TED Talks
Jimmy Wales: The birth of Wikipedia
Jimmy Wales recalls how he assembled "a ragtag band of volunteers," gave them tools for collaborating and created Wikipedia, the self-organizing, self-correcting, never-finished online encyclopedia.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How the Normans changed the history of Europe - Mark Robinson
In the year 1066, 7,000 Norman infantry and knights sailed in warships across the English Channel. Their target: England, home to more than a million people . Around the same period of time, other groups of Normans were setting forth all...
TED Talks
Nandan Nilekani: Ideas for India's future
Nandan Nilekani, the visionary co-founder of outsourcing pioneer Infosys, explains four brands of ideas that will determine whether India can continue its recent breakneck progress.
Crash Course
Family Obligations: Crash Course Philosophy
Today we are investigating our moral obligations to our parents and our families. Do we owe our parents anything as adults? Would it be a good idea to license parents? We’ll explore these questions as well as the ethics of care, and some...
TED Talks
Anupam Mishra: The ancient ingenuity of water harvesting
With wisdom and wit, Anupam Mishra talks about the amazing feats of engineering built centuries ago by the people of India's Golden Desert to harvest water. These ancient aqueducts and stepwells are still used today -- and are often...
TED Talks
Jamila Lyiscott: 3 ways to speak English
Jamila Lyiscott is a “tri-tongued orator;” in her powerful spoken-word essay “Broken English,” she celebrates — and challenges — the three distinct flavors of English she speaks with her friends, in the classroom and with her parents. As...
TED Talks
David Peterson: Why language is humanity's greatest invention
Civilization rests upon the existence of language, says language creator David Peterson. In a talk that's equal parts passionate and hilarious, he shows how studying, preserving and inventing new languages helps us understand our...
SciShow
Are Colors Real?
The sky is blue, but according to whom? Could the rules of our language affect the way we perceive color?
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Where do new words come from? - Marcel Danesi
There are over 170,000 words currently in use in the English language. Yet every year, about a thousand new words are added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Where do they come from, and how do they make it into our everyday lives?...
Crash Course
The Yellow Wallpaper: Crash Course Literature 407
Today on Crash Course Literature, John Green teaches you about The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper tells the story of a woman who is a prisoner in her own home, in the name of caring for her mental...
Crash Course
The Seven Years War Crash Course World History
In which John teaches you about the Seven Years War, which may have lasted nine years. Or as many as 23. It was a very confusing was. The Seven Years War was a global war, fought on five continents, which is kind of a lot. John focuses...
Crash Course
George Orwell's 1984, Part 2: Crash Course Literature 402
In which John Green continues discussing George Orwell's 1984. Today we're talking about what the novel 1984 has to say about what some have called today's surveillance society. We'll also look at the idea that language can be used as a...
Crash Course
Tea, Taxes, and The American Revolution Crash Course World History
In which John Green teaches you about the American Revolution and the American Revolutionary War, which it turns out were two different things. John goes over the issues and events that precipitated rebellion in Britain's American...
Crash Course
The Quakers, the Dutch, and the Ladies Crash Course US History
In which John Green teaches you about some of the colonies that were not in Virginia or Massachussetts. Old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it, I can say; ENGLISH people just liked it better that way, and when the...
Crash Course
1984 by George Orwell, Part 1: Crash Course Literature 401
In which John Green returns for a dystopian new season of Crash Course Literature! We're starting with George Orwell's classic look at the totalitarian state that could be in post-war England. Winston Smith is under the eye of Big...
Crash Course
Medieval Europe: Crash Course European History
Our European history is going to start around 1500 with the Renaissance, but believe it or not, that is not the actual beginning of history in the continent. So, today, we're going to teach you the broad outlines of the so-called Middle...
TED Talks
Jay Walker: The world's English mania
Jay Walker explains why two billion people around the world are trying to learn English. He shares photos and spine-tingling audio of Chinese students rehearsing English -- "the world's second language" -- by the thousands.
TED Talks
TED: 4 reasons to learn a new language | John McWhorter
English is fast becoming the world's universal language, and instant translation technology is improving every year. So why bother learning a foreign language? Linguist and Columbia professor John McWhorter shares four alluring benefits...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The benefits of a bilingual brain - Mia Nacamulli
It's obvious that knowing more than one language can make certain things easier - like traveling or watching movies without subtitles. But are there other advantages to having a bilingual (or multilingual) brain? Mia Nacamulli details...
Crash Course
The Black Legend, Native Americans, and Spaniards Crash Course US History
In which John Green kicks off Crash Course US History! Why, you may ask, are we covering US History, and not more World History, or the history of some other country, or the very specific history of your home region? Well, the reasons...
TED-Ed
Who decides what's in the dictionary? | Ilan Stavans
While the concept of a dictionary dates back to ancient civilizations, the first English dictionary wasn't published until 1604. In the centuries that followed, many more dictionaries were written by individual authors who chose what to...
TED Talks
Rajesh Rao: A Rosetta Stone for a lost language
Rajesh Rao is fascinated by "the mother of all crossword puzzles": how to decipher the 4000-year-old Indus script. He's enlisting modern computation to try to read this lost language, the key to understanding this ancient civilization.
Curated Video
Tea, Taxes, and The American Revolution: Crash Course World History
In which John Green teaches you about the American Revolution and the American Revolutionary War, which it turns out were two different things. John goes over the issues and events that precipitated rebellion in Britain's American...