The Power of Transportation | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

[music playing] [motor revving]

JASON SILVA: What does it take to power a global civilization to connect billions of people across continents? It takes the power of transportation. From the beginning, speed and strength were paramount in the hunt, on the battlefield, for holding together far-flung empires. We sought new forms of power, harnessing the forces of nature to drive us forward—the horse, the wheel, steam power, jet engine. Every new innovation powered our next great leap.

Transportation has become our exoskeleton allowing us to transcend our biology. [music playing] Faster than sound, farther than the moon, our inventions give us a level of power we never imagined. With our machines we carved through solid rock, tunneled beneath the sea floor, connecting the world, mixing distant cultures. Freedom of movement has given us freedom of mind.

The flow of people and materials exposes us to new ideas and new understanding. This is the story of how transportation turned society inside out, how engines and animals powered the rise of civilization, and how the innovations that drive humanity forward made us modern. This is "Origins."

Are Real Estate Prices about to Collapse?

15 Signs Someone is Fake Smart

View All

Modeling with basic exponential function

There are 170 deer on a reservation. The deer population is increasing at a rate of 30% per year. Write a function that gives the deer population P of t on the reservation T years from now. All right, let’s think about this. And like always, pause this …

Creativity break: How are math and creativity changing the world? | Algebra 1 | Khan Academy

[Music] The math underpins everything in our universe, so it impacts every corner of our society. But over the past decade, in particular, the advances in computer technology and the introduction of machine learning and artificial intelligence has been ma…

Become Unconquerable | Stoic Philosophy

Bound upon me, rush upon me, I will overcome you by enduring your onset: whatever strikes against that which is firm and unconquerable merely injures itself by its own violence. Wherefore, seek some soft and yielding object to pierce with your darts. Sen…

Finding a Cancer Killer | Breakthrough

NARRATOR: Working out of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. June has been developing a new technology to leverage the immune system’s T-cells to fight and kill leukemia in mice. [squeaking] CARL JUNE: Yeah. I have been through a long journey. So I was a…

How To Unmask The Narcissist's Double Life | STOICISM

Have you ever felt like someone could see right through you, tapping into your deepest fears and desires, and manipulating them to their own advantage? Imagine living in a world where your very emotions are the plaything of a master illusionist, someone w…

Simon Benjamin on Architectures for Quantum Computing

Simon, why in the past few years has quantum computing gotten so much attention? Right, well, quantum computing is something that academics have been working on now for decades, but what’s exciting is that it’s all starting to work in the sense that what…

The Power of Transportation | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

More Articles