Our Fight Against Death | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

Humanity's struggle against death has been our most enduring fight. History has given us one weapon in this existential battle: we fight back with medicine. Tens of thousands of years ago, our ancestors scavenged the natural world for remedies. Imagine the incredible leaps of faith we had to take in an effort to ease the pain, mend the broken, and revive the sick.

Medicine was a dark art, full of false starts and false gods. But when we struck upon some form of relief, it swept like wildfire through humankind. We built on every success until medicine became a form of science. That's when we discovered the real killers within us: microscopic armies hidden within our bodies, waging war on our species for thousands of years.

Medicine is our great weapon to fight back against invisible, unthinkable death. [Applause] From superstition to science, medicine has become one of humanity's most powerful tools. And with each new challenge, we may stumble, but we find a way to get stronger and smarter to beat back fatal diseases and extend our lifespans. We even crack open our genetic code.

This is the story of how our fight against death has determined our fate, how it became the driving force of our evolution, how our tireless pursuit of medicine has made us modern, and even made us superhuman. This is origins. [Music]

Inside a Civil War Most People Have Never Heard of | National Geographic

Khan Academy Ed Talks with Barbara Oakley, Phd - Thursday, June 15

View All

Diode graphical solution

Now I want to use a diode in a circuit and we’ll see how we, uh, solve circuits that include these nonlinear diodes in them. So I have a circuit here with a battery and a resistor and a diode here, and it’s going to be a special kind; it’s going to be an …

Best Film on Newton's Third Law. Ever.

There are a lot of misconceptions out there, and this is a video about one of the most common ones. So I went around asking people, “What makes the Moon go around the Earth?” and they told me, “The Earth puts a gravitational force on the moon.” But does …

The Secret War in Laos | No Man Left Behind

When I joined the CIA and had the opportunity, I was able to get into the Special Operations Division. I went through six months of intensive paramilitary training, and shortly thereafter, I was assigned to the operation in Laos. There was a war going on,…

BONUS: The Oxford comma | Punctuation | Grammar | Khan Academy

Hey grammarians, hey Paige, hi David! So, we’re going to talk today about the Oxford comma, which is just another word for another name for the serial comma. This is normally when you have a list of things; you punctuate them with a comma after each item…

Half the universe was missing... until now

This episode was sponsored by KiwiCo. More about them at the end of the show. Until recently, half the universe was missing or hidden or just… undetected. And no, I’m not talking about dark matter or dark energy, which make up 27 and 68 percent of our un…

Energy Conservation| Energy Resources and Consumption| AP Environmental Science| Khan Academy

In this video, we’re going to talk about energy conservation, or trying to save or lower the amount of energy that we use. Now, a lot of y’all might already have a sense that that is a good thing, while others of you might say, “Hey, why can’t I just use …

Our Fight Against Death | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

More Articles