Hard work, resilience and grit lead to success, right? This narrative pervades the way we think, says economist Darrick Hamilton, but the truth is that our chances at economic security have less to do with what we do and more to do with...

It's the most famous prediction of perhaps the most famous genius of our time ... Stephen Hawking's theory of Hawking Radiation.

Do Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Jules Verne, Philip K. Dick, Hugo Gernsback, Robert Heinlein, or Isaac Asimov hold a candle to H.G. Wells when it comes to correctly predicting the future of science via science fiction? And why does...

The pandemic forced the world to work together like never before and, with unprecedented speed, bore a new age of health and medical innovation. Physician-scientist Daniel Kraft explains how breakthroughs and advancements like...

Thanks to Google Making and Science for supporting this series, and to Sean Carroll for collaborating on it!



This video is about why there's no such thing as cause and effect at the level of fundamental particle...

This Nobel Prize season, dive into the world of the super small for physics and chemistry. It's where the nanocars roam and phase transitions get really weird.

How do companies like SpaceX make sudden breakthroughs on decades-old challenges? Emerging tech expert Antoine Gourévitch explains how deep tech -- a new approach to innovation that merges science, engineering and design thinking -- is...

A historic number of Latinx voters participated in the 2020 US presidential election, including a record number of young people casting their ballots for the first time. Civic leader María Teresa Kumar takes a look at the issues closest...

Biologist Dan Gibson edits and programs DNA, just like coders program a computer. But his "code" creates life, giving scientists the power to convert digital information into biological material like proteins and vaccines. Now he's on to...

The SETI Institute's Jill Tarter makes her TED Prize wish: to accelerate our search for cosmic company. Using a growing array of radio telescopes, she and her team listen for patterns that may be a sign of intelligence elsewhere in the...

economic growth is the defining challenge of our time; without it, political and social instability rises, human progress stagnates and societies grow dimmer. But, says economist Dambisa Moyo, dogmatic capitalism isn't creating the...

Inventor, entrepreneur and visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why, by the 2020s, we will have reverse-engineered the human brain and nanobots will be operating your consciousness.

Over the years, scientists have made a lot of predictions about how Earth's climate is changing, but they don't just pull those predictions from thin air.

Natsai Audrey Chieza is a designer on a mission -- to reduce pollution in the fashion industry while creating amazing new things to wear. In her lab, she noticed that the bacteria Streptomyces coelicolor makes a striking red-purple...

China is a huge laboratory of innovation, says retail expert Angela Wang, and in this lab, everything takes place on people's phones. Five hundred million Chinese consumers -- the equivalent of the combined populations of the uS, uK and...

We all know that when we make decisions in groups, they don't always go right -- and sometimes they go very wrong. How can groups make good decisions? With his colleague Dan Ariely, neuroscientist Mariano Sigman has been inquiring into...

Humans are great at creating, and solving, problems. Hank talks with Gina McCarthy about the biggest public health problem we face today: climate change. Gina McCarthy is the Director of C-CHANGE (Center for Climate, Health and the...

Under the sea, untold wonders await in the form of untapped medicinal potential. Chemist Sam Afoullouss dives into the science behind natural remedies, explaining why the ocean's great (and still largely unexplored) biodiversity is ideal...

What is the blockchain? If you don't know, you should; if you do, chances are you still need some clarification on how it actually works. Don Tapscott is here to help, demystifying this world-changing, trust-building technology which, he...

We're living in a golden era of innovation, says entrepreneur Ashwini Anburajan -- but venture capital hasn't evolved to keep up, and startups aren't getting the funding they need to grow. In this quick talk, she shares the story of how...

We are living through the tech-enabled unraveling of full-time employment itself, says anthropologist Mary L. Gray. As the pandemic exposes and accelerates the shift to on-demand online labor, Gray takes us inside the jobs being created...

For intersex people -- those born with sex characteristics outside the traditional definitions of female and male -- the stakes to appear "normal" are high. Drawing on her personal experience, Susannah Temko reveals the shame, prejudice...

Our universe started with the Big Bang, but how will it end? Explore cosmologists’ three possible scenarios: the Big Crunch, the Big Freeze and the Big Rip. -- We know about our universe’s past: the Big Bang theory predicts that all...

Hank remembers Back to the Future and tells us about his favorite word combination--lasers and fusion.