TED Talks
TED: How to build a thriving music scene in your city | Elizabeth Cawein
How does a city become known as a "music city"? Publicist Elizabeth Cawein explains how thriving music scenes make cities healthier and happier and shares ideas for bolstering your local music scene -- and showing off your city's talent...
TED Talks
Jaime Lerner: A song of the city
Jaime Lerner reinvented urban space in his native Curitiba, Brazil. Along the way, he changed the way city planners worldwide see what's possible in the metropolitan landscape.
TED Talks
Robert Hammond: Building a park in the sky
New York was planning to tear down the High Line, an abandoned elevated railroad in Manhattan, when Robert Hammond and a few friends suggested: Why not make it a park? He shares how it happened in this tale of local cultural activism.
TED Talks
Robert Thurman: We can be Buddhas
In our hyperlinked world, we can know anything, anytime. And this mass enlightenment, says Buddhist scholar Bob Thurman, is our first step toward Buddha nature.
TED Talks
Carlo Ratti: Architecture that senses and responds
With his team at SENSEable City Lab, MIT's Carlo Ratti makes cool things by sensing the data we create. He pulls from passive data sets -- like the calls we make, the garbage we throw away -- to create surprising visualizations of city...
TED Talks
TED: A practical way to help the homeless find work and safety | Richard J. Berry
When Richard J. Berry, the mayor of Albuquerque, saw a man on a street corner holding a cardboard sign that read "Want a job," he decided to take him (and others in his situation) up on it. He and his staff started a citywide initiative...
TED Talks
Rives: A mockingbird remix of TED2006
Rives recaps the most memorable moments of TED2006 in the free-spirited rhyming verse of a fantastical mockingbird lullaby.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Can you solve the temple riddle? - Dennis E. Shasha
Your expedition finally stands at the heart of the ancient temple. But as you study the inscriptions in the darkness, two wisps of green smoke burst forth. The walls begin to shake. The giant sandglass begins flowing with less than an...
TED Talks
TED: A Republican mayor's plan to replace partisanship with policy | G.T. Bynum
Conventional wisdom says that to win an election, you need to play to your constituencies' basest, most divisive instincts. But as a candidate for mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, G.T. Bynum decided to skip the smear campaigns, tell voters what...
SciShow
SciShow Quiz Show: Weird Water Creatures & Spontaneous Combustion!
SciShow Quiz Show is back, with familiar faces Hank Green and Caitlin Hofmeister battling it out over questions on water, fire, and computer science!
TED Talks
TED: Refugees want empowerment, not handouts | Robert Hakiza
The prevailing image of where refugees live is of temporary camps in isolated areas -- but in reality, nearly 60 percent of them worldwide end up in urban areas. TED Fellow Robert Hakiza takes us inside the lives of urban refugees -- and...
Crash Course Kids
Big Changes in the Big Apple
Did you know that all living things change their environments? It's true. Beavers, deer, worms, and humans all change their environments. It just so happens that humans change our environments in big, obvious ways. In this episode,...
TED Talks
Steven Johnson: How the "ghost map" helped end a killer disease
Author Steven Johnson takes us on a 10-minute tour of The Ghost Map, his book about a cholera outbreak in 1854 London and the impact it had on science, cities and modern society.
TED Talks
Seth Godin: How to get your ideas to spread
In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than...
TED Talks
Dave Troy: Social maps that reveal a city's intersections — and separations
Every city has its neighborhoods, cliques and clubs, the hidden lines that join and divide people in the same town. What can we learn about cities by looking at what people share online? Starting with his own home town of Baltimore, Dave...
TED Talks
Noah Wilson-Rich: Every city needs healthy honey bees
Bees have been rapidly and mysteriously disappearing from rural areas, with grave implications for agriculture. But bees seem to flourish in urban environments -- and cities need their help, too. Noah Wilson-Rich suggests that urban...
TED Talks
TED: What happens when a city runs out of room for its dead | Alison Killing
If you want to go out and start your own cemetery in the uK, says Alison Killing, "you kind of can." She thinks a lot about where we die and are buried -- and in this talk, the architect and TED Fellow offers an eye-opening economic and...
TED Talks
TED: Insightful human portraits made from data | R. Luke DuBois
Artist R. Luke DuBois makes unique portraits of presidents, cities, himself and even Britney Spears using data and personality. In this talk, he shares nine projects -- from maps of the country built using information taken from millions...
TED Talks
TED: I love being a police officer, but we need reform | Melvin Russell
We've invested so much in police departments as protectors that we have forgotten what it means to serve our communities, says Baltimore Police officer Lt. Colonel Melvin Russell. It's led to coldness and callousness, and it's...
TED Talks
TED: How kids can help design cities | Mara Mintzer
Adults tend to think of kids as "future citizens" -- their ideas and opinions will matter someday, just not today. But kids make up a quarter of the population, so shouldn't they have a say in what the world they'll inherit will look...
TED Talks
TED: Why ordinary people need to understand power | Eric Liu
Far too many Americans are illiterate in power — what it is, how it operates and why some people have it. As a result, those few who do understand power wield disproportionate influence over everyone else. "We need to make civics sexy...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Harvey Milk's radical vision of equality - Lillian Faderman
Learn about the life and tragic death of gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay public official. -- By 1973, Harvey Milk had already been many things: naval officer, high school teacher, bit-part actor and...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The myth of Sisyphus - Alex Gendler
Sisyphus was both a clever ruler who made his city prosperous, and a devious tyrant who seduced his niece and killed visitors to show off his power. While his violation of the sacred hospitality tradition greatly angered the gods, it was...
SciShow
Why Do We Keep Planting Trees That Smell Like Semen?
What's that awful smell? Cat urine? Semen? Rancid butter? Possibly one of these gorgeous city trees?