Just A Minute: Volume 04

Hello and welcome back!
This is MinuteEarth’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 🙂.

Our illustrators recently came up with a fun idea for our Patreon - a t-shirt club! Every few months, we’ll make a new fun shirt we’ll send out to people who sign up. So in typical MinuteEarth fashion, we started kicking around ideas for shirts, and I thought it’d be fun to take you through a little bit of our process:

First, we made a quick Figma board sketching out the idea:

Then we made a rough sketch of a scene we thought would work that incorporated most of the ideas:

Then we made a full drawing of the pollination party, ready for printing!

We still need to figure out a few things on the printing side  - the t-shirt should be available to purchase in a month or two!

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

MinuteEarth

Why There Are No King Bees
Ah yes - the video that inspired the shirt in the first place! Have you ever wondered why male bees never rule the hive? It’s not just because they die during copulation. Check it out as Cameron breaks down why only the queen gets to wear a fabulous pair of mom genes.

MinuteFood

The secret to buying coffee you'll actually like
Over at MinuteFood, Kate explains why the supposed “darkness” of a coffee roast doesn’t actually mean much, and points out the other, way more important factors you should be considering when you’re selecting your favorite type of caffeinated bean soup.

xkcd’s What If?

What if we teleported the oceans to Mars?
Remember when Randall and the gang drained the oceans through the Mariana Trench? Well, in the newest episode, he takes that idea to its logical conclusion by imagining what would happen if we then dumped that water out on Mars. Come for the thought experiment, stay for the audio effects - lovingly produced by our friend Aldo.

• Lizah made a comic for our Instagram that imagines what happens when the world’s most powerful new technology learns from, um, you all.

• We had MinuteLab’s Jasper and illustrator Arcadi model our awesome new Pride shirt. Work it!

  
  

1. Maybe xkcd is psychic? The same week we published a video about the possibility of (lots of) liquid water on Mars, scientists confirmed for the first time that there actually is liquid water on Mars!

2. Toby from Tibees takes us on a historical tour of science YouTube by picking her favorite science video of the year every year since 2005. It is so wonderful to see all of the folks who have inspired us along the way - thanks Toby!

3. Ann Reardon just published a new video debunking TikTok life hacks. I love her debunking videos, they kinda scratch the same part of my brain that Mythbusters did.

4. I love that Mike Boyd gets so into whatever new skill he’s learning for his channel. And the fact that he’s geeked out so much about climbing that he’s had to create a new channel just for that is very on brand.

5. Stuff Made Here is always great, but watching Shane fail repeatedly while making and testing the world’s smallest bike was pure entertainment.
   

by Matthew Goldenberg

Thanks for reading! More fun science content coming to your inbox soon.
❤️ MinuteEarth