Robert Gupta, violinist with the LA Philharmonic, talks about a violin lesson he once gave to a brilliant, schizophrenic musician -- and what he learned. Called back onstage later, Gupta plays his own transcription of the prelude from...

At the turn of the 20th century, scientists thought that insects were nothing more than tiny reflex machines. But Charles Henry Turner, who was possibly America’s first Black entomologist, ran some groundbreaking animal behavior studies...

Did you know that Schizophrenia and Multiple Personality Disorder aren't the same thing? Did you know that we don't call it Multiple Personality Disorder anymore? In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank takes us down the...

How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been erased, cut up, written on and painted over? With a powerful particle accelerator, of course! Ancient books curator William Noel tells the fascinating story behind the...

India has the second largest population of any country in the world -- yet it has only 50 decent bookstores, says publisher Chiki Sarkar. So she asked herself: How do we get more people reading books? Find out how Sarkar is tapping into...

How much more damage do we have to endure before we realize that it's cheaper to save this planet than to ruin it? asks engineer and investor John Doerr. In conversation with Countdown cofounder Lindsay Levin, Doerr and systems innovator...

In 2002, investigative journalist and TED Fellow Will Potter took a break from his regular beat, writing about shootings and murders for the Chicago Tribune. He went to help a local group campaigning against animal testing: "I thought it...

In which Stan Muller subs for John Green and teaches you about energy and humanity. Today we discuss the ideas put forth by Alfred Crosby in his book, Children of the Sun. Historically, almost all of the energy that humans use has been...

My friend Eric Schulze, awesome science guy and leader of Thirst DC helps me understand how genes and DNA write the book of life, and how reading that book has helped us learn that everything on Earth is descended from a common ancestor....

In which John Green concludes teaching you about Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. You'll learn about the historical contexts of Things Fall Apart, including 19th century colonization and 20th century decolonization. We're going to...

The European Renaissance may have started in Florence, but it pretty quickly moved out of Italy and spread the art, architecture, literature, and humanism across Europe to places like France, Spain, England, and the Low Countries....

"Confidence is the necessary spark before everything that follows," says educator and activist Brittany Packnett. In an inspiring talk, she shares three ways to crack the code of confidence -- and her dream for a world where...

What makes a book a book? Is it just anything that stores and communicates information? Or does it have to do with paper, binding, font, ink, its weight in your hands, the smell of the pages? To answer these questions, Julie Dreyfuss...

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here... Inscribed above the Gate of Hell, this prophecy sets into motion an epic journey for salvation. Written over 10 years, Dante Alighieri's three-part narrative poem "Divine Comedy" is both an...

Thousands of languages thrive across the globe, yet modern speech technology -- with all of its benefits -- supports just over a hundred. Computational linguist Kalika Bali dreams of a day when technology acts as a bridge instead of a...

In 1775, General George Washington received a poem from one of colonial America's most famous writers. Its verses praised the burgeoning revolution, invoking the goddess of their new nation to aid the general's cause. But this ode to...

How Long Can You Balance a Pencil

This is it! The final episode of CC Literature season 4 is a deeper look at Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Today we'll explore the novel's take on materialism, and we'll talk about whether the novel has a liberal or conservative...

Mister Brown teaches Squeaks all about engineering to help him solve a problem he is having!



K-2 Next Generation Science

Standards

Science and En
gineering Practices:
Asking Questions and Defining...

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...

Were you the favorite child, the wild child or the middle child? Jeffrey Kluger explores the profound life-long bond between brothers and sisters, and the influence of birth order, favoritism and sibling rivalry.

Offering a vision of Afghanistan that goes beyond what's often depicted in the media, President Ashraf Ghani shares his thoughts on peacemaking, the true cost of war, the nation's COVID-19 response strategy and the sweeping economic and...

Over a hundred years after his creator was laid to rest, Dracula lives on as the most famous vampire in history. But this Transylvanian noble _ neither the first fictional vampire, nor the most popular of his time _ may have remained...

In the uS, the press has a right to publish secret information the public needs to know, protected by the First Amendment. Government surveillance has made it increasingly more dangerous for whistleblowers, the source of virtually every...