TED Talks
Lisa Harouni: A primer on 3D printing
2012 may be the year of 3D printing, when this three-decade-old technology finally becomes accessible and even commonplace. Lisa Harouni gives a useful introduction to this fascinating way of making things -- including intricate objects...
TED Talks
Jake Barton: The museum of you
A third of the world watched live as the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001; a third more heard about it within 24 hours. (Do you remember where you were?) So exhibits at the soon-to-open 9/11 Memorial Museum will reflect...
TED Talks
TED: A delightful way to teach kids about computers | Linda Liukas
Computer code is the next universal language, and its syntax will be limited only by the imaginations of the next generation of programmers. Linda Liukas is helping to educate problem-solving kids, encouraging them to see computers not...
SciShow
The Next Step to a Holodeck
The next step toward a holodeck might be the ability to actually touch a simulation, and we’re getting closer—using sound.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Making a TED-Ed Lesson: Visualizing complex ideas
How can animation convey complex, intangible concepts? A visual metaphor, or an idea represented through imagery, can take an idea as massive as Big Data and tie it to the familiar depiction of a growing tree. TED-Ed animators explain...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Will we ever be able to teleport? - Sajan Saini
Is teleportation possible? Could a baseball transform into something like a radio wave, travel through buildings, bounce around corners, and change back into a baseball? Oddly enough, thanks to quantum mechanics, the answer might...
TED Talks
TED: Forget shopping. Soon you'll download your new clothes | Danit Peleg
Downloadable, printable clothing may be coming to a closet near you. What started as designer Danit Peleg's fashion school project turned into a collection of 3D-printed designs that have the strength and flexibility for everyday wear....
SciShow
What the Wright Brothers Should Actually Be Famous For
For the pioneers of human aviation, one of the trickiest problems was figuring out how to steer the early craft. Then, the Wright Brothers changed everything by using bike parts and watching birds.
SciShow
The Terrifying Promise of Robot Bugs
Imitating nature to build a better (or possibly more terrifying) future. We've been trying to build flapping-wing robots for hundreds of years, and now, ornithopters are finally being developed, and may be used mostly for military...
TED Talks
Zach Kaplan + Keith Schacht: Toys and materials from the future
The Inventables guys, Zach Kaplan and Keith Schacht, demo some amazing new materials and how we might use them. Look for squishy magnets, odor-detecting ink, "dry" liquid and a very surprising 10-foot pole.
TED-Ed
TED-ED: What was so special about Viking ships? - Jan Bill
As the Roman Empire flourished, Scandinavians had small settlements and no central government. Yet by the 11th century, they had spread far from Scandinavia, gaining control of trade routes throughout Europe, conquering kingdoms as far...
TED Talks
David Griffin: How photography connects us
The photo director for National Geographic, David Griffin knows the power of photography to connect us to our world. In a talk filled with glorious images, he talks about how we all use photos to tell our stories.
TED Talks
R.A. Mashelkar: Breakthrough designs for ultra-low-cost products
Engineer RA Mashelkar shares three stories of ultra-low-cost design from India that use bottom-up rethinking, and some clever engineering, to bring expensive products (cars, prosthetics) into the realm of the possible for everyone.
TED Talks
John Hardy: My green school dream
Join John Hardy on a tour of the Green School, his off-the-grid school in Bali that teaches kids how to build, garden, create (and get into college). The centerpiece of campus is the spiraling Heart of School, perhaps the world's largest...
TED Talks
Catarina Mota: Play with smart materials
Ink that conducts electricity; a window that turns from clear to opaque at the flip of a switch; a jelly that makes music. All this stuff exists, and Catarina Mota says: It's time to play with it. Mota leads us on a tour of surprising...
TED Talks
Ron McCallum: How technology allowed me to read
Months after he was born, in 1948, Ron McCallum became blind. In this charming, moving talk, he shows how he reads -- and celebrates the progression of clever tools and adaptive computer technologies that make it possible. With their...
TED Talks
TED: How Airbnb designs for trust | Joe Gebbia
Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, bet his whole company on the belief that people can trust each other enough to stay in one another's homes. How did he overcome the stranger-danger bias? Through good design. Now, 123 million hosted...
TED Talks
Anna Piperal: What a digital government looks like
What if you never had to fill out paperwork again? In Estonia, this is a reality: citizens conduct nearly all public services online, from starting a business to voting from their laptops, thanks to the nation's ambitious post-Soviet...
TED Talks
Thomas Heatherwick: Building the Seed Cathedral
A future more beautiful? Architect Thomas Heatherwick shows five recent projects featuring ingenious bio-inspired designs. Some are remakes of the ordinary: a bus, a bridge, a power station ... And one is an extraordinary pavilion, the...
TED Talks
Angelo Vermeulen: How to go to space, without having to go to space
"We will start inhabiting outer space," says Angelo Vermeulen, crew commander of a NASA-funded Mars simulation. "It might take 50 years or it might take 500 years, but it's going to happen." In this charming talk, the TED Senior Fellow...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How the world's first subway system was built - Christian Wolmar
It was the dawn of 1863, and London's not-yet-opened subway system - the first of its kind in the world - had the city in an uproar. Most people thought the project, which cost more than 100 million dollars in today's money, would never...
TED Talks
TED: 7 principles for building better cities | Peter Calthorpe
More than half of the world's population already lives in cities, and another 2.5 billion people are projected to move to urban areas by 2050. The way we build new cities will be at the heart of so much that matters, from climate change...
SciShow
The Truth About COVID Vaccines and Emergency Use Authorizations
The news of several promising COVID-19 vaccines over the past few weeks has been very exciting, but so far, none have received emergency authorization for general use in the US. We'll talk about what that means, and also, why these...
TED Talks
Débora Mesa Molina: Stunning buildings made from raw, imperfect materials
What would it take to reimagine the limits of architecture? Débora Mesa Molina offers some answers in this breathtaking, visual tour of her work, showing how structures can be made with overlooked materials and unconventional methods --...