TED Talks
TED: To learn is to be free | Shameem Akhtar
Shameem Akhtar posed as a boy during her early childhood in Pakistan so she could enjoy the privileges Pakistani girls are rarely afforded: to play outside and attend school. In an eye-opening, personal talk, Akhtar recounts how the...
SciShow Kids
Ramps A Super, Simple Machine!
Jessi and Squeaks brought home a whole bunch of books! But they aren't quite sure how to get them up the stairs into the house. Join them as they learn about ramps and how these simple machines help us with our work!
Crash Course
Check Yourself with Lateral Reading: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #3
Look to your left. Look to your right. Look at this video. Today, John Green is going to teach you how to read laterally, using multiple tabs in your browser to look stuff up and fact check as you read. Real-time fact-checking an help...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The contributions of female explorers - Courtney Stephens
During the Victorian Age, women were unlikely to become great explorers, but a few intelligent, gritty and brave women made major contributions to the study of previously little-understood territory. Courtney Stephens examines three...
TED Talks
TED: Be humble -- and other lessons from the philosophy of water | Raymond Tang
How do we find fulfillment in a world that's constantly changing? Raymond Tang struggled with this question until he came across the ancient Chinese philosophy of the Tao Te Ching. In it, he found a passage comparing goodness to water,...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Alex Gendler: Why should you read "Crime and Punishment"?
What drives someone to kill in cold blood? What goes through the murderer's mind? And what kind of a society breeds such people? Over 150 years ago Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky took these questions up in what would become one of the...
TED Talks
TED: Live drawings of the human experience | Jarrett J. Krosoczka
In this live drawing performance and poignant autobiographical journey, author and illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka sketches some life-shaping moments, showing us how drawing and storytelling can help us honor and remain close to those...
Crash Course
Toni Morrison: Crash Course Black American History #48
Today, Clint Smith will teach you about the legendary writer Toni Morrison. Morrison is best known for her novels which chronicle the experiences of Black Americans throughout history. She was the first Black American Woman to win a...
TED-Ed
Why should you read Toni Morrison's "Beloved"? | Yen Pham
Two tiny handprints stamped into a cake. A mirror that shatters without warning. A trail of cracker crumbs strewn along the floor. Everyone at 124 Bluestone Road knows their home is haunted— but there's no mystery about the spirit...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The true story of Sacajawea - Karen Mensing
In the early 19th century, a young Agaidika teenager named Sacajawea was enlisted by explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to aid her husband Toussaint Charbonneau as a guide to the Western United States. Karen Mensing debunks...
TED Talks
Sam Martin: Claim your "manspace"
Author Sam Martin shares photos of a quirky world hobby that's trending with the XY set: "manspaces." (They're custom-built hangouts where a man can claim a bit of his own territory to work, relax, be himself.) Grab a cold one and enjoy.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How will AI change the world? | TED-Ed
In the coming years, artificial intelligence is probably going to change your life— and likely the entire world. But people have a hard time agreeing on exactly how AI will affect our society. Can we build AI systems that help us fix the...
TED Talks
TED: How we're harnessing nature's hidden superpowers | Oded Shoseyov
What do you get when you combine the strongest materials from the plant world with the most elastic ones from the insect kingdom? Super-performing materials that might transform ... everything. Nanobiotechnologist Oded Shoseyov walks us...
SciShow
Calendars, Codes & Virgins: 3 Myths About the Maya
Hank talks about the Maya, and helps dispel some myths about their historic civilization, revealing how, ultimately, they were just like us: smart, flawed, and awesome.
TED Talks
TED: 3 myths about racism that keep the US from progress | Candis Watts Smith
Racism morphs, spreading and hiding behind numerous half-truths and full-blown falsities about where it lives and who embodies it. In this actionable talk, political scientist Candis Watts Smith debunks three widely accepted myths about...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why should you read "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy? | Laura Wright
Set in a small town in India, "The God of Small Things" revolves around fraternal twins Rahel and Estha, who are separated for 23 years after the fateful hours in which their cousin drowns, their mother's affair is revealed, and her...
Crash Course
Why Early Globalization Matters: Crash Course Big History
Globalization has been in process for centuries, and has had a huge effect on Big History, and on Collective Learning. This week, Emily is investigating early globalization through three things that moved around the world and shaped...
TED Talks
TED: 12 truths I learned from life and writing | Anne Lamott
A few days before she turned 61, writer Anne Lamott decided to write down everything she knew for sure. She dives into the nuances of being a human who lives in a confusing, beautiful, emotional world, offering her characteristic...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Pazit Cahlon and Alex Gendler: What "Machiavellian" really means
From Shakespeare's plays to modern TV dramas, the unscrupulous schemer for whom the ends always justify the means has become a familiar character type we love to hate. For centuries, we've had a single word to describe such characters:...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Infinity according to Jorge Luis Borges | Ilan Stavans
What would it be like to have a limitless memory? Can the meaning of life be found in an infinite library? Is time a labyrinth or a single moment? Jorge Luis Borges explored these questions of infinity in his many works. His body of...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Jabberwocky: One of literature's best bits of nonsense | Lewis Carroll
As Alice wanders through the dreamscape of Looking-Glass Land in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There," she happens across a book written in an unintelligible language. Inside, she discovers an epic poem...
Crash Course
Alchemy: History of Science
In fantasy stories, charlatans in fancy robes promise to turn lead into gold. But real alchemists weren’t just mystical misers. They were skilled experimentalists, backed by theories of matter. And they played a huge role in the...
SciShow
You Read More Slowly As You Get Older — Here's Why
Researchers have noticed a decline in reading ability starting in your 40s. And learning more about why this happens might help us tell the difference between healthy aging and Alzheimer’s disease.