Would you reroute a train to run over one person to prevent it from running over five others? In the classic “Trolley Problem” survey, most people say they would. But I wanted to test what people would actually do in a real-life situation. In the world’s first realistic simulation of […]
Technology isn’t just changing our lives. It’s literally changing our brains — and maybe for the better. In this episode, I’m a human lab rat in a groundbreaking study at UC Irvine, where scientists test how playing 3D video games affects my spatial memory. Will 10 days of gaming improve […]
Psychology. Neuroscience. Drugs. All can be tools of interrogation. In this episode, an expert shows me how to coerce unsuspecting subjects into signing false confessions; a police psychologist questions me about my personal life after I am injected with a truth serum; and I match wits against a new brainwave-reading […]
Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3lWVLuc6CE Peruvian Shaman Daniel performs his icaro (healing chant) in its entirety.
What makes a hero? Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, now runs seminars to teach everyday people how to be heroes. But can heroism be learned? I put his unsuspecting students into a fake crisis situation to see if they would act heroically. Also, I […]
Exactly how do placebos work? Researchers believe that, through the power of suggestion, placebos may unleash the power of our own subconscious minds to cure ourselves. I was honored to participate in McGill University’s groundbreaking study of an accessory-assisted placebo. Could a fake, non-functioning “Sham Brain Scanner” enable children with […]
Humans are the only Earthlings with complex language. But at what cost was that ability acquired? In this episode, I visit Tetsuro Matsuzawa to learn about his influential cognitive tradeoff hypothesis. Available with YouTube Premium – https://www.youtube.com/premium/originals. To see if Premium is available in your country, click here: https://goo.gl/A3HtfP
To celebrate, I asked a group of colleagues who worked with me on the series to sit down at Vsauce HQ and watch through three entire episodes. We go behind the scenes, elaborate on topics in the episodes, and dig in to what impact working on Mind Field has had […]
Everyone is scared of something … but what’s the SCARIEST thing? Is it even possible to answer such a question? In this special I explore the dark recesses of the mind to learn how fears are born and whether there exists a grand, unifying terror. FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tweetsauce […]
Support Vsauce, your brain, Alzheimer’s research, and other YouTube educators by joining THE CURIOSITY BOX: a seasonal delivery of viral science toys made by Vsauce! A portion of all proceeds goes to Alzheimer’s research and our Inquisitive Fellowship, a program that gives money and resources directly to growing science channels […]
