The Secret Life of Chaos

Category: Math | Download:

Professor Jim Al-Khalili shows how chaos theory can answer a question that mankind has asked for millennia - how does a universe that starts off as dust end up with intelligent life? It's a mindbending, counterintuitive and for many people a troubling idea.

Make a donation

Buy a brother a hot coffee? Or a cold beer?

Hope you're finding these documentaries fascinating and eye-opening. It's just me, working hard behind the scenes to bring you this enriching content.

Running and maintaining a website like this takes time and resources. That's why I'm reaching out to you. If you appreciate what I do and would like to support my efforts, would you consider "buying me a coffee"?

Donation addresses

BTC: bc1q8ldskxh4x9qnddhcrgcun8rtvddeldm2a07r2v

ETH: 0x5CCAAA1afc5c5D814129d99277dDb5A979672116

With your donation through , you can show your appreciation and help me keep this project going. Every contribution, no matter how small, makes a significant impact. It goes directly towards covering server costs.

You might also like

How big is infinity?

How big is infinity?

Using the fundamentals of set theory, explore the mind-bending concept of the "infinity of infinities" -- and how it led mathematicians to conclude that math itself contains unanswerable questions.

TED-Ed • Math

The Language of the Universe

The Language of the Universe

In Egypt, professor Marcus du Sautoy uncovers use of a decimal system based on ten fingers of the hand and discovers that the way we tell the time is based on the Babylonian Base 60 number system. In Greece, he looks at the contributions of some of the giants of mathematics including Plato, Archimedes and Pythagoras, who is credited with beginning the transformation of mathematics from a counting tool into the analytical subject of today.

S1E1 • The Story of Maths • Math

PBS Nova - Zero to Infinity

PBS Nova - Zero to Infinity

Zero and infinity. These seemingly opposite, obvious, and indispensable concepts are relatively recent human inventions. Discover the surprising story of how these key concepts that revolutionized mathematics came to be – not just once, but over and over again as different cultures invented and re-invented them across thousands of years.

2022 • Math

Code-Breakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes

Code-Breakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes

Documentary that reveals the secret story behind one of the greatest intellectual feats of World War II, a feat that gave birth to the digital age. In 1943 a 24-year-old maths student and a GPO engineer combined to hack into Hitler's personal super code machine - not Enigma but an even tougher system, which he called his 'secrets writer'. Their break turned the Battle of Kursk, powered the D-day landings and orchestrated the end of the conflict in Europe. But it was also to be used during the Cold War - which meant both men's achievements were hushed up and never officially recognised.

2011 • Math

How many ways can you arrange a deck of cards?

How many ways can you arrange a deck of cards?

One deck. Fifty-two cards. How many arrangements? Let's put it this way: Any time you pick up a well shuffled deck, you are almost certainly holding an arrangement of cards that has never before existed and might not exist again. Yannay Khaikin explains how factorials allow us to pinpoint the exact (very large) number of permutations in a standard deck of cards.

TED-Ed • 2014 • Math

Psychedelics

Psychedelics have impacted history for as long as there have been people wanting to get their minds blown. Discover who's been under the influence from Salem witches and Santa Claus to 1960s hippies and Steve Jobs, and find out how mind-altering substances have changed our world.

S1E2 • History By The Numbers • 2021 • Math