Did you ever notice how many jokes start with _Did you ever notice?" And what's the deal with "What's the deal?" There's a lot of funny to be found simply by noticing the ordinary, everyday things you don't ordinarily notice every day....

In this video Paul Andersen explains how contour lines show areas of equal elevation or equal gravitational potential. Contour lines are used as an analogy for lines of equipotential in electric fields.

Black holes are the result of absolute gravitational collapse of a massive body: a point of hypothetical infinite density surrounded by an event horizon. At that horizon time is frozen and the fabric of space itself cascades inwards at...

If you feel something inside you say, “I really don’t think you’re strong enough,” you don’t necessarily have to trust that little voice—it might not know you as well as you think it does.

This week, we're continuing our discussion of Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.' This is part two of our talk about Huck Finn, and this time we're looking at the metaphors in the book, a little bit about what the...

In which you are introduced to the life and accomplishments of Alexander the Great, his empire, his horse Bucephalus, the empires that came after him, and the idea of Greatness. Is greatness a question of accomplishment, of impact, or...

Renewable energy may be the way of the future, but in order to store that energy to make our grids more sustainable, we might need to take a look back at some battery technologies of the past.

Russia went and had a revolution in 1917 and cinema was a big part of its aftermath. Even though film stock was hard to come by, we saw the first film school started, and the study of film became hugely important. Russian filmmakers...

How does a robin know to fly south? The answer might be weirder than you think: Quantum physics may be involved. Jim Al-Khalili rounds up the extremely new, extremely strange world of quantum biology, where something Einstein once called...

Fairness is one of the quickest ways to lose or gain trust. A lot of times we assume unfair people are incompetent or opportunistic. In this episode, Evelyn chats about how we perceive fairness and what the hurdles are to being "fair" in...

The Sound! The Fury! Today, we're talking about Shakespeare's Scottish play, Macbeth. So, was Macbeth really predestined to do all the murdering and bad kinging and other terrible stuff? That's the big question in Macbeth, and it's one...

Consciously or not, the first thing you notice when you visit a website is how the site LOOKS, which is controlled by the CSS Stylesheet. CSS is the fashion of the web- it makes sites pretty (or very very ugly). And as our lives migrate...

Even science can't yet explain these 7 extremely cool, weird phenomena in the universe, despite decades or even centuries of research.

Cha
pters
BALL
LIGHTNI
NG

1:09
> 3:07r/> SON
IC BOOM
...

Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, talks about his quest to make all knowledge computational -- able to be searched, processed and manipulated. His new search engine, Wolfram Alpha, has no lesser goal than to model and explain the...

Houseplants are great for decoration and cute Instagram pictures - plus they make for pretty chill roommates. As if that wasn’t enough, there is actually some evidence that houseplants can also be good for your mental health.

Educator and entrepreneur Sebastian Thrun wants us to use AI to free humanity of repetitive work and unleash our creativity. In an inspiring, informative conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Thrun discusses the progress of deep...

There are a multitude of books and motivational speakers that insist that anyone can think their way to happiness, but that advice really isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.

The toughest, most dominant canine gets the resources and respect - or at least that's the idea that caught on culturally. Turns out, that's not necessarily how it works.

An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform, winding graphs around circles.

Dr. John Roach joins the Talk Show to talk about his ecological studies and then Jessi brings on Freckles the leopard gecko.

"I Don't Think It Means What You Think It Means" examines scientific theories that have taken on a life of their own in popular culture & we help you understand what they really mean in scientific terms. Today we take on Schrodinger's...

Dark Energy is what we call the mysterious force that seems to be pushing the universe apart. By some calculations, it makes up 70% of everything in nature. Or...maybe it doesn’t exist at all! Plus, Juno’s observations give us new...

Legendary ocean researcher Sylvia Earle shares astonishing images of the ocean -- and shocking stats about its rapid decline -- as she makes her TED Prize wish: that we will join her in protecting the vital blue heart of the planet.

Popular culture has occasionally touched on the idea that people with depression are more objective judges of the world around them, but research has shown that’s not necessarily true.