Hurt Your Brain Playlist #1

Welcome to the Hurt Your Brain internet playlist from July 1, 2016. It's a collection of podcasts, videos, and other links for people who love to learn online and are fascinated by the world. Click here to get playlists emailed to you as they come out.

Carl Sagan is one of my heroes, so it is fitting this first playlist has a bit of a space theme. Alright, let's get to it!

PODCASTS

Planet Money #538: Is a Stradavarius Just A Violin?, Jun 22, 23 min Learn: How much of the value of something is based on the story around it vs it's intrinsic value. Quote: "Sometimes when you debunk a myth, you realize you kind of like the myth. You needed the myth."

Half Hour Intern NASA Engineer (with Mike Cooney), Jun 16, 87 min Learn: Everything you've always wanted to know about working at NASA and why what they do is so cool and often under appreciated (especially lately). Quote: "We built the International Space Station which has been up for what, going on 20 years I think now. There's a significant portion of the world's population who has only been alive when we've continually had human beings in space."Stuff You Should Know How Space Stations Work, Jun 21, 51 min Learn: A walk through of why space stations even became a thing and why the most recent one (the ISS) is still a big deal. Quote: "I think the reason why we do kind of take it for granted is because the conception of living in space that we are at right now is remedial compared to where everyone expected it to be in the mid 70's, where the idea of space colonization was at it's peak."99% Invisible 217- Home on Lagrange, Jun 21, 29 min Learn: How the optimism about space colonization exploded in the early 70's because of Princeton physics professor, Gerry O'Neill. Click on the link above to check out the fantastic pictures that go along with this episode. Quote: "In all of his interviews and lectures, Gerry O'Neill talked about space in this whole new way, Space wasn't just a government program for elite astronauts to take part in. Space was a place. Just another place for you and I to get to and explore."

YOUTUBE

Vsauce How Earth Moves, Jun 13, 21 min Learn: Everything you need to know about why the calendar is the way it is, leap years, how Earth and the solar system move through space, and in typical Vsauce fashion, so much more. Quote: “This is how you, on Earth’s surface, are moving through the Universe, on space ship Earth.” (awesome visual at 19:50)Kurzgesagt- In a Nutshell What Happened Before History? Human Origins, Jun 23, 10 mins Learn: If the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind has been on your radar, this excellent video boils down the overarching argument of who we are and how we got here. I love anything that boils down the main arguments of a popular book so that I don't actually have to read it now. Great visuals is of course an added bonus. Quote: "It has been about 125,000 generations since the emergence of the first human species (6,000,000 BC). About 7,500 generations since the physiologically modern humans saw the light of day (200,000 BC). 500 generations ago, what we call modern civilization began (10,000 BC), 20 generations ago, we learned how to do science (1540’s), and the internet became available to most people, only one generation ago."

LINKS

Read, Watch, Binge from NPR. NPR critics take a long list of popular books and movies and recommend other things you should check out related to those things. Netflix is great for recommending other Netflix stuff, but I can get behind any effort to recommend things across different types of media, and where a human is the algorithm.And that's it! I'll try to keep these short and sweet and to consistently try to find the best places to learn interesting things. Please reply and let me know if you have any thoughts or recommendations.