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."

Why New Years Resolutions Fail & How To Succeed

15 Investments That Will Make Your Children Rich

View All

When Family Secrets (And Soap Operas) Fuel Creativity | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

I think when I think about my childhood, it feels split. There’s my childhood in Moscow and my childhood in Armenia, which came at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. So my first memory is of us standing in breadlines. My second memory is of us …

A Little Sea Sick | Wicked Tuna

Like liver, like failing. Your liver failing. Did you puke? No, it’s not my stomach. We’ve been fishing hard for almost five straight weeks now, and I woke up this morning with an excruciating pain in my side. Um, it feels like when my appendix burst. I c…

Shiba Inu Just Broke The Internet

What’s up, Dogecoin? It’s Shiba Inu here, and well, that was fast! Just a week ago, I covered my thoughts about the latest cryptocurrency seemingly overtaking the entire market, cannibalizing everything in its path, and quickly turning some people into mu…

Equilibrium nominal interest rates in the money market | AP Macroeconomics | Khan Academy

So we’ve spent a lot of time justifying why we have this downward sloping demand curve for money, but you’re probably asking, “Well, this is a market. What we need to think about an equilibrium point?” And to do that, we need to think about the supply of …

Strategies for dividing by tenths

Let’s do a few more examples of thinking of strategies for dividing decimals. In the future, we’re going to come up with a more systematic way of doing it, but it’s really important to come up with some of these strategies because it gives you an intuitio…

Worked example: area between curves | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy

What we’re going to do using our powers of calculus is find the area of this yellow region. If at any point you get inspired, I always encourage you to pause the video and try to work through it on your own. So, the key here is you might recognize, “Hey,…

The Power of Transportation | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

More Articles