Up Next
Back to Show
It's Okay to Be Smart
Traffic Lights Are So Much Weirder Than You Realize
Why are stop lights red? The common explanation about red light traveling farther through fog is actually wrong. The real story involves early railroads, deadly accidents, an exploding gas traffic light, forgotten inventors, and even the evolution of primate color vision. Here’s how history and biology accidentally created the nearly perfect traffic signal.
Support Provided By
11:20
Learn nature’s ultimate game of hide-and-seek, and the way to win this game is all in the brain.
11:17
Nature has had to come up with some crazy ways to survive winter. None are weirder than hibernation.
12:40
Political scientist Don Green joins Joe to figure out the complex psychological and social factors t
11:43
Despite what you may have heard or learned in school, the sun is NOT the center of the solar system.
10:23
People see faces everywhere thanks to a quirk of the brain called visual pareidolia.
10:00
Why do the same, self-repeating patterns appear in trees, rivers, lightning, and even our bodies?
15:25
Our animal brains deal with quantities in very specific, and fascinating, ways.
12:54
Can new technologies make death prediction even more accurate?
10:40
The cosmic distance ladder is the world’s longest ruler, built to measure the universe.
15:17
On April 8, North America is getting a total solar eclipse. Here’s what you need to know.