With acidic puddles, lava lakes, and one of the most important early hominid discoveries, the Danakil Depression is home to all of the extremes.

When a piece of cryptography is described as having "256-bit security", what exactly does that mean? Just how big is the number 2^256?

Astronomers are predicting that two stars are likely to merge and explode, and it may happen soon... on a cosmic timescale. Plus, scientists break up a meteorite and find the oldest solid matter ever discovered on earth.

During the warmer months, especially at night during the full moon, horseshoe crabs emerge from the sea to spawn. Waiting for them are teams of lab workers, who capture the horseshoe crabs by the hundreds of thousands, take them to labs,...

Stefan and Alexis are headed to Olympic National Park in Washington state to bring you some of the coolest geology stories there. This week, they explore why Mount Olympus should be taller than Mount Everest.

A ravenous swarm stretches as far as the eye can see. It has no leader or strategic plan; its only goals are to eat, breed, and move on. These are desert locusts— infamous for their capacity for destruction. But most of the time desert...

At the online University of the People, anyone with a high school diploma can take classes toward a degree in business administration or computer science — without standard tuition fees (though exams cost money). Founder Shai Reshef...

I sell dreams, and I peddle love to millions of people, says Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood's biggest star. In this charming, funny talk, Khan traces the arc of his life, showcases a few of his famous dance moves and shares hard-earned wisdom...

Cynthia Schneider looks at two international "American Idol"-style shows -- one in Afghanistan, and one in the United Arab Emirates -- and shows the surprising effect that these reality-TV competitions are creating in their societies.

You may not know it yet, but AJ Jacobs is probably your cousin (many, many times removed). Using genealogy websites, he's been following the unexpected links that make us all, however distantly, related. His goal: to throw the world's...

Expensive to build and often needing highly skilled engineers to maintain, artificial intelligence systems generally only pay off for large tech companies with vast amounts of data. But what if your local pizza shop could use AI to...

India's revolutionary Aravind Eye Care System has given sight to millions. Thulasiraj Ravilla looks at the ingenious approach that drives its treatment costs down and quality up, and why its methods should trigger a re-think of all human...

Pot Theft (A Radiolab Adventure)

* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. TED's Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated...

In 1986, a prospecting crew in southern Romania was looking for a good place to build a geothermal power plant, when they accidentally discovered one of the oddest caves of all

Today we’re going to go a little meta and talk about how computer science can support learning with educational technology. We here at Crash Course are big fans of interactive in-class learning and hands-on experiences, but we also...

They're cute, they're lovable, and judging by the 26 billion views on over 2 million YouTube videos of them, one thing is certain: cats are very entertaining. But their strange feline behaviors, both amusing and baffling, leave many of...

We've all heard that robots are going to take our jobs -- but what can we do about it? Innovation expert David Lee says that we should start designing jobs that unlock our hidden talents and passions -- the things we spend our weekends...

You can aspire to great things in life, but how about in death? Could you be one of the world's greatest fossils many years from now? To ensure being found by a future paleontologist, you'll need to die in a highly specific way (think...

Bitcoin and other blockchain technologies, like NFTs, work a lot like reindeer mating.

Data mining recently made big news with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but it is not just for ads and politics. It can help doctors spot fatal infections and it can even predict massacres in the Congo.

As the world's attention focuses on the perils of oil exploration, we present Richard Sears' talk from early February 2010. Sears, an expert in developing new energy resources, talks about our inevitable and necessary move away from oil....

Why do we often neglect big problems, like the financial crisis and climate change, until it's too late? Policy strategist Michele Wucker urges us to replace the myth of the "black swan" -- that rare, unforeseeable, unavoidable...

Crocodiles, horseshoe crabs and tuatara are animals that have persisted for millions of years, said to have gone unchanged since the days of the dinosaurs. But even the most ancient-looking organisms show us that evolution is always at...