TED Talks
TED: Iran and Israel: Peace is possible | Trita Parsi
Iran and Israel: two nations with tense relations that seem existentially at odds. But for all their antagonistic rhetoric, there is a recent hidden history of collaboration, even friendship. In an informative talk, Trita Parsi shows how...
Crash Course
African Pantheons and the Orishas: Crash Course World Mythology
So, today we're talking about African Pantheons. Now, you might say, that's ridiculous. Africa isn't a single place with a single pantheon, and we'd be fools to try and cover all that in an eleven minute video. You'd be right. Instead...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: A brief history of Spanish | Ilan Stavans
Beginning in the third century BCE, the Romans conquered the Iberian peninsula. This period gave rise to several regional languages in the area that's now Spain, including Castilian, Catalan, and Galician. One of these would become...
PBS
How Much Information is in the Universe?
Billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, each with .... rather a lot of particles in them. And then there's dark matter, black holes, planets, and the particles and radiation in between the stars and galaxies. But.... is the...
SciShow
What We Can Learn from 5 Times Rivers Ran Backward
Usually, you can count on a river to flow in one direction, but some things can make it reverse course. Aside from being weird and surprising, these river reversals can often reflect geological changes and have long-lasting impacts on...
TED Talks
TED: Bio-lab on a microchip | Frederick Balagadde
Drugs alone can't stop disease in sub-Saharan Africa: We need diagnostic tools to match. TED Senior Fellow Frederick Balagadde shows how we can multiply the power and availability of an unwieldy, expensive diagnostic lab -- by...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How does an atom-smashing particle accelerator work? - Don Lincoln
An atom smasher, or particle accelerator, collides atomic nuclei together at extremely high energies, using engineering that exploits incredibly cold temperatures, very low air pressure, and hyperbolically fast speeds. Don Lincoln...
TED Talks
Laura Boushnak: For these women, reading is a daring act
In some parts of the world, half of the women lack basic reading and writing skills. The reasons vary, but in many cases, literacy isn't valued by fathers, husbands, even mothers. Photographer and TED Fellow Laura Boushnak traveled to...
Crash Course
What are the Patterns of Border Conflicts? Crash Course Geography
Today, we’re going to take a closer look at borders and the stories they tell. When we look at a map, the shapes we’re seeing can seem so permanent, but a map is just a snapshot of the Earth at a particular time, and by looking a...
PBS
How to See Black Holes + Kugelblitz Challenge Answer
Quasars, X-ray Binaries and Supermassive voids at the center of our galaxies .... black holes take many forms. In this episode Matt tells us what these different types of black holes are and how scientists are using VLBI, Very Long...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why isn’t the Netherlands underwater?
In January 1953, a tidal surge shook the North Sea. The titanic waves flooded the Dutch coastline, killing almost 2,000 people. 54 years later, a similar storm threatened the region. But this time, they were ready. This was thanks to a...
Crash Course
The Oort Cloud
Now that we’re done with the planets, asteroid belt, and comets, we’re heading to the outskirts of the solar system. Out past Neptune are vast reservoirs of icy bodies that can become comets if they get poked into the inner solar system....
SciShow
Archeology from Space: Mapping Tombs with Satellites
Sometimes, ancient ruins can be a little out of the way, but with some creativity, we can use satellites for those hard to reach areas.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The imaginary king who changed the real world
In 1165, copies of a strange letter began to circulate throughout Europe. It spoke of a fantastical realm, containing the Tower of Babel and the Fountain of Youth— all ruled over by the letter’s mysterious author: Prester John. Who was...
SciShow
The Real Mayan Apocalypse
There are just six weeks left until the celestial odometer that is the Mayan calendar clicks over to the next b'akt'un, but in the meantime, scientists have been trying to solve the mystery behind the collapse of the Mayan civilization....
PBS
White Holes
Lurking in the depths of the mathematics of Einstein's general relativity is an object even stranger than the mysterious black hole. In fact it's the black hole's mirror twin, the white hole. Some even think that these could be the...
TED Talks
TED: The Axis of Evil Middle East Comedy Tour | Jamil Abu-Wardeh
Jamil Abu-Wardeh jump-started the comedy scene in the Arab world by founding the Axis of Evil Middle East Comedy Tour, which brings standup comedians to laughing audiences all over the region. He's found that, by respecting the "three...
TED Talks
Rose M. Mutiso: How to bring affordable, sustainable electricity to Africa
Energy poverty, or the lack of access to electricity and other basic energy services, affects nearly two-thirds of Sub-Saharan Africa. As the region's population continues to increase, so will the need to build a new energy system to...
3Blue1Brown
Rediscovering Euler's formula with a mug (not that Euler's formula) - Part 4 of 4
A classic puzzle in graph theory, the "Utilities problem", a description of why it is unsolvable on a plane, and how it becomes solvable on surfaces with a different topology.
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The great brain debate - Ted Altschuler
Throughout history, scientists have proposed conflicting ideas on how the brain carries out functions like perception, memory, and movement. Is each of these tasks carried out by a specific area of the brain? Or do multiple areas work...
SciShow
This Melon Builds a Whole Ecosystem in the Desert
The nara melon is as juicy as any other, so how is it able to grow in the hyper-arid Namib desert?
PBS
Escape The Kugelblitz Challenge
In the last episode Matt discussed how the Penrose Diagram enabled you to map how black holes affect Space Time. In this episode you can use that knowledge to stop an all-too-real threat to our planet. Aliens are trying to destroy the...
TED Talks
Tali Sharot: The optimism bias
Are we born to be optimistic, rather than realistic? Tali Sharot shares new research that suggests our brains are wired to look on the bright side -- and how that can be both dangerous and beneficial.