How could you dispose of your cooking oil when you're done cooking? The easiest thing to do might be to pour it down your drain -- but if you save it up and send it to a processing plant, it can gain useful new life as biodiesel, a...

About 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers, aided by rudimentary agriculture, moved to semi-permanent villages and never looked back. With further developments came food surpluses, leading to commerce, specialization and, many years later...

Where did all the lumps and bumps on buildings go? When did city architecture become so ... dull? Here to talk about why cities need inspiring architecture, designer Thomas Heatherwick offers a path out of the doldrums of urban monotony...

In this collection of classic MinuteEarth videos, we take a look at some of the most extreme weather on Earth and its consequences.

Although coal is such an amazing energy source that we've kept using it despite the harm it causes, today we may be better poised to stop using it than at any previous time in history.

In which John Green teaches you about the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the largest of the ancient civilizations. John teaches you the who, how, when, where and why of the Indus Valley Civilization, and dispenses advice on how to be...

You ever think about where your trash goes? How long it takes to decompose? And whether your garbage can become ... dangerous? You should! Hank explains the science of trash, how we've dealt with it (or not) over the ages, and both the...

On July 26, 1943, Los Angeles was blanketed by a thick gas that stung people’s eyes and blocked out the Sun. Panicked residents believed their city had been attacked using chemical warfare. But the cloud wasn’t an act of war. It was...

So, what happens when there's not enough water? Well... not good things. Do we let homes have more water for showering and cooking? Or do we let farms have the water for growing crops? There aren't any easy solutions, but today Sabrina...

How to Build a Better City

Historians love to debate each other. So some of them pointed out that the first half of this revolution looks a lot different from the second. Let's chat about industry, cars, and Henry Ford.

Low-status neighborhoods in the US are often stuck between stagnating assistance from the government and gentrification at the hands of real estate developers. The result is that the brightest minds are convinced that "success" means...

In which John Green teaches you the history of the Indian Ocean Trade. John weaves a tale of swashbuckling adventure, replete with trade in books, ivory, and timber. Along the way, John manages to cover advances in seafaring technology,...

We've talked about a lot of revolutions in 19th Century Europe, and today we're moving on to a less warlike revolution, the Industrial Revolution. You'll learn about the development of steam power and mechanization, and the labor and...

If you change your city, you're changing the world, says Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles and chair of C40 Cities, a network of the world's megacities committed to tackling the climate crisis. He shares tangible ways Los Angeles and...

In which John Green teaches you about the massive immigration to the United States during the late 19th and early 20th century. Immigrants flocked to the US from all over the world in this time period. Millions of Europeans moved to the...

In her global exploration of Indigenous design systems, architect Julia Watson researches enduring innovations that could help us counter the challenges of climate change. From floating villages to living root bridges that strengthen...

Too often, people feel checked out of politics — even at the level of their own city. But urban activist Alessandra Orofino thinks that can change, using a mix of tech and old-fashioned human connection. Sharing examples from her...

In our final episode of Crash Course Geography we're going to take a look towards the future, and to do that we'll need to revisit our fundamental geography tools: space, place, and human-environment interactions! We'll talk about the...

David Macaulay relives the winding and sometimes surreal journey toward the completion of Rome Antics, his illustrated homage to the historic city.

View full lessonf='https://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-hidden-network-that-makes-the-internet-possible-sajan-saini' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>lesson↵↵In 2012, a team of researchers set a world record, transmitting 1 petabit of data—...

Scientists tend to be careful and resistant to big claims. So evidence for the possible end of the living world took a while to be seen as such. In this episode of Crash Course History of Science, Hank talks to us about where Climate...

In 1910, 90% of Black Americans lived in the South. By 1940, around 1.5 million Black Americans had left their homes, and 77% lived in the South. By 1970, 52% of Black Americans remained in the South. People moved away for many reasons,...

Janine Benyus has a message for inventors: When solving a design problem, look to nature first. There you'll find inspired designs for making things waterproof, aerodynamic, solar-powered and more. Here she reveals dozens of new products...