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In Iceland if somebody is very wise you say that person is “vitur”. It means they have a lot of “vit” or “sense”. And the opposite of that, when someone is not wise at all they are “vitleysingur”. It means that person does not have any “vit”, essentially they are “witless”. A recent study showed that learning new words activates the same region that is active when you do pleasurable activities like eating cake or seeing your favorite band perform. We hope you find “vitleysingur” mind-blowing. In the study researchers gave participants two tasks: one was learning new words and the other was a gambling task. FMRI scan showed that the ventral stratum, the kay area involved in reward and motivation was active in both tasks. It sorts of makes sense because communicating with people gives us pleasure. Research shows that through human <a href="https://rumble.com/v30na7-10-unsolved-mysteries-of-evolution.html" target="_blank">evolution</a> we were motivated to acquire linguistic skills and learn new language because it is tied to this reward system. We describe things as mind-blowing all the time, but what does it actually mean? The emotional aspect to learning new languages is extremely important because we need emotion to engage our learning cycle. Research shows that we are <a href="https://rumble.com/v4cks7-learning-the-language-while-you-travel.html" target="_blank">learning</a> best when we are in a state of relaxed awareness, not too aroused or totally disengaged. Learning comes best when you are in this mood and you experience awe and curiosity. When we learn new cool bits of information we activate that same reward region of our brain as when we learn new words. You feel good because you have learned something cool and you want to learn more. Curiosity is contagious and it is sort of addictive as well. Learning new words activates the reward area of our brain and, perhaps, learning surprising new bits, or “vits” of information does too.

Are you a morning person or a night owl? I've never been an early bird – and lately I've been wondering why. This pattern in your sleep/wake cycle is called your "chronotype" and appears to be influenced by your genetics. It has some interesting effects on your health – from some people being more agreeable and proactive to others eating and drinking more. Do you notice an effect on your health?

Do you ever talk to your dog? Do they ever talk back? Humans and dogs have a truly amazing relationship, developed along an evolutionary journey that goes back nearly 10,000 years. Do they really understand what we say, think, and feel? Recent research suggests dogs know more about our language and emotions than you might think.

Albert Einstein strongly disagreed with Niels Bohr when it came to Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics. Quantum entanglement settled the argument once and for all.

It may sometimes seem like things are getting worse, but there’s lots of reasons to be optimistic about the future. More people have access to toilets and sanitation than ever before. Thanks to public health improvements like this, since 1990, 122 million children’s lives have been saved. Diseases like polio are nearing eradication. Women have more access to health care and education than ever bef

Honeycomb. Strawberries. Flower pods. Some people find these things incredibly scary. We call this extreme fear trypophobia. But why does it exist?

The *mind-blowing* story of Phineas Gage, a man who survived with a hole in his brain – and what we learnt from him.

A halfalogue is that distracting half-of-a-conversation that you overhear. And you absolutely must know the other half. Because you're a curious human and your brain circuitry rewards you for finding out. Here's the lowdown.

We can all be pretty awkward. Right? Here we cover the psychology of awkwardness. But it's not all bad news. It’s a good thing that we’re aware of ourselves and care about how others perceive us. Feeling awkward can push us to sharpen our social skills. Being in an <a href="https://rumble.com/v3ry4x-well-this-is-awkward.html" target="_blank">awkward</a> situation is nothing new to each and every individual living on this planet. The pressure of always remaining in the good graces of the crowd weighs down on our shoulders and makes our anxiety levels sky-rocket fairly regularly. But science thinks that not everything is black and white and that somewhere in that gray area this uncomfortableness we’re feeling makes us grow our people skills. Crazy, right? Apparently, it’s not that crazy. Scientists have this theory that we have two perceptions of ourselves, the first one represents our introspective view and how we see ourselves, while the second one represents how we think the other people see us on the outside. To us, this second one is extremely important because it may affect our social status and interaction. Granted, we may never be too satisfied of ourselves, but we like to play by the <a href="https://rumble.com/v4spcr-introvert-at-puppy-playtime.html" target="_blank">unwritten standards of society</a>. So how do we go about dealing with those mild anxiety attacks we experience each time we misinterpret a greeting? Make sure you check out the whole video to find out! Enjoy!

We live in a fast moving world. The faster you drink your coffee, the faster you’ll wake up. The <a href="https://rumble.com/v31i4g-late-for-school-morning-routine-life-hacks-everyone-should-know.html" target="_blank">faster you wake up</a>, the more time in the day you’ll have. The faster you walk, the faster you’d reach a destination. The faster you do things, the more accomplished you’ll be. It’s all a daily competition you have with yourself and with the things that surround you and the promise of success is what gets you out of bed in the morning. But is everything supposed to be done in as little time as possible? Shouldn’t we stop at some point and just enjoy existence? <a href="https://rumble.com/v3xb79-a-little-baby-running-and-running-in-street.html" target="_blank">Running</a> is the oldest competition in the world. Running means surviving when you’re in danger. It also means that there is a prize waiting for you at the end of your destination, and if you don’t get it first, someone else will. It saved the first humans in the ancient wilderness and it was turned into a competitive sport in ancient Greece, one which we still practice to this day. Running has become such a hobby that 65 million people in America said that they went running in 2014. But are we doing it right? Should we be running with or without shoes? Should we rely on technology to ease our running experience or should we tune into our primordial instincts? Are we sure that we are positioning our foot right or even our whole body and our breathing? Make sure you watch this video to find out the answers to these questions.

No astronauts were harmed in the making of this video.

From spirals to spots to fractals, nature is full of interesting patterns. Many of these patterns even resemble geometric shapes. One of the most common? Hexagons. Why do we see this six-sided shape occur so many times in nature? This week we explore why hexagons are so common in the natural world, from honeycomb to bubbles to rocks, and what their mathematics, physics, and biology may have in com

Got a bad habit you just can’t seem to break? That’s because it’s literally wired into your brain. Every single thought, action, and feeling changes your brain. When repeated enough times, a habit is formed. This week we’ll talk about how an advertiser in the early 1900s got half of Americans to pick up a new behavior - and make it a habit we all know today.

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 ever see a bigger rainbow?

What do the first stars in the universe, dark matter, and superior siege engines have in common?

As more and more parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children or are vaccinating them later, diseases like measles are making a comeback. Are vaccines safe? How do vaccines work? Why do some people claim there is a link between vaccines and autism? This week we look at why are people afraid of something that has saved so many lives, and look at the history and science of vaccines.

Many of our foods contain sugar nowadays to stimulate the addictive part in our brains in order to have the need for more. This does happen to occur more frequently wuth fast food rather than food bought from the market or fresh vegetables and fruits. The girl in this video has a detailed explanation of food addiction or eating addiction that she describes as behavioral addiction that is characterized by the compulsive consumption of palatable foods, the types of food which markedly activate the reward system in humans and other animals, despite adverse consequences. "<a href="https://rumble.com/v4n40p-brown-dog-wearing-blue-jacket-begging-for-food.html" target="_blank">Food addiction</a>" refers to compulsive over eaters who engage in frequent episodes of uncontrolled eating. The term binge eating means eating an unhealthy amount of food while feeling that one's sense of control has been lost. People who engage in binge eating may feel frenzied, and consume a considerable amount of calories before stopping. Food binges may be followed by feelings of guilt and depression, for example, some will cancel their plans for the next day because they "feel fat." Binge eating also has implications on physical health, due to excessive intake of fats and sugars, which can cause numerous health problems. Sometimes our love of sugar makes us go a little overboard, not always specifically cause we are consciously looking for <a href="https://rumble.com/v47qcr-seattle-sugar-tax-gives-starbucks-a-pass.html" target="_blank">sugar</a>, but simply because sugar might be one of the many ways in which one product can be made more desirable than another.

‘If you could have any superpower, what would it be?’ is one of the most common icebreaker questions there is. It makes sense, since our physical limitations are pretty firmly defined and the idea of being extremely exceptional is something that everyone has dreamt about at one point or another. Superpowers aren’t only found between the pages of comic books and sci-fi movies, there are many animals on Earth who have extreme abilities compared to humans. Of course, we humans shouldn’t feel too bad. Sure, we might not be able to jump as high or fly, but we’ll just need to take comfort in the fact that our species is intelligent enough to develop the technology necessary to create videos such as this. Chitons can make their own magnetic teeth. These molluscs might not have a face, but they do have the ability to make their own teeth out of one of the hardest materials made by a living organism: magnetite. <a href="https://rumble.com/v32ulz-bearded-dragon-meets-axolotl.html" target="_blank">Lizards</a> are capable of truly outstanding feats, including the salamander. This amphibian is known for its ability to re-grow not just its tale but also entire limbs and parts of major organs. And salamanders can regrow whole limbs. Cuttlefish are masters of camouflage while pit vipers can see in infrared. So there's nowhere you can hide (except maybe a freezer). Salmon sense the Earth's magnetic field to guide them home and dragon millipedes can shoot cyanide at their predators. <a href="https://rumble.com/v351s3-platypus-scratches-its-tummy-below-mountain-waterfall.html" target="_blank">Platypuses</a> have a sixth sense - electrolocation - that means they can sense the electrical signals in their prey's muscles. So the more they try to swim away, the more visible they become to the platypus. Electric eels can generate electric shocks up to 600 volts. You don't need a sixth sense to detect that. Dung beetles can pull over 1,000 times their body weight while geckos can walk up windows thanks to electrostatic forces between thousands of tiny hairs on their feet and the surface. Fleas can jump 200 times their body length in a single bound. Mantis shrimps swing their arm out at 80kph when they punch, with about the same acceleration as a 22-caliber bullet.

We learned how motion gives matter its mass, but how does motion affect time? Let’s dive deeper into the true nature of matter and mass by exploring Einstein’s photon clock thought experiment, and the phenomenon that is time dilation.

Our universe is prone to increasing disorder and chaos. So how did it generate the extreme complexity we see in life? Actually, the laws of physics themselves may demand it.

In this episode, welcome in Matt O’Dowd as the new host to rigorously take you through the mysteries of space, time, and the nature of reality. We’re starting off this new season with perhaps one of the most mysterious things of all — DARK MATTER. What is it? Where does it come from? And is it even real? Watch this episode of Space Time to find out!

Why do we cry? It’s weird. Humans leak water out of their faces when they get sad. Are we the only animals that do this? What does it mean? What is it for? Here’s the science of human tears!

The silence of the galaxy and the resulting Fermi Paradox has perplexed us for nearly 50 years. But our most recent surveys of the Milky Way finally allow us to draw scientific conclusions about the depressingly persistent absence of aliens.

Most of us take gravity as an assumed part of our living realities, but why? Basic physics introduces us to the concept of gravity from a Newtonian sense, but when you start factoring Einstein into an understanding of gravity, things get… weird. For example, gravity may simply not exist. Why? Watch this week’s episode of PBS Space Time and find out why gravity may be an illusion!

When we say a planet is habitable, we aren’t REALLY saying what we think we are saying. 'Habitable' means something else. Is Kepler 186f habitable, in the true sense of the word? And if not, what other planets should we be looking at? Watch this episode of PBS SpaceTime and find out!