One could argue that slang words like ‘hangry,’ ‘defriend’ and ‘adorkable’ fill crucial meaning gaps in the English language, even if they don't appear in the dictionary. After all, who actually decides which words make it into those...

What does it mean to lead in this new age of employee activism? Megan Reitz offers a four-point crash course on what employees want from their organizations and how leaders can rise to the challenge of building proactive and productive...

Conductor Charles Hazlewood talks about the role of trust in musical leadership -- then shows how it works, as he conducts the Scottish Ensemble onstage. He also shares clips from two musical projects: the opera "U-Carmen eKhayelitsha"...

Nothing is original, says Kirby Ferguson, creator of Everything is a Remix. From Bob Dylan to Steve Jobs, he says our most celebrated creators borrow, steal and transform.

Is it okay if I totally trash your office? It's a question elyn Saks once asked her doctor, and it wasn't a joke. A legal scholar, in 2007 Saks came forward with her own story of schizophrenia, controlled by drugs and therapy but...

What happens when you don't sleep? And why do we need to do it anyways? Hank explains the science of sleep: the cause, the benefits, and who holds the record for going without it!

Keeping our data safe and secure is necessary in today's world, but a lot of the encryption we depend on has been in development for thousands of years!

Paul Andersen describes how cell communication is used in both single-celled and multicellular organisms. He starts by describing the symbiotic relationship between the bobtail squid and the bacteria Vibrio fisheri. He explains how...

The words we use to describe our emotions affect how we feel, says historian Tiffany Watt Smith, and they've often changed (sometimes very dramatically) in response to new cultural expectations and ideas. Take nostalgia, for instance:...

* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. As a black woman from a tough part of the Bronx who grew up to attain all the markers of academic prestige, Dena...

* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. In 2012, Colorado legalized cannabis and added to what has fast become a multibillion-dollar global industry for...

All it takes is a simple S to make most English words plural. But it hasn't always worked that way (and there are, of course, exceptions). John McWhorter looks back to the good old days when English was newly split from German -- and...

As we try to figure out the evolutionary trees for languages and species, we sometimes get led astray by similar but unrelated words and...

Do you ever talk to your dog? Do they ever talk back? Humans and dogs have a truly amazing relationship, developed along an evolutionary journey that goes back nearly 10,000 years. Do they really understand what we say, think, and feel?...

Some words just SOUND like the thing they refer to. But are these associations come from the specific culture we were raised in, or is there something more fundamental going on here?

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...

Wandering an old dark place at night sounds pretty scary, but you can take comfort in the fact that ghostly encounters can be explained by natural phenomena: no “super-” prefix necessary.

We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't, says poet and teacher Clint Smith. A short, powerful piece from the heart, about finding the courage to speak up...

For a crime he committed in his early twenties, the courts sentenced Marlon Peterson to 10 years in prison -- and, as he says, a lifetime of irrelevance. While behind bars, Peterson found redemption through a penpal mentorship program...

Freudian slips are actually an artifact of how your brain processes language!

Dialects are a part of how we communicate, but it also turns out that many animals have dialects depending on what part of the world they live in.

Deep inside Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library lies a 240 page tome. Recently carbon dated to around 1420, its pages feature looping handwriting and hand drawn images seemingly stolen from a dream. It is called the Voynich...

We thought that we taught dogs how to play fetch, but some adorable wolf pups may have just proved us wrong. Also some plants may be immortal?

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.