From a boy setting off small explosions in his living room to the creator of world-famous pyrotechnic events, multidisciplinary artist Cai Guo-Qiang has always been drawn to gunpowder. He gives a stunning tour of his work — including his...

Lily Yeh calls herself a barefoot artist: she travels the world with a suitcase full of art supplies, working with whoever wants to join her. In an inspiring talk, she shares the fruits of her collaborative art projects that bring color,...

Have you ever wondered why you look up and see a dark sky at night?

Science, Religion, and the Big Bang

In this captivating video narrated by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, viewers are taken on a journey through the history of the universe, from its explosive beginnings to the evolution of life on Earth. Through a mix of science and...

In 2023, a team of researchers proposed that our universe experienced not one, but TWO Big Bangs about a month apart from one another. The first for the stuff described by our Standard Model of Particle Physics. And the second for that...

Artist Laetitia Ky has a unique medium: using the hair on her head (and some wire), she creates incredible sculptures of objects, animals, people and more, promoting messages of bodily autonomy and self-acceptance. She shares how she...

If you could survive a trip to the very first moments of reality as we know it, what color would you see?

If you've spent enough time on the internet, you may have stumbled upon the fact that sharks are older than Polaris, aka the North Star. But are they really? It turns out the truth is a little more complicated.

Rhymes might seem frivolous, but there's scientific evidence for why we like them so much.

In astronomy we talk about billions of years like it’s no big deal. But how can we be sure about timescales so far beyond the capacity for human intuition? Our discovery of what we now call deep time is very recent - as recent as our...

Our universe started with the big bang. But only for the right definition of “our universe”. And of “started” for that matter. In fact, probably the Big Bang is nothing like what you were taught.

A hundred years ago we discovered...

Now that we have a primer on the aspects of the Big Bang Theory that we know definitely happened, let’s look further into what we don’t yet know, and how the theory could progress in the future. Since there is a discrepancy between...

Climate change doesn't care about ideological divides, says policy analyst and China expert Changhua Wu. Here's what she says the US can learn from the progress China has made on the clean energy revolution -- and why collaboration...

With data as his paintbrush, media artist Refik Anadol trains AI algorithms to visualize the disappearing wonders of nature. He gives a beautiful tour of his recent work -- imagery of artificial coral reefs, flowers, rainforests -- and...

Searching for a cure for rickets led to the discovery of vitamin D. Fortifying foods with vitamin D led to another disease, and a whole new way to view genetic disease in general.

Near the end of 2020, we got some puzzling but good news: COVID-19 fatality rates have been dropping. Here are a few factors that might help explain why we’re seeing this trend.

For one hundred days in 1994, the African country of Rwanda suffered a horrific campaign of mass murder. Neighbor turned against neighbor as violence engulfed the region, resulting in the deaths of over one-tenth of the country's...

When human rights advocate Manu Peni returned to Papua New Guinea from abroad, he built a home for himself using modern techniques -- and promptly learned a harsh lesson on how the newest ideas aren't always the best ideas. Peni calls...

Crop physiologist Guntur V. Subbarao and his team have developed an antibiotic-infused strain of wheat that naturally combats harmful, fertilizer-eating bacteria -- a "monster" contributor to climate change. Learn more about how this...

The post-World War II decades in Europe are sometimes called the Thirty Glorious Years. As those years wore on, tensions between East and West grew, and economic growth slowed or was unevenly distributed across Europe, protests and...

This week on Crash Course mythology, Mike is talking to you about floods. You may have heard the story of Noah and the Ark from the Bible, but that is not the only deluge story humans tell. It's a common thing across culture. You could...

Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that's only the first step in a...

Craig Venter and team make a historic announcement: they've created the first fully functioning, reproducing cell controlled by synthetic DNA. He explains how they did it and why the achievement marks the beginning of a new era for science.