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."

The Secret of Musical Genius | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

Inventing Graphics on Cave Walls | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

View All

Benefits explained | Employment | Financial Literacy | Khan Academy

Hi everyone! So, what I’m going to do in this video is really go through a bunch of terms that you’re going to see when thinking about benefits from your employer. The whole goal here is so that you’re never lost when you hear an acronym like 401k—well, t…

Self-Discipline is Freedom... From Yourself. | Why it's Important.

If you have been following this channel for a while, you might get the idea that I like structure. And I do. I love productivity, organization, order, and I try to be as disciplined as possible. When some people hear, they think that it’s boring. They equ…

Finding an in-between frame of reference | Special relativity | Physics | Khan Academy

Let’s say I’m person A here in my ship, traveling through the universe at a constant velocity. So that is person A right over there. Let me write it a little bit bigger: person A. And let’s say that I have a friend, person B, and they are in another ship…

Alienated | Vocabulary | Khan Academy

Hey wordsmiths! Just checking in; you doing okay? The word we’re talking about today is “alienated.” “Alienated” it’s an adjective and it means feeling excluded and apart from other people. Kind of a bummer word, but at the same time, a fascinating one. …

Valuation Modeling: Excel as a tool

Hi, welcome back! In this session, I’m going to break the mold; not talk about big ideas or companies, but about how to use an Excel spreadsheet I’ve created on valuation. Before I go further, though, there’s nothing magical about the spreadsheet. There a…

Psychology of a Serial Killer (the Jeffrey Dahmer Story)

Foreign those words were spoken by Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer, a sex offender, necrophiliac, and cannibal who brutally murdered 17 Milwaukee young men throughout the late 70s, 80s, and 90s. Dahmer’s story makes for a chilling example of a psychopath …

The Power of Transportation | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

More Articles