TED Talks
Jane Chen: A warm embrace that saves lives
In the developing world, access to incubators is limited by cost and distance, and millions of premature babies die each year. TED Fellow Jane Chen shows an invention that could keep millions of these infants warm -- a design that's...
TED Talks
Peter Molyneux: Meet Milo, the virtual boy
Peter Molyneux demos Milo, a hotly anticipated video game for Microsoft's Kinect controller. Perceptive and impressionable like a real 11-year-old, the virtual boy watches, listens and learns -- recognizing and responding to you.
TED Talks
Leonard Susskind: My friend Richard Feynman
What's it like to be pals with a genius? Physicist Leonard Susskind spins a few stories about his friendship with the legendary Richard Feynman, discussing his unconventional approach to problems both serious and ... less so.
TED Talks
Suzana Herculano-Houzel: What is so special about the human brain?
The human brain is puzzling -- it is curiously large given the size of our bodies, uses a tremendous amount of energy for its weight and has a bizarrely dense cerebral cortex. But: why? Neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel puts on her...
SciShow
This Flatworm Remembers Things After You Cut Off Its Brain
Planarians are flatworms most known for being able to grow a new head if it gets cut off, but perhaps even stranger is the fact that their new head retains some of the memories from the old one.
TED Talks
Rita Pierson: Every kid needs a champion
Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, "They don't pay me to like the kids." Her response: "Kids don't learn from people they don't like.'" A rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually...
TED Talks
TED: How a start-up in the White House is changing business as usual | Haley Van Dyck
Haley Van Dyck is transforming the way America delivers critical services to everyday people. At the United States Digital Service, Van Dyck and her team are using lessons learned by Silicon Valley and the private sector to improve...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What happens to our bodies after we die? - Farnaz Khatibi Jafari
Since the dawn of humanity, an estimated 100.8 billion people have lived and died, a number that increases by about 0.8% of the world's population each year. What happens to all of those peoples' bodies after they die? And will the...
SciShow
There Are Crystal Mirrors Hidden in Scallop Eyes
Sea creatures abound this week, as scientists make discoveries about scallop eyes and use models to help figure out the age old mystery, "Which came first, comb jellies or the sea sponge?”
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What's the definition of comedy? Banana. - Addison Anderson
What makes us giggle and guffaw? The inability to define comedy is its very appeal; it is defined by its defiance of definition. Addison Anderson riffs on the philosophy of Henri Bergson and Aristotle to elucidate how a definition draws...
TED Talks
TED: Want to be happy? Be grateful | David Steindl-Rast
The one thing all humans have in common is that each of us wants to be happy, says Brother David Steindl-Rast, a monk and interfaith scholar. And happiness, he suggests, is born from gratitude. An inspiring lesson in slowing down,...
TED Talks
TED: The walk from "no" to "yes" | William Ury
William Ury, author of "Getting to Yes," offers an elegant, simple (but not easy) way to create agreement in even the most difficult situations -- from family conflict to, perhaps, the Middle East.
TED Talks
Rose George: Let's talk crap. Seriously.
It's 2013, yet 2.5 billion people in the world have no access to a basic sanitary toilet. And when there's no loo, where do you poo? In the street, probably near your water and food sources -- causing untold death and disease from...
TED Talks
Tyler Cowen: Be suspicious of simple stories
Like all of us, economist Tyler Cowen loves a good story. But in this intriguing talk, he asks us to step away from thinking of our lives -- and our messy, complicated irrational world -- in terms of a simple narrative.
TED Talks
David Christian: The history of our world in 18 minutes
Backed by stunning illustrations, David Christian narrates a complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in a riveting 18 minutes. This is "Big History": an enlightening, wide-angle look at complexity, life and...
TED Talks
Dan Ariely: How equal do we want the world to be? You'd be surprised
The news of society's growing inequality makes all of us uneasy. But why? Dan Ariely reveals some new, surprising research on what we think is fair, as far as how wealth is distributed over societies ... then shows how it stacks up to...
TED Talks
Maira Kalman: The illustrated woman
Author and illustrator Maira Kalman talks about her life and work, from her covers for The New Yorker to her books for children and grown-ups. She is as wonderful, as wise and as deliciously off-kilter in person as she is on paper.
TED Talks
George Smoot: The design of the universe
At Serious Play 2008, astrophysicist George Smoot shows stunning new images from deep-space surveys, and prods us to ponder how the cosmos -- with its giant webs of dark matter and mysterious gaping voids -- got built this way.
SciShow
How We Proved Earth Rotates Using a Giant Swinging Ball
People have suspected that Earth rotates for thousands of years, but how did we first prove it?
TED Talks
Lucien Engelen: Crowdsource your health
You can use your smartphone to find a local ATM, but what if you need a defibrillator? Lucien Engelen shows us online innovations that are changing the way we save lives, including a crowdsourced map of local AEDs.
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Jellyfish predate dinosaurs. How have they survived so long? - David Gruber
Some are longer than a blue whale. Others are barely larger than a grain of sand. One species unleashes one of the most deadly venoms on earth; another holds a secret that's behind some of the greatest breakthroughs in biology. They've...
TED Talks
Scott Dinsmore: How to find work you love
Scott Dinsmore quit a job that made him miserable, and spent the next four years wondering how to find work that was joyful and meaningful. He shares what he learned in this deceptively simple talk about finding out what matters to you —...
TED Talks
Andy Hobsbawm: Do the green thing
Andy Hobsbawm shares a fresh ad campaign about going green -- and some of the fringe benefits.
SciShow
Should You Really 'Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever'?
Old adages can be pretty hit or miss—especially when it comes to medical advice—but it turns out there may actually be some truth to the saying, "feed a cold, starve a fever."