.info⁠⁠⁠
If you like what we do, you can help us!
- Become our patron: ⁠⁠⁠https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth⁠⁠⁠
- Buy our merch: ⁠⁠⁠http://dftba.com/minuteearth⁠⁠⁠
- Buy our book: ⁠⁠⁠https://minuteearth.com/books⁠⁠⁠
- Sign up to our newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠http://news.minuteearth.com⁠⁠⁠
- Share with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
4 min
May 07, 2025How The Modern World Tricks Our Bodies Into Hurting Themselves
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Cyclooxygenase: An enzyme responsible for the production of thromboxane and prostaglandins.

Thromboxane: A lipid that acts as a platelet aggregator.

Platelets: Special non-nucleic blood cells that clump together to cause blood clots.

Prostaglandins: A lipid that causes vasodilation and inflammation.

Aspirin: A form of acetylsalicylic acid that acts as an NSAID.

NSAIDs: Non-steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs that inhibit COX, and thus inflammation and clotting.
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
⁠⁠⁠https://neptunestudios.info⁠⁠⁠
If you like what we do, you can help us!
- Become our patron: ⁠⁠⁠https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth⁠⁠⁠
- Buy our merch: ⁠⁠⁠http://dftba.com/minuteearth⁠⁠⁠
- Buy our book: ⁠⁠⁠https://minuteearth.com/books⁠⁠⁠
- Sign up to our newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠http://news.minuteearth.com⁠⁠⁠
- Share with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
4 min
May 06, 2025Why Exercise Is Hard
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Physical activity - any bodily movement produced by the contraction of skeletal muscle that increases energy expenditure above a basal level

Exercise - a form of physical activity that is planned, structured, repetitive, and performed (primarily) with the goal of improving health or fitness

Recommended levels of physical activity (USA) - 150 minutes moderate-intensity or 75 minutes vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity per week, or an equivalent combination, and muscle-strengthening activities at least 2 days / week

Evolutionary medicine - a field that uses evolutionary theory & data to better understand (the origins of) health & disease

Mismatch conditions - health conditions that are more prevalent or severe today than in the past because the body is inadequately or insufficiently adapted to modern environmental conditions (likely including: cavities, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis)
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
⁠⁠https://neptunestudios.info⁠⁠
If you like what we do, you can help us!
- Become our patron: ⁠⁠https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth⁠⁠
- Buy our merch: ⁠⁠http://dftba.com/minuteearth⁠⁠
- Buy our book: ⁠⁠https://minuteearth.com/books⁠⁠
- Sign up to our newsletter: ⁠⁠http://news.minuteearth.com⁠⁠
- Share with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
5 min
May 05, 2025The Secret Global Sewer System
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Waterlog - to saturate (a field) with water; a problem for most crops

Drainage - the removal of liquid (water) from an area

Ditch - a narrow channel dug in the ground, typically used for drainage alongside a road or the edge of a field

Drain tile - a pipe buried (beneath a field) for drainage. Originally made of ceramic tiles, now typically of corrugated plastic

Precision agriculture - putting corn seed + small dose of fertilizer/pesticides in hole in ground

Controlled drainage - the use of a water control structure to raise the depth of a drain tile outlet to hold water in the field when drainage isn't needed

Wood chip bioreactor - an underground trench filled with wood chips that provide carbon for bacteria that denitrify the water flowing through it

Saturated buffer - a strip on the edge of a field filled with plants & bacteria that can remove some nitrogen from the water flowing onto it from drain tiles

Denitrification - the removal of nitrogen from a substance (soil, air, or water) by chemical reduction, typically via bacteria

Wetland - an area of land where water covers the soil year-round or at certain times of year

Ecosystem services - the free benefits humans get from natural ecosystems
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
⁠https://neptunestudios.info⁠
If you like what we do, you can help us!
- Become our patron: ⁠https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth⁠
- Buy our merch: ⁠http://dftba.com/minuteearth⁠
- Buy our book: ⁠https://minuteearth.com/books⁠
- Sign up to our newsletter: ⁠http://news.minuteearth.com⁠
- Share with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
4 min
May 04, 2025 Keeled dragons
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
⁠⁠https://neptunestudios.info⁠⁠
If you like what we do, you can help us!
- Become our patron: ⁠⁠https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth⁠⁠
- Buy our merch: ⁠⁠http://dftba.com/minuteearth⁠⁠
- Buy our book: ⁠⁠https://minuteearth.com/books⁠⁠
- Sign up to our newsletter: ⁠⁠http://news.minuteearth.com⁠⁠
- Share with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
2 min
May 03, 2025 Four-limbed dragons
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
⁠https://neptunestudios.info⁠
If you like what we do, you can help us!
- Become our patron: ⁠https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth⁠
- Buy our merch: ⁠http://dftba.com/minuteearth⁠
- Buy our book: ⁠https://minuteearth.com/books⁠
- Sign up to our newsletter: ⁠http://news.minuteearth.com⁠
- Share with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
2 min
May 02, 2025How We Evolved To Browse The Web
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Optimality models: tools used to evaluate the costs and benefits of different organismal features, traits, and characteristics, including behavior, in the natural world.

Optimal foraging theory: a behavioral ecology model that helps predict how an animal behaves when searching for food.

Marginal value theorem: an optimality model that describes the strategy that maximizes gain per unit time in systems where resources, and thus rate of returns, decrease with time.

Central place foraging: a model for analyzing how an organism traveling from a home base to a distant foraging location can maximize foraging rates.
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
⁠https://neptunestudios.info⁠
If you like what we do, you can help us!
- Become our patron: ⁠https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth⁠
- Buy our merch: ⁠http://dftba.com/minuteearth⁠
- Buy our book: ⁠https://minuteearth.com/books⁠
- Sign up to our newsletter: ⁠http://news.minuteearth.com⁠
- Share with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
5 min
May 01, 2025Our Best View Of Bacteria Is...From Space?!
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Microbe - an organism (such as a bacterium or protozoan) of microscopic or ultramicroscopic size.

Remote sensing - the scanning of the earth , especially by satellite or high-flying aircraft, in order to obtain information about it.

Pathogen - a bacterium, virus, or other microbe that can cause disease.

Chlorophyll - a green pigment, present in all green plants and in cyanobacteria, responsible for the absorption of light to provide energy for photosynthesis.

Phytoplankton - photosynthesizing microscopic biotic organisms that inhabit the upper sunlit layer of almost all oceans and bodies of fresh water on Earth.

Cholera - an infectious and often fatal bacterial disease of the small intestine, typically contracted from infected water supplies and causing severe vomiting and diarrhea.

Evaporite - a natural salt or mineral deposit left after the evaporation of a body of water.

Microbially induced sedimentary structures (MISS) - primary sedimentary structures formed by the interaction of microbes with sediment and physical agents of erosion, deposition, and transportation.
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
⁠https://neptunestudios.info⁠
If you like what we do, you can help us!
- Become our patron: ⁠https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth⁠
- Buy our merch: ⁠http://dftba.com/minuteearth⁠
- Buy our book: ⁠https://minuteearth.com/books⁠
- Sign up to our newsletter: ⁠http://news.minuteearth.com⁠
- Share with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
4 min
April 30, 2025The Bacteria That Made Life Possible Is Now Killing Us
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Cyanobacteria: aquatic photosynthesizing bacteria often erroneously call blue-green algae

Blue-green algae: incorrect name often used for cyanobacteria because they are blue-green in appearance and can be confused with algae

Dead zone: coastal area where cyanobacteria blooms lead to anaerobic conditions, killing fish and other organisms

Mycrosystins: a class of toxic compounds released by certain cyanobacteria

MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
⁠https://neptunestudios.info⁠
If you like what we do, you can help us!
- Become our patron: ⁠https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth⁠
- Buy our merch: ⁠http://dftba.com/minuteearth⁠
- Buy our book: ⁠https://minuteearth.com/books⁠
- Sign up to our newsletter: ⁠http://news.minuteearth.com⁠
- Share with your friends and family
- Leave us a comment (we read them!)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
4 min

About MinuteEarth

From the publisher's feed

From the creators of the popular science show with millions of YouTube subscribers comes the MinuteEarth podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know…