SciShow
Seed-Inspired Microdevices and Zombie Plants
This week in news, we dive into microfliers inspired by seeds and parasites that turn plants into zombie plants!
TED Talks
Cheryl Hayashi: The magnificence of spider silk
Cheryl Hayashi studies spider silk, one of nature's most high-performance materials. Each species of spider can make up to 7 very different kinds of silk. How do they do it? Hayashi explains at the DNA level -- then shows us how this...
TED Talks
TED: How trees talk to each other | Suzanne Simard
A forest is much more than what you see, says ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery -- trees talk, often and over vast distances. Learn more about the harmonious yet...
TED Talks
TED: This computer will grow your food in the future | Caleb Harper
What if we could grow delicious, nutrient-dense food, indoors anywhere in the world? Caleb Harper, director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, wants to change the food system by connecting growers with technology....
Crash Course
Frankenstein Part II: Crash Course Literature 206
In which John Green continues to teach you about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. You'll learn about romantic vs Romantic, the latter of which is a literary movement. John will also look at a few different critical readings of Frankenstein,...
SciShow
For These 7 Species, Sex Changes Everything
Animals and plants come in an amazing variety of shapes, sizes and colors. And in some species, they take it pretty extreme to deal with the battles within and between sexes.
TED Talks
TED: The incredible potential of flexible, soft robots | Giada Gerboni
Robots are designed for speed and precision -- but their rigidity has often limited how they're used. In this illuminating talk, biomedical engineer Giada Gerboni shares the latest developments in "soft robotics," an emerging field that...
TED Talks
Phil Plait: The secret to scientific discoveries? Making mistakes
Phil Plait was on a Hubble Space Telescope team of astronomers who thought they may have captured the first direct photo of an exoplanet ever taken. But did the evidence actually support that? Follow along as Plait shows how science...
TED Talks
Christoph Keplinger: The artificial muscles that will power robots of the future
Robot brains are getting smarter and smarter, but their bodies are often still clunky and unwieldy. Mechanical engineer Christoph Keplinger is designing a new generation of soft, agile robot inspired by a masterpiece of evolution:...
TED Talks
TED: How will we survive when the population hits 10 billion? | Charles C. Mann
By 2050, an estimated 10 billion people will live on earth. How are we going to provide everybody with basic needs while also avoiding the worst impacts of climate change? In a talk packed with wit and wisdom, science journalist Charles...
TED Talks
TED: The city planting a million trees in two years | Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr
Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, is on a mission to plant a million trees over the next two years, increasing vegetation in her city by fifty percent while shoring up eroding riverbanks and increasing biodiversity....
TED Talks
The worldwide web of belief and ritual - Wade Davis
* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Anthropologist Wade Davis muses on the worldwide web of belief and ritual that makes us human. He shares...
Be Smart
Thomas Jefferson and The Giant Moose
America's first great science battle wasn't the space race or the atom bomb, it was fought between Thomas Jefferson, a French nobleman, and in the middle a giant moose. Some people call Jefferson our only scientist-President, and T.J....
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: 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-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 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
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
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
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.