TED Talks
Katharine Wilkinson: How empowering women and girls can help stop global warming
If we really want to address climate change, we need to make gender equity a reality, says writer and environmentalist Katharine Wilkinson. As part of Project Drawdown, Wilkinson has helped scour humanity's wisdom for solutions to draw...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Who owns the "wilderness"? | Elyse Cox
In 1903, US President Theodore Roosevelt took a camping trip in California's Yosemite Valley with conservationist John Muir. Roosevelt famously loved the outdoors, but Muir had invited him for more than just camping: Yosemite was in...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Phenology and nature's shifting rhythms - Regina Brinker
With rapidly rising global temperatures come seasonal changes. As spring comes earlier for some plant species, there are ripple effects throughout the food web. Regina Brinker explains how phenology, or the natural cycles of plants and...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The cockroach beatbox - Greg Gage
By dissecting a cockroach ... yes, live on stage ... TED Fellow and neuroscientist Greg Gage shows how brains receive and deliver electric impulses -- and how legs can respond. (Launching a series on Awesome Nature) "The Cockroach...
TED Talks
TED: Clues to prehistoric times, found in blind cavefish | Prosanta Chakrabarty
TeD Fellow Prosanta Chakrabarty explores hidden parts of the world in search of new species of cave-dwelling fish. These subterranean creatures have developed fascinating adaptations, and they provide biological insights into blindness...
TED Talks
TED: What's so sexy about math? | Cedric Villani
Hidden truths permeate our world; they're inaccessible to our senses, but math allows us to go beyond our intuition to uncover their mysteries. In this survey of mathematical breakthroughs, Fields Medal winner Cedric Villani speaks to...
TED Talks
Karl Skjonnemand: The self-assembling computer chips of the future
The transistors that power the phone in your pocket are unimaginably small: you can fit more than 3,000 of them across the width of a human hair. But to keep up with innovations in fields like facial recognition and augmented reality, we...
TED Talks
Erin McKean: Go ahead, make up new words!
In this fun, short talk from TEDYouth, lexicographer Erin McKean encourages — nay, cheerleads — her audience to create new words when the existing ones won’t quite do. She lists out 6 ways to make new words in English, from compounding...
TED Talks
TED: Could fish social networks help us save coral reefs? | Mike Gil
Mike Gil spies on fish: using novel multi-camera systems and computer vision technology, the TED Fellow and his colleagues explore how coral reef fish behave, socialize and affect their ecosystems. Learn more about how fish of different...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The philosophy of cynicism - William D. Desmond
In the 4th century BCE, a young Diogenes of Sinope was found to be counterfeiting coins. He was stripped of his citizenship, his money, all his possessions and sent into exile. He decided he would live self-sufficiently, close to nature,...
SciShow
These Chimps Treat Each Other’s Wounds. With Bugs
Chimpanzees in Gabon have been observed using bugs as a possible antiseptic, but what's more surprising is that they're applying this remedy to one another in what may be a form of chimpanzee health care.
SciShow
The Secrets of Life’s Toughest Material
One of the toughest materials known to science is made not by humans, but by nature... and it's inside of oysters.
TED Talks
Ella Al-Shamahi: The fascinating (and dangerous) places scientists aren't exploring
We're not doing frontline exploratory science in a huge portion of the world -- the places governments deem too hostile or disputed. What might we be missing because we're not looking? In this fearless, unexpectedly funny talk,...
SciShow
The Climate Crisis Is Changing the Circle of Life
When you think about the impact of climate change on the circle of life, you likely picture polar bears or Bengal tigers struggling in new conditions. But the impacts on the world go all the way down to the tiniest creatures who do some...
TED Talks
TED: You have no idea where camels really come from | Latif Nasser
Camels are so well adapted to the desert that it's hard to imagine them living anywhere else. But what if we have them pegged all wrong? What if those big humps, feet and eyes were evolved for a different climate and a different time? In...
SciShow
3 Things to Know About Cecil the Lion
Cecil was one of the most thoroughly studied lions in Africa. And thanks to him, we know several reasons why the death of one big cat can be a big deal.
TED Talks
How synthetic biology can improve our health, food and materials | Emily Leproust
What if we could use biology to restore our balance with nature without giving up modern creature comforts? Advocating for a new kind of environmentalism, scientist and entrepreneur Emily Leproust rethinks modern sustainability at the...
TED Talks
Jonathan Klein: Photos that changed the world
Photographs do more than document history -- they make it. At TED University, Jonathan Klein of Getty Images shows some of the most iconic, and talks about what happens when a generation sees an image so powerful it can't look away -- or...
TED Talks
TED: A "forest generation" living in harmony with nature | Ernestine Leikeki Sevidzem
We need to care for and live in harmony with the environment, says climate and gender activist Ernestine Leikeki Sevidzem. The best way to do that? Nurture a forest generation: one that learns to protect nature. Sevidzem shares how she's...
TED Talks
TED: The African swamp protecting Earth's environment | Vera Songwe
The peatlands of Africa's Congo Basin are a vast expanse of swamp and greenery that act as one of the world's most effective carbon sinks -- and they're under threat of environmental destruction. Economist Vera Songwe explains how...
TED Talks
TED: Let's protect the oceans like national parks | David Lang
You don't have to be a scientist to help protect the world's oceans, says underwater drone expert and TED Fellow David Lang -- in fact, ordinary citizens have pulled together to save the planet's natural treasures many times in history....
TED Talks
David Brooks: Should you live for your résumé ... or your eulogy?
Within each of us are two selves, suggests David Brooks in this meditative short talk: the self who craves success, who builds a résumé, and the self who seeks connection, community, love -- the values that make for a great eulogy....
TED Talks
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson: A love story for the coral reef crisis
Over the course of hundreds of scuba dives, marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson fell in love -- with a fish. In this ode to parrotfish, she shares five reasons why these creatures are simply amazing (from their ability to poop white...
TED Talks
TED: How we'll find life on other planets | Aomawa Shields
Astronomer Aomawa Shields searches for clues that life might exist elsewhere in the universe by examining the atmospheres of distant exoplanets. When she isn't exploring the heavens, the classically trained actor (and TED Fellow) looks...