What if ancient myths are warnings for the future? Contemporary folklorist Lauren Fadiman explores how the Norse tale of Ragnarök may stem from real climate catastrophe, revealing how folklore preserves lessons of resilience and can...

Ada Lovelace, Daughter of Lord Byron, was somehow the first author of a computer program...even though she lived more than a century before the first modern computer.

In the 1920s, there was a blossoming of all kinds of art made by African Americans in the New York neighborhood Harlem. Let's call it a renaissance. While all the arts were having a great run, some extremely interesting things were...

The history of medicine is about two of our big questions: one, what is life? What makes it so special, so fragile, so… goopy!?

Two, how do we know what we know? Why should I take my doctor’s advice? Why are deep-fried Oreos bad...

What is a change of basis, and how do you do it?

What is a change of basis, and how do you do it?

TED curator Chris Anderson shares his obsession with questions that no one (yet) knows the answers to. A short intro leads into two questions: Why can't we see evidence of alien life? And how many universes are there?

In which John Green teaches you about Sub-Saharan Africa! So, what exactly was going on there? It turns out, it was a lot of trade, converting to Islam, visits from Ibn Battuta, trade, beautiful women, trade, some impressive...

English is a confusing language for many reasons. But the irregular verbs might be the most confusing part. Why is "told" the past tense of "tell" but "smold" isn't the past tense of "smell"? It turns out that the study of irregular...

In which John Green examines Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare. John delves into the world of Bill Shakespeare's famous star-crossed lovers and examines what the play is about, its structure, and the context in which it was written....

TED talks about tips for reclaiming your peace of mind online | Naomi Shimada

In the first of a new TED-Ed series designed to catalyze curiosity, TED Curator Chris Anderson shares his boyhood obsession with quirky questions that seem to have no answers.

So far in this series, we've mostly focused on how AI can interpret images, but one of the most common ways we interact with computers is through language - we type questions into search engines, use our smart assistants like Siri and...

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...

How to think about implicit differentiation in terms of functions with multiple inputs, and tiny nudges to those inputs.

You might have seen this story circulating on social media…but we’re here to let you know that children are NOT growing horns because they use cellphones. This is a great opportunity to learn from what can happen when both peer review...

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...

Divergence, curl, and their relation to fluid flow and electromagnetism

TED curator Chris Anderson shares his obsession with questions that no one (yet) knows the answers to. A short intro leads into two questions: Why can't we see evidence of alien life? And how many universes are there?

In 4 minutes, atmospheric chemist Rachel Pike provides a glimpse of the massive scientific effort behind the bold headlines on climate change, with her team -- one of thousands who contributed -- taking a risky flight over the rainforest...

Pitching your movie to people can be hard. A studio, a friend, your mom... each of these entities will have different stressed and give you different results. But, what's important in a pitch? And what happens after the pitch? How do you...

In which John Green concludes teaching you about Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. You'll learn about the historical contexts of Things Fall Apart, including 19th century colonization and 20th century decolonization. We're going to...

Long before we had rocket scientists, the idea of spaceflight traveled from mind to mind across generations. With great visuals, TED Fellow and NASA economist Alexander MacDonald shows how 300 years of sci-fi tales -- from Edgar Allan...

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...