Last week, Make Magazine announced a new series of educational and inspirational videos called “The Elements of Humanity”, designed to inspire students to become interested in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), the series is a set of interviews with prominent scientists and technologists which seeks to uncover each person’s own fascination with science and how that fascination has shaped their life’s work.

In the clip above, “Fascination with Fossils”, Louise Leakey says,  “I finally found evidence that put Africa on the map as the place we all came from.” A member of the storied Leakey family, Louise Leakey has continued to explore Africa in search of fossils that tell the story of our human origins. A Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Stony Brook, New York, Leakey is also a National Geographic Explorer in Residence.

These interviews of working scientists and technologists were recorded at SciFoo, an unstructured conference on Science and Technology organized this past summer by O’Reilly Media along with Nature Magazine and Google.  Other interviews, which showcase scientists in an informal setting discussing their life’s passion as they would with a new acquaintance at a dinner party, include Mathematician John Mighton talking about his fascination with how kids learn math, and Google computer scientist Rebecca Moore talking about her fascination with mapping tools.

The video series can be found at ElementsofHumanity.org