Today’s kids would rather be YouTubers than astronauts

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

YouTube camps teach kids how to create content for the platform

YouTube Creators Camp in Katy, Texas, is just one example of a new camp aimed at teaching kids how to develop their own YouTube channels. This short documentary explores the camp and what its campers suggest makes for a successful piece of content.

Watch how dozens of everyday human tasks are performed in space

This playlist features clips of astronauts aboard the International Space Station explaining how they cook, eat, sleep, and conduct research in microgravity. Other activities to pass the time, including watering plants and playing soccer, are also shown.

Increasing space tourism may require changing the definition of astronaut

Though astronaut has been used to describe any crew member in space, civilian explorers who lack formal training have instead been dubbed "space travelers" by some. The term astronaut may one day fall out of use or be modified by ongoing media and social perceptions as the space tourism industry continues to evolve.

YouTube occupies more US screen time than Netflix

As consumers continue to shift their viewing activity away from traditional cable and broadcast TV, they’re spending an increasing amount of time streaming content, much of it on YouTube. In fact, Nielsen data from August 2025, shows that YouTube accounted for 13.1% of US screen time, compared to Netflix’s 8.7%.

The 30 most popular YouTubers

From music superstars like Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift to streamers like PewDiePie and MrBeast, the ranks of YouTube’s most-subscribed-to accounts includes a mix of everything from celebrities whose YouTube presence complements the rest of their persona to stars who made a name for themselves solely from the platform. This ranking from Search Engine Journal breaks down the 30 biggest YouTube accounts as of June 2004.

About 2.5 million American students watched the Challenger disaster live

Because of the publicity of the Teacher in Space program, millions of students viewed Challenger's liftoff in school classrooms—turning the explosion into a shared national traumatic experience marked by shock, silence, and grief.

'We are more fulfilled when we are involved in something bigger than ourselves.'

- Astronaut John Glenn (1921–2016)

Pop culture sometimes changes the way people invest

After the "Barbie" movie premiered, the number of investors in Barbie parent company Mattel's stock grew more than six times larger on the investment platform Public, according to the platform's recent report. Other cultural trends have affected which stocks investors choose as well.

Why your favorite color is probably blue

From a young age, we are primed to choose a favorite color, but strangely as we grow up, our preference often changes—and it’s largely due to influences outside our control.

You are 65,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be hit by space trash

In 2023, about 1,500 pieces of space junk fell to Earth, with most consisting of payload fragmentation debris. The vast majority that falls back to Earth burns up before reaching the surface, making it three times less likely to be struck by space trash than by a meteorite.

The Industrial Revolution changed childhood—including education

Industrialization transformed childhood—from free-range, mixed-age play long embedded in human culture to the regimented, adult-controlled environments of today's schools.

Watch a YouTuber solve a Rubik's Cube while in free fall

He broke a world record, completing the task in the sky in just 23.333 seconds.

Watch a Yale University psychologist explain his new supportive parenting anxiety therapy

Dr. Eli Leibowitz says that accommodating a child's fears and anxieties—say, sleeping on the floor next to them or submitting to their requests to repeatedly come tell them goodnight—can further their anxiety. Instead, parents should change how they approach fear to equip children to think they don't need parental rescue.

Even medieval teachers sometimes complained about their students

Although it's tempting to assume that the youngest generation has gone astray, it's important to remember that older generations throughout history have been annoyed, and even dismayed, by the behavior of the youth. Look no further than this collection of medieval teachers complaining about their students, including one father who complains that his son prefers "license to restraint and play to work and strumming a guitar while the others are at their studies."

Carl Sagan, the host of 'Cosmos,' gave Bill Nye advice on his future show

Originally wanting to lean into his engineering background to explain the workings of objects such as bicycles and bridges, Nye ran his idea past his former professor at a college reunion. Sagan told him that children resonated with pure science, not technology, altering the show's future topics.

In recent years a child anxiety expert has created and tested a novel phobia and anxiety treatment approach for children, focused on changing how parents respond to the fears.

The Wrights were inspired by a toy helicopter as kids

The pair tinkered with toys and dreamed of building a flying machine at a young age. Founders Podcast host David Senra read David McCullough’s 2015 book on the duo and distilled key insights for leaders to take from their work and lives, focusing on their relentless resourcefulness.

Young voters are ditching political parties

While the silent generation and baby boomers have become less likely to identify as political independents as they have aged, generation X and millennials are maintaining high levels of independent identification.

The basic science of rockets

How do rockets work? What is the science behind a rocket launch? How does a rocket go into space? In this short and simple video, we discuss the science of rocket propulsion and what takes to get these vehicles into orbit.

TikTok is transforming the English language

Linguists like Adam Aleksic have argued that the way internet slang—especially the kind that thrives on TikTok—enters the real world isn’t so different from how English evolved in its earliest days.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

Where are the first batch of YC founders now?

Reddit was one of the companies in Y Combinator’s first batch. While OpenAI wasn’t among the companies started at YC, Sam Altman, who would later become the AI company’s CEO, had a different company called Loopt in the first batch.

NASA's big dream that never came to life

Conceived in the early 1960s, the Sea Dragon was an audacious ocean-launched rocket design that would have dwarfed the Saturn V in both scale and payload—but its extreme engineering challenges kept it firmly on the drawing board.

Fame can trigger addictive, drug-like highs in the brain

Differences in the type of fame, such as movie stardom, sports, and internet virality, can produce varying degrees of dependence on individuals based on their age and background. Some individuals—particularly children—can develop drug-seeking behavior as they pursue continuous dopamine spikes if they lack an existing sense of fulfillment from elsewhere.

Michaels doesn’t care when people say ‘SNL’ was funnier when they were younger

"Generally when people talk about the best cast I think, 'Well, that's when they were in high school,'" Michaels told "Today" in 2015. "Because in high school you have the least amount of power you're ever gonna have. ... Staying up with friends later on a Saturday is great, and people attach to a cast."

Meet the ‘SPY kids’ tied to Wall Street’s first ETF

When SPY became the first ETF to launch in 1993, regulators wanted its issuers to set a termination date. After initially saying the fund would cease to exist in 25 years, its issuers came up with a different strategy. They named 11 children born between 1990 and 1993 and declared that the fund would cease to exist in 2118, or 20 years after the last of the 11 “SPY kids” died. The kicker? According to Bloomberg, none of the children knew they were connected to the fate of this giant fund.

Why are kids increasingly diagnosed with myopia?

According to the World Health Organization, 40% of the world will have myopia—nearsightedness—by 2030. This NPR podcast episode details why people are being diagnosed with myopia at increasingly younger ages. Early onset myopia can lead to...

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

Explore our favorite visualization of the immense scale of space, from an astronaut to the size of the observable universe

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

How fusion—which releases energy when two lighter atoms combine to form a heavier atom—differs from fission

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.