Erica Woodahl tells us how individual genetic screenings could help doctors prescribe better medications and Jessi from Animal Wonders brings in two fantastic rodents: Huckleberry the beaver and Chili Pepper the Patagonian cavy. Chapters...

Horseshoe crabs aren't really crabs, but they are super old, super cool, and they deserve your respect. Because they may have already saved your life. SciShow explains!

Believe it or not, about 20 years' worth of potentially life-saving drugs are sitting in labs right now, untested. Why? Because they can't get the funding to go to trials; the financial risk is too high. Roger Stein is a finance guy, and...

The War on Drugs is a decades-long United States policy intended to curb illegal drug use and trafficking. Long story short: it has not worked to reduce drug use or trade, and the policy has had devastating effects, especially on...

Venom can kill ... or it can cure. In this fascinating talk, marine chemical biologist Mandë Holford shares her research into animal venom, from killer sea snails to platypuses and slow lorises -- and explores its potential to one day...

Hank delves into the details about that very popular substance: caffeine.

Health headlines are published every day, sometimes making opposite claims from each other. There can be a disconnect between broad, attention-grabbing headlines and the often specific, incremental results of the medical research they...

Testing new treatments in other animals can help us spot complications or potential pitfalls, but the results don’t always carry over to humans, which means that safely going from animal to human trials is a lot more complicated than you...

Cancer is a very clever, adaptable disease. To defeat it, says medical researcher and educator Paula Hammond, we need a new and powerful mode of attack. With her colleagues at MIT, Hammond engineered a nanoparticle one-hundredth the size...

(NOTE: Statements in this talk have been challenged by scientists working in this field. Please read "Criticisms & Updates" below for more details.) Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks, "Why are boys struggling?" He shares some stats...

Hank talks about the scary new drug that's led to some recent incidences of goat stabbing, as well as other tragedies - bath salts. We learn how it works and ask the important question: why?

Sodium pentothal, the so-called "truth serum,' is real! But does it work? Find out what "truth serums' do, and how your brain lets you tell lies.

The FDA has approved a whole new class of antidepressant, and ultrasounds might be far more useful than we thought.

Swallowing pills to get medication is a quick, painless and often not entirely effective way of treating disease. A potentially better way? Lasers. In this passionate talk, TED Fellow Patience Mthunzi explains her idea to use lasers to...

Food provides our bodies with the energy to go about our daily tasks, but we don't eat only for our physical health. Our brains are also deeply connected to our food.

After a traumatic brain injury, it sometimes happens that the brain can repair itself, building new brain cells to replace damaged ones. But the repair doesn't happen quickly enough to allow recovery from degenerative conditions like...

From a new method of drug design to an antiviral agent for herpes, Gertrude Elion's works totally transformed the world of drug development.

Aspirin isn't just an old medicine cabinet stand-by, it's one of the oldest medicines we humans learned how to make ourselves. And our research into aspirin did more than just make it better at relieving pain, it opened the door to whole...

Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are an effective way to kill a myriad of potentially harmful microbes. But is there a risk of germs becoming resistant to this ubiquitous liquid?

There’s no doubt that lithium has a diverse list of uses. But the way that it interacts with our bodies to help treat bipolar disorder is aiding us in better understanding the disorder and potentially developing new drugs to combat it.

Scorpion venom and insect poison sound really deadly, but scientists are increasingly turning them into medical treatments that save millions of lives. Chapters CAPTOPRIL 1:18 SOUTH AMERICAN PIT VIPER Credit: Renato Augusto Martins 1:33...

In the 1950s, the discovery of two new drugs sparked what would become a multi-billion dollar market for antidepressants. Neither drug was intended to treat depression at all— many doctors and scientists believed psychotherapy was the...

Anyone who has lost a loved one to pancreatic cancer knows the devastating speed with which it can affect an otherwise healthy person. TED Fellow and biomedical entrepreneur Laura Indolfi is developing a revolutionary way to treat this...

Most people will take a pill, receive an injection, or otherwise take some kind of medicine during their lives. But most of us don't know anything about how these substances actually work. How can various compounds impact the way we...