TED Talks
TED: Is war between China and the US inevitable? | Graham Allison
Taking lessons from a historical pattern called "Thucydides's Trap," political scientist Graham Allison shows why a rising China and a dominant United States could be headed towards a violent collision no one wants -- and how we can...
Crash Course
Lord of the Flies: Crash Course Literature 305
This week, John i s talking about one of his least favorite novels, The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Lord of the Flies is a novel of ideas, and John doesn't agree with the central idea of the novel, which diminished his...
TED Talks
TED: Is humanity smart enough to survive itself? | Jeanette Winterson
With quick wit and sharp insight, writer Jeanette Winterson lays out a vision of the future where human and machine intelligence meld -- forming what she calls "alternative intelligence" -- and takes a philosophical look at our species,...
TED Talks
Aaron Huey: America's native prisoners of war
Aaron Huey's effort to photograph poverty in America led him to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the struggle of the native Lakota people -- appalling, and largely ignored -- compelled him to refocus. Five years of work later,...
TED Talks
Parag Khanna: Mapping the future of countries
Many people think the lines on the map no longer matter, but Parag Khanna says they do. Using maps of the past and present, he explains the root causes of border conflicts worldwide and proposes simple yet cunning solutions for each.
SciShow
How Encryption Keeps Your Data Safe
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!
TED Talks
Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex
Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems -- and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error. In this sparkling talk from TEDGlobal 2011, he asks us to embrace our randomness and...
TED Talks
Edward Tenner: Unintended consequences
Every new invention changes the world -- in ways both intentional and unexpected. Historian Edward Tenner tells stories that illustrate the under-appreciated gap between our ability to innovate and our ability to foresee the consequences.
SciShow
Alan Turing: Great Minds
Hank introduces us to that great mathematical mind, Alan Turing, who, as an openly gay man in the early 20th century faced brutal prejudice that eventually led to his suicide, despite being a genius war hero who helped the Allies defeat...
TED Talks
TED: Why the passport needs an upgrade | Karoli Hindriks
It's time to give paper passports a digital upgrade, says entrepreneur Karoli Hindriks. Looking to Estonia's technology-driven government for inspiration, she envisions a world where immigration is no longer hindered by bureaucracy and...
TED Talks
TED: How common threats can make common (political) ground | Jonathan Haidt
If an asteroid were headed for Earth, we'd all band together and figure out how to stop it, just like in the movies, right? And yet, when faced with major, data-supported, end-of-the-world problems in real life, too often we retreat into...
SciShow
Attack of the Super Bugs
Don't panic! But you should really know about antibiotic-resistant bacteria, aka super bugs. They're here, and they're doing very well, thank you. SciShow explains what they are, how they're getting around our best drugs, and what...
TED Talks
TED: An Iraq war movie crowd-sourced from soldiers | Deborah Scranton
Filmmaker Deborah Scranton talks about and shows clips from her documentary The War Tapes, which puts cameras in the hands of soldiers fighting in Iraq.
TED Talks
TED: How to end the pandemic -- and prepare for the next | Maria Van Kerkhove
We will get out of this pandemic, says Maria Van Kerkhove, the COVID-19 Technical Lead of the World Health Organization (WHO). The question is how fast -- and if we'll take what we've learned from the past two years and apply it to the...
TED Talks
TED: Can a divided America heal? | Jonathan Haidt
* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. How can the US recover after the negative, partisan presidential election of 2016? Social psychologist Jonathan...
Be Smart
The Physics of Space Battles
How scientifically accurate is your favorite sci-fi space battle?
SciShow
How Kodak Discovered Radioactive Rain
The Trinity Test had some unexpected consequences, including the creation of radioactive rain found hundreds of miles away from the test site.
SciShow
Einstein’s Greatest Mistake: SciShow Talk Show with David Bodanis
Hank gets to chat with David Bodanis: an author, and expert on Albert Einstein. They discuss Einstein's fame and his feelings about the aesthetics of science, as well as Bodanis' upcoming book: "Einstein's Greatest Mistake".
Crash Course
Biomedicine: Crash Course History of Science
The history of science up until the Cold War is often overshadowed by the Manhattan Project. But, today we are going to talk about advances in biomedicine, or healthcare based on a biological understanding of human bodies and diseases.
Crash Course
The Cold War Crash Course US History
In which John Green teaches you about the Cold War, which was the decades long conflict between the USA and the USSR. The Cold War was called cold because of the lack of actual fighting, but this is inaccurate. There was plenty of...
TED Talks
James Howard Kunstler: The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs
In James Howard Kunstler's view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about.
Crash Course
World War II Part 2 - The Homefront Crash Course US History
In which John Green teaches you about World War 2, as it was lived on the home front. You'll learn about how the war changed the country as a whole, and changed how Americans thought about their country. John talks about the government...
TED Talks
James Flynn: Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents'
It's called the "Flynn effect" -- the fact that each generation scores higher on an IQ test than the generation before it. Are we actually getting smarter, or just thinking differently? In this fast-paced spin through the cognitive...