PBS

Did you know Martin Luther King Jr Day wasn’t celebrated in all 50 states until 2000? And that in order to create the holiday honoring the civil rights leader we needed help from Stevie Wonder and the National Football League. Why was this the case? Well MLK Jr, wasn’t beloved by everyone during his life and winning the battle to create a holiday in his honor took a lot of work. How did happen?

“Go To Your Room!” might be the most well known parental demand in America, but why do kids have their own sleeping area at all? Because while a bedroom might just seem like a “normal” thing for people who can afford a certain amount of living space, the history of separate sleeping spaces is actually the result of European colonialism, clocks, Victorian modesty and post-war Suburban expansion.

A psychiatrist holding up an inky blob and saying “what does this look like?” might be the most famous psycholigical test of all time. Originally developed by Hermann Rorschach as means of detecting schizophrenia, this little known and abstract test went on to become a pop culture staple featured in everything from The Golden Girls to Armageddon. But why? And more importantly, can those weird litt

It may seem obvious, but only 40-45% of colonists supported the cause. It's not as simple as it may appear!

Could Muslim forces have conquered Europe during the Middle Ages? Well if the Battle of Tours in 732, where Frankish King Charles Martel defeated the army of the Umayyad Caliphate led by 'Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, had the opposite outcome it’s very possible European history could have been wildly different. How so? Watch the episode to find out.

Do you believe that your race correlates to your skin tone? Because that wasn’t always the case. So how did Americans come to believe that race equals certain visible physical characteristics such as skin color and hair? And why is it that certain ethnic groups that were once considered “non-white” became reclassified as “white”? Watch the episode to find out.

Everybody hates paying taxes, but what if no one had to pay them? As strange as this may seem to modern Americans, until the 16th amendment, the USA didn’t have a permanent federal income tax. So how would America be different if federal income taxes had never been made into law? Watch the episode to find out.

The edge of everything used to be the edge of the map. But now, thanks to what we know about astrophysics and the universe, the edge of everything might not even exist…

Eating turkey this holiday season? Chowing down on a roast chicken? You’re eating a dinosaur! Entertain your family and friends with a little science lesson this year, and show them why bird bones tell us that birds are actually living dinosaurs.

Nothing is guaranteed in life except death, taxes, and entropy. What do other life forms have to teach us about staying alive as we get old, and will we ever conquer death?

The bottom of the cereal box is a disappointing place. But at least now you know why. Where do you see the Brazil Nut Effect around you?

We’ve known about the greenhouse effect for nearly 200 years and about climate change for more than a century, but we’ve had a hard time acting because our brains aren’t a good match for a problem this big.

Splitting the atom once promised to be the carbon-free energy source of the future. But today, nuclear power plants are aging and retiring worldwide. What happened?

What do you think of when you hear the words “climate change?” Chances are, you might think of sad nature, somewhere far away. But climate change also affects humans, in every corner of the world, including the corner where you live, and where I live. It impacts the people and places we see everyday, and it will impact some of us more than others.

Weather and climate are very different. But our experience of weather can have a big effect on how we view climate change. Why is that?

The average carbon footprint of a person in the US is 16.5 tons –TONS. So, what can you actually do decrease this number and make a meaningful difference?

Climate change is affecting lots of living things, including the fluffy, cute ones. What can the adorable pika teach humans about adapting to global warming?

Nothing is less romantic than talking to your partner about their financial history, but finances cause major stresses in relationships. A lot of these stresses can be tackled by communicating without judgment. Here are 5 financial topics you should discuss with your future partner.

Fantasy novels are more than just hundreds of pages worth of swords and magic! Okay, there's some of that. But it's also a lens to what our society finds important to our pasts, our presents, and future.

What makes a book important? Why are some books required reading in high school, while others are lost to history?

Get to know the story behind some of literature’s most iconic book covers in the latest episode of It’s Lit!

What is ghostwriting and why does it exist? The answer is less frightening — but more complicated — than you’d think.

During the Cretaceous Period, dinosaurs were more diverse, more fierce, and more strange than ever. But something else was happening under the feet of the terrible lizards: for the first time in history, there were flowers.

There are animals in the fossil record that challenge some of our most basic ideas about what animals are supposed to look like. If there ever was a monster on this planet that was worthy of the name, it might have been the Tully Monster.

We don’t know which living thing was the very first to arrive at the totally revolutionary process that is sexual reproduction but we can follow the history of how (and why) sex became a thing.