TED Talks
Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster -- from scratch
It takes an entire civilization to build a toaster. Designer Thomas Thwaites found out the hard way, by attempting to build one from scratch: mining ore for steel, deriving plastic from oil ... it's frankly amazing he got as far as he...
TED Talks
Kristina Gjerde: Making law on the high seas
Kristina Gjerde studies the law of the high seas -- the 64 percent of our ocean that isn't protected by any national law at all. Gorgeous photos show the hidden worlds that Gjerde and other lawyers are working to protect from trawling...
TED Talks
Herman Narula: The transformative power of video games
A full third of the world's population -- 2.6 billion people -- play video games, plugging into massive networks of interaction that have opened up opportunities well beyond entertainment. In a talk about the future of the medium,...
SciShow
No Hips, No Problem: Better Hip Replacements From Snakes
If you want to make a better hip replacement, who better to turn to than… a snake? While these hip-less creatures might seem like a weird choice for help with this particular issue, a major part of creating comfortable, long-lasting...
TED Talks
Zeynep Tufekci: Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win
Today, a single email can launch a worldwide movement. But as sociologist Zeynep Tufekci suggests, even though online activism is easy to grow, it often doesn't last. Why? She compares modern movements -- Gezi, Ukraine, Hong Kong -- to...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Can you solve the counterfeit coin riddle? - Jennifer Lu
You're the realm's greatest mathematician, but ever since you criticized the Emperor's tax laws, you've been locked in the dungeon. Luckily for you, one of the Emperor's governors has been convicted of paying his taxes with a counterfeit...
Bozeman Science
Electromagnetic Forces
In this video Paul Andersen explains how electromagnetic forces are exerted over all scales and dominate at the human scale. The magnitude of electromagnetic forces vary with the magnitude and motion of the electric charges involved.
TED Talks
TED: What you can do to prevent Alzheimer's | Lisa Genova
Alzheimer's doesn't have to be your brain's destiny, says neuroscientist and author of "Still Alice," Lisa Genova. She shares the latest science investigating the disease -- and some promising research on what each of us can do to build...
TED Talks
TED: How AI could compose a personalized soundtrack to your life | Pierre Barreau
Meet AIVA, an artificial intelligence that has been trained in the art of music composition by reading more than 30,000 of history's greatest scores. In a mesmerizing talk and demo, Pierre Barreau plays compositions created by AIVA and...
TED Talks
Janet Echelman: Taking imagination seriously
Janet Echelman found her true voice as an artist when her paints went missing -- which forced her to look to an unorthodox new art material. Now she makes billowing, flowing, building-sized sculpture with a surprisingly geeky edge. A...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How small are we in the scale of the universe? - Alex Hofeldt
In 1995, scientists pointed the Hubble Telescope at an area of the sky near the Big Dipper. The location was apparently empty, and the whole endeavor was risky _ what, if anything, was going to show up? But what came back was nothing...
MinuteEarth
The Great Acceleration
We’re in the middle of a rapid, unprecedented, and world-changing increase in the intensity and scale of human activity on this planet.
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
Aaron O'Connell: Making sense of a visible quantum object
Physicists are used to the idea that subatomic particles behave according to the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics, completely different to human-scale objects. In a breakthrough experiment, Aaron O'Connell has blurred that distinction...
TED Talks
Margaret Gould Stewart: How giant websites design for you (and a billion others, too)
Facebook's "like" and "share" buttons are seen 22 billion times a day, making them some of the most-viewed design elements ever created. Margaret Gould Stewart, Facebook's director of product design, outlines three rules for design at...
TED Talks
Catherine Mohr: The tradeoffs of building green
In a short, funny, data-packed talk at TED U, Catherine Mohr walks through all the geeky decisions she made when building a green new house -- looking at real energy numbers, not hype. What choices matter most? Not the ones you think.
TED Talks
George Smoot: The design of the universe
At Serious Play 2008, astrophysicist George Smoot shows stunning new images from deep-space surveys, and prods us to ponder how the cosmos -- with its giant webs of dark matter and mysterious gaping voids -- got built this way.
TED Talks
Josette Sheeran: Ending hunger now
Josette Sheeran, the head of the UN's World Food Program, talks about why, in a world with enough food for everyone, people still go hungry, still die of starvation, still use food as a weapon of war. Her vision: "Food is one issue that...
TED Talks
Del Harvey: Protecting Twitter users (sometimes from themselves)
Del Harvey heads up Twitter’s Trust and Safety Team, and she thinks all day about how to prevent worst-case scenarios -- abuse, trolling, stalking -- while giving voice to people around the globe. With deadpan humor, she offers a window...
TED Talks
TED: A flying camera ... on a leash | Sergei Lupashin
Let's admit it: aerial photo drones and UAVs are a little creepy, and they come with big regulatory and safety problems. But aerial photos can be a powerful way of telling the truth about the world: the size of a protest, the spread of...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What if there were 1 trillion more trees? | Jean-François Bastin
Today humanity produces more than 1,400 tons of carbon every minute. To combat climate change, we need to reduce fossil fuel emissions, and draw down excess CO2 to restore the balance of greenhouse gases. Like all plants, trees consume...
TED Talks
TED: The billion-dollar pollution solution humanity needs right now | Stacy Kauk
Could the same mechanism used to accelerate vaccine development work for spurring solutions to the climate crisis? Sustainability innovator Stacy Kauk introduces the billion-dollar fund to supercharge the carbon removal market, which...
TED Talks
Will Marshall: Tiny satellites show us the Earth as it changes in near-real-time
Satellite imaging has revolutionized our knowledge of the Earth, with detailed images of nearly every street corner readily available online. But Planet Labs' Will Marshall says we can do better and go faster -- by getting smaller. He...