Sunday Lectures: Black Holes, Condoms, and the Perfect Meal
Get smart without getting out of bed.
Sunday Lectures is a weekly roundup of the internet’s most interesting educational videos. Get smarter without getting out of bed.
Professor Charles Spence on “The Perfect Meal”
Truly fine dining isn’t just about the food. As Oxford University-based experimental psychologist and gastrophysicist Charles Spence describes in his book The Perfect Meal, the experience should be multisensory. The color of your plate, the shape of your glass, or even the restaurant’s playlist could make the difference between a good and great meal.
Better Safe Than Sorry - The History of Contraception
Babies are a pain in the ass if you don’t plan for them, and depending on your culture, having one accidentally could also get you in a lot of trouble. Here’s a brief rundown of the ways we’ve attempted to avoid making mistakes.
Crash Course in Black Holes
Black holes have become such a common sci-fi trope that casual nerds take it for granted that they understand them. They don’t. Nobody really does. But if you’re ready to try, this video is a good start.
How Does Page Ranking Work?
Google has the baffling ability to take your “Slime Season” search, list all of the Young Thug-related links on the first couple of pages, and relegate websites on Florida swampland to page 16, where you’ll probably never look. Here, Dr. Max Wilson of the University of Nottingham explains how it works.
How The Brain Encodes Time and Place
The memories you store in your brain are made up of three components: What, Where, and When? While scientists haven’t fully mapped out the memory recall process, researchers at MIT think they’ve got the “when” and “where” bits figured out.
