What separates life from death? The line is fuzzier than we might expect
It’s easy to think that living stuff must be inherently different from non-living stuff, but is that really the case? Some of our greatest thinkers have explored the question, and the more we learn, the harder it is to conclude there’s anything special or distinct about ‘life’. What is Life? Is Death Real? is a clever animation that explores how viruses, artificial intelligence and the nature of DNA make drawing a line between the living and the non-living so difficult, and why we’re not likely to resolve the big questions about life any time soon.
Video by Kurzgesagt
videoBiology
What would it mean if we were able to ‘speak’ with whales?
65 minutes
videoHistory of ideas
How to read ‘The School of Athens’ – a triumph of Renaissance art
25 minutes
videoBiology
For 3 billion years, life was unicellular. Why did it start to collaborate?
4 minutes
videoEthics
A deathbed scenario raises the question: how much power should a promise hold?
5 minutes
videoBiology
Dive deep into an egg cell to see how ageing reboots when a new life begins
2 minutes
videoMathematics
After centuries of trying, we’ve yet to arrive at a perfect way to map colour
20 minutes
videoEthics
What’s an idea worth? How prominent thinkers have understood intellectual property
6 minutes
videoHistory of science
Insect aesthetics – long viewed as pests, in the 16th century bugs became beautiful
8 minutes
videoMathematics
Spiral into the ‘golden ratio’ – and separate the myths from the maths
4 minutes