What if there was a black hole in your pocket?

Life, the universe and everything answered in these terrific videos.


Funded by crowdfunding supporter of the creative arts—Patreon—Kurgesagt (meaning “in a nutshell” in German) is a series of fascinating videos mostly about science.* They cover topics such as evolution, light, the Fermi Paradoxred dwarfs and black holes and the immune system—to name a few. Because the videos are so professionally done, they can only make one video a month. So if you binge watch them all in one sitting like I did, you’ll have to wait a while until the next one is posted.

Damn.

What I like about Kurgesagt is that the videos explain things simply. But most importantly, with a smirk. It doesn’t hurt that the narrator’s voice has a British accent, which always adds an element of dignity and authority. I don’t know why that is, but it just is. (A favorite video ingeniously explains how to debunk conspiracy theories. It’s a hoot.)

Anyway, the smirk is an important point. I love learning things and if I can do it with a little wink from the video or tiny smile, all the better. To me, science is absolutely amazing. It’s just bad communicators who make it dull.

And in the words from the makers of the videos: “We are a small team of like-minded people who want to make science look beautiful. Because it is beautiful.”

I couldn’t have said it any better.

*Kurgesagt does have a smattering of political videos in their offering, covering complex topics such as Iraq, fracking, and the refugee crisis.