Journey to the Microcosmos
5
2019
Documentary
Take a dive into the tiny, unseen world that surrounds us! With music by Andrew Huang, footage from James Weiss, and narration by Hank Green, we want to take you on a fascinating, reflective journey through the microcosmos.
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- Cast：
- Hank Green
Episode 42 : Tiny Mysteries from the Black Sea
May. 28,2024
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Episode 41 : You Have Something in Common With This Horrifying Tube Worm
May. 13,2024
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Episode 40 : We've Been Looking For This Purple Amoeba for 6 Years!
May. 06,2024
We know that it’s bad form to return to the same word over and over again here on Journey to the Microcosmos. But whenever we write about amoeba, we will probably say the word “blob” a lot.
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Episode 39 : We Found Something Strange in Portugal
April. 29,2024
Sometimes, the microcosmos can take a little while to surprise. You have to be patient, enjoying the familiar sights as you wait for something new.
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Episode 38 : This Amoeba Made Armor From Its Dead Enemies
April. 22,2024
This amoeba has a shell around it, which seems like a pretty good idea. The world at large is full of predators, and shells seem like a straightforward strategy to ward those predators off. But what if this amoeba’s shell wasn’t just a form of protection? What if it was actually dangerous?
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Episode 37 : Watch a Stentor Fix Itself
April. 15,2024
Today James, our master of microscopes, is using a microscopy slide as a cutting board, chopping away at the slide to end up with a bunch of individual stentors.
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Episode 36 : How Do We Find Cancer?
March. 25,2024
Usually on Journey to the Microcosmos, we spend our time delving into the microscopic world and the surprising things that microbes have to teach us. But today, we would like to talk about Hank Green, and what was his cancer.
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Episode 35 : These Slugs Led Us to the Last Good Place on the Internet
March. 11,2024
If you were asked to describe what a sea slug is, you might be tempted to go with the straightforward response: it’s a slug that lives in the sea. And you know, you wouldn’t be wrong.
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Episode 34 : We Fed Our Microbes Blood So You Don't Have To
March. 04,2024
If you’ve clicked on this video, we assume it’s because you read the title, “We fed our microbes blood so you don’t have to,” and immediately asked the question everyone asks when a youtuber says they did something so you don’t have to: but why?
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Episode 33 : This special diatom is having a very bad day
February. 28,2024
It’s hard to count how many times we’ve encountered diatoms on Journey to the Microcosmos. However, we've always talked about the more colorful variety of diatom, and not the ones that are colorless.
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Episode 32 : These Tiny Crustaceans Hate Change
February. 19,2024
One of the fascinating aspects of microscopy is the way you can look so deeply into something that it becomes unrecognizable. What could look like a stained glass window could actually turn out to be... a hopping shrimp?
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Episode 31 : What Makes A Microbe Rare?
February. 12,2024
In the microcosmos—where the organisms vastly outnumber us, where what we find in a single pool of water can change from day to day—it makes us as what it mean for a microbe to be rare?
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Episode 30 : This Microbe Hasn't Been Seen Since The 1930s
January. 29,2024
After an absence of almost 90 years, we’ve found a rare ciliate last written about about in 1933.
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Episode 29 : The Microbial Universe That Makes Kombucha
January. 22,2024
When you think of kombucha, you might think of a nice, refreshing, healthy drink, one that’s exceptionall good for your microbiome. What we here at Journey to the Microcosmos think of is a terrarium…a place where a whole ecosystem exists, trapped in glass.
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Episode 28 : We Built A Tardigrade Trap, And It Worked
January. 15,2024
We don’t know if there are many rites of passage institutionalized among amateur microscopists. But we have to imagine that, as people find themselves navigating the microcosmos for the first time, they’re often on the lookout for tardigrades.
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Episode 27 : Why Picocyanobacteria Might Just Outlast All Of Us
January. 09,2024
In the northeast Atlantic Ocean, plankton populations aren’t looking like they used to. And at the center of it all are tiny, photosynthetic bacteria called picocyanobacteria who may just outlast us all.
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Episode 26 : These Mites Give Cheese Its Flavor
December. 18,2023
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Episode 25 : The History of Red Algae
December. 11,2023
Imagine that you aren’t watching the microcosmos right now. Instead you’re living in the world as it existed around one billion years ago, and you are the ancestor of this red algae.
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Episode 24 : What Do These Algae Do With Four Genomes?
November. 20,2023
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Episode 23 : Trying To Solve Some Micro Mysteries
November. 13,2023
We Found Some Things We Can't Explain
Today's episode has one particular theme: a bunch of funny things going on in the microcosmos.
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Episode 22 : Can Microbes Just Appear Out Of Nowhere?
November. 06,2023
Can life be created spontaneously? Well, a year and a half ago, our master of microscopes, James, was inspired by the idea of spontaneous generation and set up his own little experiment.
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Episode 21 : Some Ciliates Are Hiding a Secret Weapon
October. 30,2023
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Episode 20 : These Dancing Worms Are Surprisingly Useful
October. 23,2023
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Episode 19 : This Microscopic Killer Wears Its Victims
October. 16,2023
If you have been following Journey to the Microcosmos for some time, this might sound like a familiar story.| Consider this a proper slasher movie sequel.
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Episode 18 : Blood-Sucking Escape Artists
October. 09,2023
Of all the animals that we’ve examined in the microcosmos, leeches are probably one of the few that can be used as a verb, to leech off someone—to take and take from them, like a worm consuming someone’s blood.
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Episode 17 : This Predator Is A Shape-Shifter
October. 02,2023
In the middle of the 19th century, a scientist stared into the microscope and found, staring back at him, a vampire.
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Episode 16 : Is It Possible To Photosynthesize In The Dark?
September. 25,2023
Our master of microscopes is always looking for rare ciliates that live in areas low in oxygen. But when he puts those samples under a growth light, his tubes quickly turn the color of the green sulfur bacteria that thrive in those anaerobic conditions.
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Episode 15 : Bacteria That Survive In Gelatinous Colonies
September. 18,2023
In the 1820s, a man named Dr. R. Brandes walked through a meadow on a quest to try and answer a centuries-old question about a mysterious gelatinous substance on the ground known as “star jelly.”
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Episode 14 : Liverworts Use The Rain To Make Their Clones
September. 11,2023
An ambiguously long time ago, there was this theory of medicine. An idea that if you came across a plant that looked like a body part, that meant it was meant to treat ailments that targeted said part. And this put a lot of pressure on liverwort, simply because it resembled the liver.
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Episode 13 : Floating Cities of Scum
September. 04,2023
When you think of bees, you probably don’t think of single-celled eukaryotes. What could an insect have in common with, say, a ciliate?
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Episode 12 : The Electric Relationship Between Plants And Bees
August. 28,2023
When you think of bees, you probably don’t think of single-celled eukaryotes. What could an insect have in common with, say, a ciliate?
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Episode 11 : Why Are Some Birds Blue?
August. 21,2023
One of the spectacular details of animals in our world is just how varied their colors can be. When you look at birds, for example, you’ll see everything from mundane grays to iridescent blues. So why don’t we shine with the same iridescence of birds?
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Episode 10 : The Tiny Worlds Inside of Puddles
August. 14,2023
When was the last time you saw a puddle? Was it recent—perhaps some time in the past week, fresh from a downpour? Or has it been a long time since you’ve seen rain, and so an even longer time since your path has crossed a puddle?
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Episode 9 : Falling In Love With Microscopy
August. 07,2023
This video is all about James, who many of you know as our master of microscopes. He is the scientist, and the artist, behind just about everything we are able to see in our collective journey through the microcosmos.
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Episode 8 : Up Close With The World's Deadliest Animal
July. 31,2023
Under the microscope, mosquitos undergo a metamorphosis sculpted in gold. The buzzing body takes on a life of its own, its usual role as menace lying far beyond the margins of the screen.
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Episode 7 : This Neon World Is Inside Your Fruit
July. 24,2023
Usually we’re looking into pond water or whatever other fascinating bit of nature that James, our master of microscopes, usually looks at. But right now, our sights are coming to us directly from the kitchen and from a different master of microscopes.
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Episode 6 : Avoid These Tiny Bits of Killer Fluff (If You Can)
July. 17,2023
When you hear the phrase “brain-eating amoebas,” is there a particular image that comes to mind? Whatever you envision, it's probably not what the notorious brain-eating amoeba that strikes fear in our hearts actually looks like.
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Episode 5 : We Don't Know Why Moth Wings Glow
July. 10,2023
A little while ago, James found himself with a bit of a problem. He was keeping some wheat grains at home to use as food for the microbes that he cultures and films for our enjoyment. But before he could feed the grains to his microbes, they became infested with the larvae.. of moths.
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Episode 4 : Why Beggiatoa Are Stuffed Full Of Sulfur
June. 19,2023
There’s a few things that give Beggiatoa away. The first is the simple serpentine shape of their bodies, and the second are those little dots inside of them. They look like bubbles, but they’re actually sulfur granules.
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Episode 3 : The Cryptic Origins of Yogurt
June. 12,2023
The microcosmos is home to many unusual partnerships. Life is, after all, just relationships, each of which build upon one another like strokes of paint in an epic tableau of ecology, epidemics, and yogurt?
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Episode 2 : When Is A Fungus Not A Fungus?
June. 05,2023
Oomycetes are one of the more unusual-looking microbes we’ve seen in the microcosmos. It looks more like a coral reef painted by an artist inspired by Gustav Klimt and a pile of trash. And if you saw that painting hanging in the museum, you might pass it by without thinking much of its subject.
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Episode 1 : The Complicated Sex Lives of Hydra
May. 29,2023
If we were to write a fable to get this moral across, it would have to star the freshwater cnidarian called the hydra. Because in the hydra, the question of butts connects to the ambiguities of immortality, which in turn relates to the befuddling matter of sexual reproduction.
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