TED Talks
James B. Glattfelder: Who controls the world?
James Glattfelder studies complexity: how an interconnected system -- say, a swarm of birds -- is more than the sum of its parts. And complexity theory, it turns out, can reveal a lot about how the world economy works. Glattfelder shares...
3Blue1Brown
Visualizing the Riemann hypothesis and analytic continuation
What is the Riemann zeta function? What is analytic continuation? This video lays out the complex analysis needed to answer these questions.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why is it so hard to cure ALS? - Fernando Vieira
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also called motor neuron disease and Lou Gehrig's Disease, affects about two out of every 100,000 people worldwide. When a person has ALS, their motor neurons - the cells responsible for all voluntary...
SciShow
What's Stopping the James Webb Space Telescope?
The James Webb Space Telescope is the most complex telescope we’ve ever sent into space. But, Webb is not, in fact, in space… yet.
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Cell membranes are way more complicated than you think - Nazzy Pakpour
Cell membranes are structures of contradictions. These oily films are hundreds of times thinner than a strand of spider silk, yet strong enough to protect the delicate contents of life: the cell's watery cytoplasm, genetic material,...
SciShow
A ‘New Neptune’ With Water, and Cyanide in Space
SciShow Space News shares the latest developments from around the universe, including the discovery of water vapor on a new “exo-Neptune,” and cyanide found in the clouds where stars are born.
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How interpreters juggle two languages at once - Ewandro Magalhaes
Language is complex, and when abstract or nuanced concepts get lost in translation, the consequences may be catastrophic. Given the complexities of language and cultural exchange, how do these epic miscommunications not happen all the...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: You are your microbes - Jessica Green and Karen Guillemin
From the microbes in our stomachs to the ones on our teeth, we are homes to millions of unique and diverse communities which help our bodies function. Jessica Green and Karen Guillemin emphasize the importance of understanding the many...
TED Talks
TED: How CRISPR lets us edit our DNA | Jennifer Doudna
Geneticist Jennifer Doudna co-invented a groundbreaking new technology for editing genes, called CRISPR-Cas9. The tool allows scientists to make precise edits to DNA strands, which could lead to treatments for genetic diseases ... but...
SciShow
The Mystery of the Biggest Genomes
3 billion base pairs is a pretty typical genome size for organisms like us, but there are a few plants and animals with genomes so huge they completely blow this number out of the water.
SciShow
A Brief History of Life: Survival Is Hard
It turns out life may have gotten its start pretty early in Earth's history, and while the first couple billion years saw several important developments, the period was still dominated by very simple life forms. This is our first...
TED Talks
TED: Cracking Stuxnet, a 21st-century cyber weapon | Ralph Langner
When first discovered in 2010, the Stuxnet computer worm posed a baffling puzzle. Beyond its sophistication loomed a more troubling mystery: its purpose. Ralph Langner and team helped crack the code that revealed this digital warhead's...
Crash Course
Indian Pantheons: Crash Course World Mythology
In which Mike Rugnetta continues our unit on pantheons with the complex Indian pantheon, focusing on stories that were written in Sanskrit. We start with a violent creation story. We talk about the concept of Brahman, and the...
Bozeman Science
Eukarya
Paul Andersen discusses the defining characteristics of the members of Domain Eukarya. He starts with a brief description of the phylogeny of life on earth. He then discusses the major characteristics of eukaryotic cells. He explains how...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Making sense of how life fits together - Bobbi Seleski
From something as miniscule as a cell to the biosphere we all call home, living things fit together in numerous interesting ways. Bobbi Seleski catalogs biology from our body and beyond, tracking how unicellular organisms, tissues,...
TED Talks
TED: Is life really that complex? | Hannah Fry
Can an algorithm forecast the site of the next riot? In this accessible talk, mathematician Hannah Fry shows how complex social behavior can be analyzed and perhaps predicted through analogies to natural phenomena, like the patterns of a...
Bozeman Science
Essential Characteristics of Life
Paul Andersen describes three main characteristics of life that are conserved in all organisms on the planet. The universal genetic code, the central dogma of biology, and shared metabolic pathways give us details of the original...
SciShow
IDTIMWYTIM Organic
In the world of chemistry, an "organic" compound is often described as anything with carbon in it, and "organic chemistry" is the study of carbon compounds, but there is actually no single definition of what "organic" means in chemistry,...
SciShow
The Hamster That Saved Thousands of COVID Patients
Forget lab rats — meet the Chinese or striped-back hamster, an unassuming little rodent whose role in research over the years has led to breakthroughs in genetics, pharmaceutics and more!
Crash Course
Ecology: Crash Course History of Science
We’ve explored the origins of modern biology, the earth sciences, and even the sciences of outer space. Now it’s time to put these disciplines together. It's Ecology time!!!
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The evolution of the human eye - Joshua Harvey
The human eye is an amazing mechanism, able to detect anywhere from a few photons to a few quadrillion, or switch focus from the screen in front of you to the distant horizon in a third of a second. How did these complex structures...
SciShow
Do Psychologists Still Use Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?
You've probably seen the pyramidal diagram of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It's straightforward enough but, it might be a bit too subjective to really measure human needs.
Crash Course
Big History 1 Preview
n 10 episodes John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about, well, everything. It’s Big History! This course will take you on a whirlwind journey from the creation to the death of the universe and is based on the Big History...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How farming planted seeds for the Internet - Patricia Russac
What does farming have to do with invention and innovation? Permanent residences, division of labor, central government, and complex technologies--all essential for advancing civilizations--could not have been developed without the move...