The European Renaissance may have started in Florence, but it pretty quickly moved out of Italy and spread the art, architecture, literature, and humanism across Europe to places like France, Spain, England, and the Low Countries....

Everyone's heard of Martin Luther King Jr. But do you know the woman Dr. King called "the architect of the civil rights movement," Septima Clark? The teacher of some of the generation's most legendary activists -- like Rosa Parks, Diane...

Ah, romantic love; beautiful and intoxicating, heart-breaking and soul-crushing... often all at the same time! If romantic love has a purpose, neither science nor psychology has discovered it yet _ but over the course of history, some of...

Nostalgia was once considered an illness confined to specific groups of people. Today, people all over the world report experiencing and enjoying nostalgia. But how does nostalgia work? And is it healthy? Clay Routledge details the way...

There are just six weeks left until the celestial odometer that is the Mayan calendar clicks over to the next b'akt'un, but in the meantime, scientists have been trying to solve the mystery behind the collapse of the Mayan civilization....

Even though we are still in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists are trying to figure out the ways in which this disease may stick with people in the long term - from lasting lung damage to potentially triggering...

We know a lot about dinosaurs but there's one question that has plagued paleontologists for decades: what color were they?

Seemingly pointless scientific research can lead to extraordinary discoveries, says physicist Suzie Sheehy. In a talk and tech demo, she shows how many of our modern technologies are tied to centuries-old, curiosity-driven experiments --...

Aaron Huey's effort to photograph poverty in America led him to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the struggle of the native Lakota people -- appalling, and largely ignored -- compelled him to refocus. Five years of work later,...

Congratulations! By being here, alive, you are one of history's winners -- the culmination of a success story four billion years in the making. The other 99 percent of species who have ever lived on earth are dead -- killed by fire,...

In the century-old statues that occupy Cape Town, Sethembile Mzesane didn't see anything that looked like her own reality. So she became a living sculpture herself, standing for hours on end in public spaces dressed in symbolic costumes,...

Bill Gates talks best (and worst) case scenarios for the coronavirus pandemic in the months ahead, explaining the challenges of reducing virus transmission, providing an update on promising vaccine candidates, offering his thoughts on...

Another economic reality is possible -- one that values community, sustainability and resiliency instead of profit by any means necessary. Niki Okuk shares her case for cooperative economics and a vision for how working-class people can...

Scientists estimate that about 2% of our DNA is from Neanderthals. In this week, the journal Cell showed what those Neanderthal DNA do to our genome.

Clint Smith teaches you about one of the most famous writers, orators, and advocates of the 19th century, Frederick Douglass. Douglass was born in slavery, escaped to the North, and became one of the most influential people of his time....

It was one of the strangest trials in Dutch history. The defendant in a 1947 case was an art forger who had counterfeited millions of dollars worth of paintings. But he wasn’t arguing his innocence— in fact, his life depended on proving...

Long before we had rocket scientists, the idea of spaceflight traveled from mind to mind across generations. With great visuals, TED Fellow and NASA economist Alexander MacDonald shows how 300 years of sci-fi tales -- from Edgar Allan...

Many of the world's biggest problems require asking questions of scientists -- but why should we believe what they say? Historian of science Naomi Oreskes thinks deeply about our relationship to belief and draws out three problems with...

From populist demagogues, we will learn the indispensability of democracy, says novelist elif Shafak. "From isolationists, we will learn the need for global solidarity. And from tribalists, we will learn the beauty of cosmopolitanism." A...

Observing the effects of microbes using satellites can give us all sorts of useful information about life on Earth ... and other planets too.

Although only boys were allowed at the Confucius Academy, what Zhu Yingtai wanted was to go to school. She begged her parents to let her attend dressed as a boy and, seeing her determination and clever disguises, they finally agreed— as...

For the pioneers of human aviation, one of the trickiest problems was figuring out how to steer the early craft. Then, the Wright Brothers changed everything by using bike parts and watching birds.

This week, researchers reveal the single most important influence on music since 1960. Also, turns out that sleepwalking and sleep terrors are genetically linked.

What makes a book a book? Is it just anything that stores and communicates information? Or does it have to do with paper, binding, font, ink, its weight in your hands, the smell of the pages? To answer these questions, Julie Dreyfuss...