Big Course: Year 3

This is the sixty-second lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn how your faucet works, where your water comes from, and the unexpected reason your sink sounds the way it does!

This is the sixty-third lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn how your toilet flushes, what happens to your poop afterwards, and just how worried we should be about fixed amount of Earth's water.

(You'll also learn something about the promises of quantification, its peril, and how to fix that.)

This is the sixty-fourth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn what the rest of your kitchen thinks your refrigerator is, the impossible simplicity of how a fridge works, and what ACTUALLY happens when you turn a fan on.

This is the sixty-fifth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn what "the Force" really is, where motors come from, and how they work. (Um, motors, not the Force.)

Oh, also there's a cool bit in it about what a good scientific explanation consists of. Hint: "elves".

This is the sixty-sixth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn how a chemist, a physicist, and a chef each disagree as to what the "ingredients" of ice cream are, learn how to MAKE ice cream, and learn what ice cream actually... is!

(Oh, we also raise the question of "reductionism" — does science remove the wonder and awe from the world, or increase it?)

This is the sixty-seventh lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn what makes sherbet different from both sorbet & premium ice cream, what "dairy" ACTUALLY is, what BUTTER actually is, and why, while we love fat, we sometimes don't want so much of it in our ice cream.

(Oh, and there's this thing that might change the way you think about McDonald's...)

How can you make ice cream less "icy"?

This is the sixty-eighth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn what "icy" ice cream really is, how to stop Ostwald ripening, how a guy named Clarence Birdseye reinvented food storage, and what we're talking about when we say something is "cold".

How can you make ice cream that IS NOT SWEET?

This is the sixty-ninth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn the secret reason we put sugar in ice cream, the crucial differences between different types of sugar, and (finally!) why we pour salt on ice.

How can you make the SMOOTHEST ice cream of all?

This is the seventieth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn the secret of frozen custard, where proteins & starches come from, and the one thing that connects like a quarter of the foods you eat.

This is the seventy-first lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn what your mouth really looks like, where all the parts originally came from... and what their original job was.

This is the seventy-second lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn why those little bumpity things on your tongue AREN'T "taste buds", why you don't have five tastes, and why most of our tastes originally had nothing to do with food.

This is the seventy-third lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn what a smell is, the real reason why no one will ever get a brain transplant (well, maybe), how you smell, and how "deliciousness" evolved.

This is the seventy-fourth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn what a word is, how your mouth might be cursed, and HOW TO SAVE A FLIPPIN' LIFE.

This is the seventy-fifth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn how you went from one cell to hundreds, why you're not a tumor, life's original superpower, and the two kinds of animal in the world. (If you stick around to the afterparty, you'll also learn where the three different kinds of twins come from.)

This is the eighty-first lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn how we figured out that viruses even existed, what one of them in particular looks & feels like, and the strange story of what, precisely, it does.

This is the eighty-second lesson of our Big Course... and it's a format we don't get to do enough. Instead of a single riddle, you'll get to fill in a veritable "Guinness Book" of viruses: the biggest, the smallest, the jackalope-i-est, the most horrible, the most blood, the (just) MOST, and the best at hide-and-seek.

This is the eighty-third lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn how evolution REALLY works, feel what the viruses that causes COVID-19 actually turns out to be like, and hear the story of the pandemic... from the virus's perspective.

(Oh, in the afterparty, you'll also see a method for cutting to the core of a debate... when we take on what might have been the biggest controversy of the COVID years.)

This is the eighty-fourth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn what a vaccine actually is (possibly not what you think?), what antibody therapy is, and what might be the single most exciting technology in medical science. (Ah, and also the fundamental dogma of molecular biology. That's cool, too — for the rest of your life, you'll UNDERSTAND CELLS.)

This is the eighty-fifth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn how much you should care, what actually makes you "sick" in the first place, and quite a lot about the "big three" viruses that most routinely make us miserable — how they spread, what their genius is, and how we can end them.

This is the eighty-sixth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll firm up your understanding of natural selection with a fairy tale, understand what evolution is ACTUALLY about (something Darwin never achieved!), and see it all in an even simpler way... that'll show you how sandwiches evolve.

Is evolution evil, or is it good?

Is evolution directionless, or is it progressive?

This is the eighty-seventh lesson of our Big Course... and an experiment in how we structure a lesson. Instead of a riddle, we have three FIGHTS: actual things that people who understand a lot about evolution disagree on (and which, maybe, we can add some wisdom to).

Along the way to the answers, you'll discover the (surprising) meanings of some words you use every day, think through whether evolution can "cause" things to happen, and draw some really strange trees.

(This, more than any of our lessons except perhaps Universe 1 and Hills 3, is about how we should think about science.)

This is the eighty-eighth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn why nature loves eels, why the whole Linnaean taxonomy project was a little silly from the start, and how you can see ANY animal like an evolutionary biologist.

This is the eighty-ninth lesson of our Big Course. Along the way to the answer, you'll learn... okay, hold onto your butts: you'll learn what ACTUALLY makes something a male, why there are sexes in the first place, why female animals are so choosy, and whether alien planets are filled with pretty male animals.

(This is a deep theory lesson. You're welcome!)

This is the [drumroll!] NINETIETH lesson of our Big Course — the actual halfway point! Along the way to the answer, you'll learn whether gazelles really sacrifice themselves for each other, what bees, ants, and naked mole rats have in common, the (dark? bright?) reality of human sacrifice, and the deep emotion that drove humanity's spread throughout the world.

(AND why people play bassoon. Really, it's quite a lesson.)