TED Talks
TED: Does working hard really make you a good person? | Azim Shariff
Around the world, people who work hard are often seen as morally good -- even if they produce little to no results. Social psychologist Azim Shariff analyzes the roots of this belief and suggests a shift towards a more meaningful way to...
TED Talks
Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions
Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can -- and should -- be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a...
Crash Course
Metaethics: Crash Course Philosophy
We begin our unit on ethics with a look at metaethics. Hank explains three forms of moral realism – moral absolutism, and cultural relativism, including the difference between descriptive and normative cultural relativism – and moral...
TED Talks
Ellen 't Hoen: Pool medical patents, save lives
Patenting a new drug helps finance its immense cost to develop -- but that same patent can put advanced treatments out of reach for sick people in developing nations, at deadly cost. Ellen 't Hoen talks about an elegant, working solution...
TED Talks
TED: How to let go of being a "good" person -- and become a better person | Dolly Chugh
What if your attachment to being a "good" person is holding you back from actually becoming a better person? In this accessible talk, social psychologist Dolly Chugh explains the puzzling psychology of ethical behavior -- like why it's...
Crash Course
Assisted Death & the Value of Life: Crash Course Philosophy
As we wrap up Crash Course Philosophy, we’re using the things we’ve learned to explore big issues like the value of life. Today, we’re discussing abortions in cases of fetal abnormality, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. We will consider...
TED Talks
Sebastian Deterding: What your designs say about you
What does your chair say about what you value? Designer Sebastian Deterding shows how our visions of morality and "the good life" are reflected in the design of objects around us.
TED Talks
TED: 3 principles for creating safer AI | Stuart Russell
How can we harness the power of superintelligent AI while also preventing the catastrophe of robotic takeover? As we move closer toward creating all-knowing machines, AI pioneer Stuart Russell is working on something a bit different:...
TED Talks
David Pizarro: The strange politics of disgust
What does a disgusting image have to do with how you vote? Equipped with surveys and experiments, psychologist David Pizarro demonstrates a correlation between your sensitivity to disgusting cues -- a photo of feces, an unpleasant odor...
TED Talks
TED: How to have better political conversations | Robb Willer
Robb Willer studies the forces that unite and divide us. As a social psychologist, he researches how moral values -- typically a source of division -- can also be used to bring people together. Willer shares compelling insights on how we...
TED Talks
TED: Moral behavior in animals | Frans de Waal
What happens when two monkeys are paid unequally? Fairness, reciprocity, empathy, cooperation -- caring about the well-being of others seems like a very human trait. But Frans de Waal shares some surprising videos of behavioral tests, on...
TED Talks
TED: What are the most important moral problems of our time? | Will MacAskill
Of all the problems facing humanity, which should we focus on solving first? In a compelling talk about how to make the world better, moral philosopher Will MacAskill provides a framework for answering this question based on the...
Crash Course
Liberals, Conservatives, and Pride and Prejudice, Part 2: Crash Course Literature 412
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...
TED Talks
Samantha Power: A complicated hero in the war on dictatorship
Would you negotiate with someone you knew to be evil, to save lives? Samantha Power tells a story of a complicated hero, Sergio Vieira de Mello. This UN diplomat walked a thin moral line, negotiating with the world's worst dictators to...
SciShow
Why We Hate the Word 'Moist'
SciShow Psych tackles the science behind what might be one of the most hated words in the English language: moist.
Crash Course
Divine Command Theory: Crash Course Philosophy
As we venture into the world of ethics, there are a lot of different answers to the grounding problem for us to explore. One of the oldest and most popular is the divine command theory. But with age comes a long history of questions,...
TED Talks
TED: How reliable is your memory? | Elizabeth Loftus
* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus studies memories. More precisely, she studies false memories, when people either...
TED Talks
TED: It's time to reclaim religion | Sharon Brous
At a moment when the world seems to be spinning out of control, religion might feel irrelevant -- or like part of the problem. But Rabbi Sharon Brous believes we can reinvent religion to meet the needs of modern life. In this impassioned...
TED Talks
TED: What moral decisions should driverless cars make? | Iyad Rahwan
Should your driverless car kill you if it means saving five pedestrians? In this primer on the social dilemmas of driverless cars, Iyad Rahwan explores how the technology will challenge our morality and explains his work collecting data...
Crash Course
Aesthetics: Crash Course Philosophy
How do art and morality intersect? Today we look at an ethically questionable work of art and discuss R. G. Collingwood’s view that art is best when it helps us live better lives. We’ll go over Aristotle’s concept of catharsis and how it...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Alex Gendler: Why should you read "Crime and Punishment"?
What drives someone to kill in cold blood? What goes through the murderer's mind? And what kind of a society breeds such people? Over 150 years ago Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky took these questions up in what would become one of the...
TED Talks
TED: How to motivate people to do good for others | Erez Yoeli
How can we get people to do more good: to go to the polls, give to charity, conserve resources or just generally act better towards others? MIT research scientist Erez Yoeli shares a simple checklist for harnessing the power of...
TED Talks
TED: Gene editing can now change an entire species -- forever | Jennifer Kahn
CRISPR gene drives allow scientists to change sequences of DNA and guarantee that the resulting edited genetic trait is inherited by future generations, opening up the possibility of altering entire species forever. More than anything,...
Crash Course
Non-Human Animals: Crash Course Philosophy
Today we are taking all the things we have learned this year about doing philosophy and applying that to moral considerations regarding non-human animals. We’ll explore what philosophers like Peter Singer and Carl Cohen have to say about...