TED Talks
TED: The creativity, innovation and ingenuity languishing in US prisons | Brittany K. Barnett
The freedom journey doesn't end when someone is released from prison. In many ways, it begins. Attorney and entrepreneur Brittany K. Barnett fights to free people from prison and champions restoring and nurturing the creative ingenuity...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Michelle Brown: What is a butt tuba and why is it in medieval art?
A rabbit attempts to play a church organ, while a knight fights a giant snail and a naked man blows a trumpet with his rear end. These bizarre images, painted with squirrel-hair brushes on vellum or parchment by monks, nuns and urban...
TED Talks
James Geary: Metaphorically speaking
Aphorism enthusiast and author James Geary waxes on a fascinating fixture of human language: the metaphor. Friend of scribes from Aristotle to Elvis, metaphor can subtly influence the decisions we make, Geary says.
TED Talks
TED: Fractals and the art of roughness | Benoit Mandelbrot
At TED2010, mathematics legend Benoit Mandelbrot develops a theme he first discussed at TED in 1984 -- the extreme complexity of roughness, and the way that fractal math can find order within patterns that seem unknowably complicated.
TED Talks
The value of your humanity in an automated future | Kevin Roose
To futureproof your job against robots and AI, you should learn how to code, brush up on your math skills and crack open an engineering textbook, right? Wrong. In this surprisingly comforting talk, tech journalist Kevin Roose makes the...
TED Talks
William Noel: Revealing the lost codex of Archimedes
How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been erased, cut up, written on and painted over? With a powerful particle accelerator, of course! Ancient books curator William Noel tells the fascinating story behind the...
TED Talks
TED: The mind-bending art of deep time | Katie Paterson
Short-sightedness may be the greatest threat to humanity, says conceptual artist Katie Paterson, whose work engages with deep time -- an idea that describes the history of the Earth over a time span of millions of years. In this lively...
TED Talks
Chiki Sarkar: How India's smartphone revolution is creating a new generation of readers and writers
India has the second largest population of any country in the world -- yet it has only 50 decent bookstores, says publisher Chiki Sarkar. So she asked herself: How do we get more people reading books? Find out how Sarkar is tapping into...
Crash Course
The Northern Renaissance: Crash Course European History
The European Renaissance may have started in Florence, but it pretty quickly moved out of Italy and spread the art, architecture, literature, and humanism across Europe to places like France, Spain, England, and the Low Countries....
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The evolution of the book - Julie Dreyfuss
What makes a book a book? Is it just anything that stores and communicates information? Or does it have to do with paper, binding, font, ink, its weight in your hands, the smell of the pages? To answer these questions, Julie Dreyfuss...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why should you read Dante's "Divine Comedy"? | Sheila Marie Orfano
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here... Inscribed above the Gate of Hell, this prophecy sets into motion an epic journey for salvation. Written over 10 years, Dante Alighieri's three-part narrative poem "Divine Comedy" is both an...
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
The freakonomics of crack dealing - Steven Levitt
* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. "Freakonomics" author Steven Levitt presents new data on the finances of drug dealing. Contrary to popular myth, he...
TED Talks
TED: How electroshock therapy changed me | Sherwin Nuland
Surgeon and author Sherwin Nuland discusses the development of electroshock therapy as a cure for severe, life-threatening depression -- including his own. It's a moving and heartfelt talk about relief, redemption and second chances.
TED Talks
TED: The problem with "trickle-down techonomics" | Jon Gosier
Hooray for technology! It makes everything better for everyone!! Right? Well, no. When a new technology, like ebooks or health trackers, is only available to some people, it has unintended consequences for all of us. Jon Gosier, a TED...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Silvia Moreno-García: Titan of terror: the dark imagination of H.P. Lovecraft
Arcane books of forbidden lore, disturbing secrets in the family bloodline, and terrors so unspeakable the very thought of them might drive you mad. These have become standard elements in modern horror stories. But they were largely...
TED Talks
TED: How much does a video weigh? | Michael Stevens
What color is a mirror? How much does a video weigh? Michael Stevens, creator of the popular educational YouTube channel Vsauce, spends his day asking quirky questions like these. In this talk he shows how asking the right -- seemingly...
SciShow
Cybersecurity & a Hacker Called Alien | SciShow Talk Show
Jeremy Smith and Sherri Davidoff talk hacking, cyber security, and the end of the world, and Jessi stops by with Rook the Raven.
TED Talks
Brewster Kahle: A free digital library
Brewster Kahle is building a truly huge digital library -- every book ever published, every movie ever released, all the strata of web history ... It's all free to the public -- unless someone else gets to it first.
TED Talks
Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is.
Chip Kidd doesn't judge books by their cover, he creates covers that embody the book -- and he does it with a wicked sense of humor. In this deeply felt (and deeply hilarious) talk, he shares the art and the philosophy behind his cover...
TED Talks
TED: The secret language of letter design | Martina Flor
Look at the letters around you: on street signs, stores, restaurant menus, the covers of books. Whether you realize it or not, the letters are speaking to you, telling you something beyond the literal text -- that whatever they represent...
TED Talks
TED: A taboo-free way to talk about periods | Aditi Gupta
It's true: talking about menstruation makes many people uncomfortable. And that taboo has consequences: in India, three out of every 10 girls don't even know what menstruation is at the time of their first period, and restrictive customs...
TED Talks
Ben Katchor: Comics of bygone New York
In this captivating talk from the TED archive, cartoonist Ben Katchor reads from his comic strips. These perceptive, surreal stories find the profound hopes and foibles of history (and modern New York) preserved in objects like light...
SciShow
Why We Love Movie Villains (According to Psychology)
Sometimes we find ourselves falling for the cute vampire or German bank robber, and this might say a lot about how we think about ourselves.