Since it has become abundantly clear that “fake news” influenced the 2016 presidential elections, it is important to understand how fake news works, who benefits, and what other goals might the have had? This video from Al Jazeera digs into a town in Macedonia with one major industry: fake news. You’ll meet the man who taught his students how to profit of fake news, and what kinds of articles they pushed to line their pockets best.

ISIS may be old news in the Middle East, but it’s a different story entirely in Africa. This Vox video explains how a perfect storm of famine, lack of government control, and rivalries are making a huge swath of Africa vulnerable to radicalization. As a result, dozens of nations are becoming destabilized, militants are kidnapping villages’ men and forcing them to fight, and entire regions are at risk not only of radicalization but also of collapse.

There are about 17,000 marijuana arrests in New York City every year. But the police department is planning to dramatically cut the number of arrests––by up to ten thousand––in the next year. Progressive New Yorkers hope that the law will help rectify the racial disparity  in marijuana arrests

What do The Godfather, Forrest Gump, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Wayne’s World have in common? Don’t bother thinking about actors or directors, because that’s the wrong avenue. Give up? They were all made by the same studio: Paramount Pictures. This video offers a brief history of Paramount, a company started over a hundred years ago. It’s a bit of long video at twenty-six minutes, but then again the history is quite long, too. So settle in with a sandwich and learn about the studio that made some of your favorite movies. 

Weapons are designed to hurt people. From the first time a Neanderthal ancestor hit his friend with a club to nuclear bombs, weapons have only had one purpose: to be inhumane. But, ironically, every now and then we all get together and decide that a weapon is too inhumane. What makes a weapon cross the inhumanity threshold? This video describes the history of treaties deciding certain weapons aren’t allowed and what makes them inhumane.

Melania Trump, who usually wears fashion pieces ranging in the thousands of dollars was spotted in a forty-dollar Zara jacket reading, “I really don’t care do u?” Most times, people would likely love her wearing that jacket––and that it is an affordable piece wouldn’t hurt either. But here’s the issue: she wore it to a migrant visit. While some critics give her the benefit of the doubt, others––particularly on Reddit––are less generous.

Roman mythology tells the story of The Rape of the Sabine Women, in which spouseless Roman men abducted women to take as spouses. This myth inspired countless Renaissance painters, and the trope is still very much alive in modern culture. Take, for example, the movie Passengers from 2016. In that story, Chris Pratt’s character brings a woman out of suspended animation in order to alleviate his own loneliness. This video examines that trope in other modern media. 

Koko the gorilla became world famous for her uncanny mastery of sign language. Her ability to translate her thoughts and feelings to language made her an icon for animal-rights activists and an eye-opening revelation for the apathetic. Koko was born in captivity, in the San Francisco Zoo, on July 4, 1971. She passed away in her sleep on June 20, 2018, just a few weeks shy of her 47th birthday. If Koko’s story moved you, you can contact Joy Chesbrough, The Gorilla Foundation’s Chief Development Officer, at: 1-800-ME-GO-APE ext 14.

For those of us older than, say, twenty, the political switch from anti-gay marriage to pro-gay marriage feels almost overnight. As recently as 2008, for example, California passed a measure affirming that gay marriages were invalid. Less than a decade later, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to marriage is guaranteed to all Americans. This video explains what made that shift possible. Although the video is a little out of date, it’s one of the best treatments on the subjects out there. Take a look and leave your comments in below. 

Reading a history book can teach you a lot, but there’s nothing quite like living through history to understand it. No, this isn’t a bad intro to an episode of Rick and Morty, it’s an installment of Townsends, a historical reenactment channel (hear is out! Don’t click away just yet) that focuses on food. In this episode, he describes the differences between historical and modern kitchens. Besides the obvious––lack of a refrigerator, etc.––there are a lot of interesting things separating these kitchens. For example, in historic kitchens smoke was a real problem, since you were always coking over a wood or charcoal fire. That meant that not only would your house reek of smoke, but also would make the food taste of smoke.

This year, Chris Pratt was awarded the MTV Movie & TV Award Generation Award is meant for the person who best represented our generation in the past year. What encompasses “our generation,” who knows. But if Pratt’s message was for millennials, than it was perfect. He balanced humor and seriousness, and he even squeezed in some religious messaging. Even if you’re not a religious person––even if you don’t like religion, for that matter––you’ll respect Pratt’s message for its honesty.

Before we go any further, be warned: this video contains lots and lots of spoilers, and for a some movies you might not expect like Psycho or Solo. So if you haven’t seen those––or rather if you care about those movies getting spoiled––then maybe bookmark this video for later. At any rate, this video examines what happens when plot twists go wrong, comparing successful twists to those that appear without enough context or that don’t add enough to the storyline to matter.