Just A Minute: Volume 18

Helloooooooo!
This is Neptune Studio’s guide to the best science content from our studio and beyond. Every edition includes stuff we’re working on, along with other cool new science-related stories we want you to know about - plus some original games just for subscribers! Make sure to subscribe below so you never miss a minute 🙂.

We're working on a new taxonomy video and poster! Here’s a not-so-subtle hint about the subject matter….

Here are some videos our team has released on our various channels over the last few weeks!

MinuteEarth

The Weird Reason Rabies Is So Deadly
Rabies kills almost everyone it infects - but not for the reasons you'd expect. We dug into the surprisingly strange biology behind why this ancient virus is so reliably lethal.

MinutePhysics

The Magic of Thorium Nuclear Reactors
Thorium reactors may eventually be a cleaner, safer alternative to uranium ones. Henry breaks down the physics and the promise.

xkcd’s What If?

What if you dropped a bowling ball in the Mariana Trench?
Randall does the math on what actually happens, and as usual the answer involves more chaos than you might expect.

• Hank Green just launched a(nother) new podcast - this one’s called Humans. The tagline is "We are much weirder than we think we are.” Which is true and lovely.

• Big congrats to former MinuteEarthling Julian and his team at Johnny Harris’s channel, who just won an Emmy!

1. David Attenborough turned 100 recently. The BBC marked the occasion with a whole week of new programming and a live event at the Royal Albert Hall. Sarah watched the special and found it genuinely inspiring.

2. The Pope wrote a manifesto on AI. Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, is entirely about safeguarding human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence. Worth reading at least the summary.

3. YouTube is changing what "serious" animation looks like. Cartoon Brew broke down YouTube's 2026 Animation Trends report, and the numbers are striking: 61% of animation fans aged 14-24 say they like watching independent YouTube animators as much as or more than major studios.

4. What actually makes a science story compelling? A new paper in the Journal of Science Communication tries to answer this empirically.

5. Steve Mould made a beautiful video about Lippmann plates, a 19th-century photography technique that captures true full-spectrum color.

by Matthew Goldenberg

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❤️ MinuteEarth