About the importance of the National Parks Foundation.

Could smartphones and cameras be our most powerful weapons for social justice? Through her organization Witness, Yvette Alberdingk Thijm is developing strategies and technologies to help activists use video to protect and defend human...

After re-purposing CAPTCHA so each human-typed response helps digitize books, Luis von Ahn wondered how else to use small contributions by many on the Internet for greater good. In this talk, he shares how his ambitious new project,...

As cinema started to take off, things like "single viewer" devices weren't going to cut it as the medium advanced. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig talks to us about the Lumiere brothers, their invention of the...

Vincent Moon travels the world with a backpack and a camera, filming astonishing music and ritual the world rarely sees -- from a powerful Sufi ritual in Chechnya to an ayahuasca journey in Peru. He hopes his films can help people see...

Chika ezeanya-esiobu wants to see Africans unleash their suppressed creative and innovative energies by acknowledging the significance of their indigenous, authentic knowledge. In this powerful talk, she shares examples of untapped,...

SciShow takes you down the deepest hole in the world -- Russia's Kola Superdeep Borehole -- explaining who dug it and why, and what we learned about Earth in the process. Don't fall!

Damon Horowitz teaches philosophy through the Prison University Project, bringing college-level classes to inmates of San Quentin State Prison. In this powerful short talk, he tells the story of an encounter with right and wrong that...

In this short, image-packed talk, Marisa Fick-Jordan talks about how a village of traditional Zulu wire weavers built a worldwide market for their dazzling work.

Using robotics, laser rangefinders, GPS and smart feedback tools, Dennis Hong is building a car for drivers who are blind. It's not a "self-driving" car, he's careful to note, but a car in which a non-sighted driver can determine speed,...

Group projects have a reputation of being difficult at times. But there are ways to make sure everything from the project to meetings about the project go smoothly. In this episode, Evelyn chats about how we can make sure and avoid...

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik and, with it, an international space race. The United States and the Soviet Union rushed to declare dominance of space for 18 years, until the two countries agreed to a...

Where did all the lumps and bumps on buildings go? When did city architecture become so ... dull? Here to talk about why cities need inspiring architecture, designer Thomas Heatherwick offers a path out of the doldrums of urban monotony...

When it comes to our blood-producing stem cells, biologists have learned that bigger is not better. And a study has taken a look at the accomplishments and obstacles of an in-progress attempt to restore a large belt of degraded land...

When he learned of the threat that rising sea levels posed to his coastal hometown of Miami, Florida, eco-artist Xavier Cortada founded a movement around beautifully designed elevation markers highlighting the risk of flood damage. The...

In 1990, The Human Genome Project proposed to sequence the entire human genome over 15 years with $3 billion of public funds. Then, seven years before its scheduled completion, a private company called Celera announced that they could...

It's not a demo, more of a philosophical argument: Why did Sergey Brin and his team at Google want to build an eye-mounted camera/computer, codenamed Glass? Onstage at TED2013, Brin calls for a new way of seeing our relationship with our...

So, we've built a lot of things over the last year and we've become awesome engineers in the process. But now it's time for a real challenge. Let's build a city! That's right, you heard me! In this episode, Sabrina shows us what we need...

What makes you, you? Psychologists like to talk about our traits, or defined characteristics that make us who we are. But Brian Little is more interested in moments when we transcend those traits -- sometimes because our culture demands...

the Catlin Seaview Survey will be taking thousands of 360 degree panoramas of the Great Barrier Reef, not just for science, but so that every person with an internet connection can experience the world's largest structure...at least...

With the question “What is life?” addressed at the molecular level, humanity could finally cure all disease and live forever… Except, not really. It turns out we're complicated.

The story picks up where we left off last time, with Einstein writing the president of his new homeland, the United States, urging him to build a nuclear weapon before Hitler. This is the tale of the most destructive force humans have...

The year is 432 BCE. As dawn breaks over Athens, Pheidias is already late for work. He is the chief builder for the Parthenon — Athens' newest and largest temple— and when he arrives onsite, city officials accuse him of embezzling gold...

From launching probes to ferrying experiment racks to the ISS, the Space Shuttle Atlantis has left quite the legacy on space exploration and scientific research.