If you've watched the news or followed politics, chances are you've heard the term Orwellian thrown around in one context or another. But have you ever stopped to think about what it really means, or why it's used so often? Noah Tavlin...

Brit Garner is here to give Hank a breakdown of the May 2019 preview of the IPBES report, and Jessi from Animal Wonders brings along Kizmit, the African Crested Porcupine.

When writer Roxane Gay dubbed herself a "bad feminist," she was making a joke, acknowledging that she couldn't possibly live up to the demands for perfection of the feminist movement. But she's realized that the joke rang hollow. In a...

Zombies have a distinct lineage— one that traces back to Equatorial and Central Africa. For three centuries, African people were enslaved and brought to the Caribbean Islands. There, a religion known as vodou developed, along with the...

Scientists dissect the human scream for the first time, and also re-think what was thought to be the biggest dinosaur in the world.

About 2500 years ago, the writing of history as we understand it didn't really exist. Then, a man called Herodotus witnessed the Persian invasions of Greece and decided to find out why they happened. Mark Robinson investigates how the...

When we type, our brain is doing most of the work without our conscious input. So you can blame your brain for al teh typsos.

Psychologists are only just beginning to study that voice in your head that narrates your thoughts, and it's more complicated than you probably realize.

A fish with eerily human-like teeth was caught in a New Jersey lake. And scientists have learned to speak Bird!

From avian omens to the beginning of a new policy or the reign of a new politician, Jessica Oreck follows the flight path of the word inaugurate.

Ashraf Ghani's passionate and powerful 10-minute talk, emphasizing the necessity of both economic investment and design ingenuity to rebuild broken states, is followed by a conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson on the future of...

The recent generations have been bathed in connecting technology from birth, says futurist Don Tapscott, and as a result the world is transforming into one that is far more open and transparent. In this inspiring talk, he lists the four...

Is a universal translator possible in real life? We already have many programs that claim to be able to take a word, sentence, or entire book in one language and translate it into almost any other. The reality, however, is a bit more...

Chip Kidd doesn't judge books by their cover, he creates covers that embody the book -- and he does it with a wicked sense of humor. In this deeply felt (and deeply hilarious) talk, he shares the art and the philosophy behind his cover...

The term Kafkaesque has entered the vernacular to describe unnecessarily complicated and frustrating experiences, especially with bureaucracy. But does standing in a long line to fill out confusing paperwork really capture the richness...

Now known for its beauty and green hue, the stone jade was previously thought to espouse magical properties, such as kidney treatment. Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel explain the word's travels from 15th century to Spain to today (and why...

We can all play a role in the climate movement by tapping into our skills, resources and networks in ways that bring us satisfaction, says climate leader Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. She suggests drawing a Venn diagram to map these...

Metaphoric compounds, like the combination of the words wind and eye to represent a window, populated Norse and Old English. Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel describe how this love of metaphor created the word window.

SciShow Psych tackles the science behind what might be one of the most hated words in the English language: moist.

The term "gaslighting" has gained popularity in recent years, but what exactly does it entail?

What do Game of Thrones' Dothraki, Avatar's Na'vi, Star Trek's Klingon and LOTR's Elvish have in common? They are all fantasy constructed languages, or conlangs. Conlangs have all the delicious complexities of real languages: a high...

Daniel Tammet has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia -- meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world. The author of "Born on a Blue Day,"...

You know that feeling, when you know a word but it's just out of reach, stuck on the tip of your tongue? Well, why does it happen? And what can you do about it?

The word "theory" is used very differently in casual everyday life vs. in science. In science, the word "theory" means so much more! Learn about what a scientific theory is with The Amoeba Sisters and discover why a scientific theory...