SciShow
A Surprisingly Simple Secret to Supersonic Flight
Making a faster plane takes more than building better engines and structures. To go supersonic, engineers had to solve hundreds of problems -- including ditching one of the biggest assumptions in aerodynamics!
MinuteEarth
Four Reasons Our Brains Suck At Pandemics
Certain cognitive biases cause humans to make unsafe decisions in a pandemic, making a terrible disease even worse.
SciShow
4 Science Superlatives of 2014
SciShow News looks at some of the firsts, highests, and lowests of the year in science.
Crash Course
Biomedicine: Crash Course History of Science
The history of science up until the Cold War is often overshadowed by the Manhattan Project. But, today we are going to talk about advances in biomedicine, or healthcare based on a biological understanding of human bodies and diseases.
TED-Ed
The rise of the Ottoman Empire | Mostafa Minawi
In the late 13th century, Osman I established a small principality sandwiched between a crumbling Byzantine Empire and a weakened Sultanate of the Seljuk of Rum, in what is now Turkey. In just a few generations, this territory had...
TED Talks
TED: Inside Africa's thriving art scene | Touria el Glaoui
Art fair curator Touria el Glaoui is on a mission to showcase vital new art from African nations and the diaspora. She shares beautiful, inspiring, thrilling contemporary art that tells powerful stories of African identity and history --...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Zen k_ans: unsolvable enigmas designed to break your brain - Puqun Li
How do we explain the unexplainable? This question has inspired numerous myths, religious practices and scientific inquiries. But Zen Buddhists practicing throughout China from the 9th to 13th century asked a different question - why do...
TED Talks
Terry Moore: Why is 'x' the unknown?
Why is 'x' the symbol for an unknown? In this short and funny talk, Terry Moore gives the surprising answer.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The myth of Jason and the Argonauts - Iseult Gillespie
Hercules, the strongest man alive with a mighty heart to match. Orpheus, charmer of nature and master of music. Castor and Pollux, the twin tricksters. The Boreads, sons of the North Wind who could hurtle through the air. Brought...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Shunan Teng: The Chinese myth of the immortal white snake
The talented herbalist Xu Xian had just started his own medicine shop where he created remedies with the help of his wife, Bai Su Zhen. One day a monk named Fa Hai approached him, warning him that there was a demon in his house. The...
TED Talks
AJ Jacobs: The world's largest family reunion ... we're all invited!
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...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: A brief history of goths - Dan Adams
What do fans of atmospheric post-punk music have in common with ancient barbarians? Not much ... so why are both known as _goths"? Is it a weird coincidence _ or is there a deeper connection stretching across the centuries? Dan Adams...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The myth of the Sampo— an infinite source of fortune and greed | Hanna-Ilona Härmävaara
After a skirmish at sea and long days of being battered by waves, Väinämöinen— a powerful bard as old as the world itself— washed up on the shores of distant Pohjola. A cunning witch nursed him back to health but demanded a reward for...
Crash Course
The Cold War Crash Course US History
In which John Green teaches you about the Cold War, which was the decades long conflict between the USA and the USSR. The Cold War was called cold because of the lack of actual fighting, but this is inaccurate. There was plenty of...
TED Talks
TED: How to revitalize a neighborhood -- without gentrification | Bree Jones
The housing market can be vexing: while some neighborhoods get ridiculously expensive and price out longtime residents, others have historic homes sitting vacant without demand. Equitable housing developer and TED Fellow Bree Jones...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Leonora Neville: The princess who rewrote history
Anna Komnene, daughter of Byzantine emperor Alexios, spent the last decade of her life creating a 500-page history of her father's reign called "The Alexiad." As a princess writing about her own family, she had to balance her loyalty to...
TED Talks
Laurie Garrett: Lessons from the 1918 flu
In 2007, as the world worried about a possible avian flu epidemic, Laurie Garrett, author of "The Coming Plague," gave this powerful talk to a small TED University audience. Her insights from past pandemics are suddenly more relevant...
TED Talks
Kate Orff: Reviving New York's rivers -- with oysters!
Architect Kate Orff sees the oyster as an agent of urban change. Bundled into beds and sunk into city rivers, oysters slurp up pollution and make legendarily dirty waters clean -- thus driving even more innovation in "oyster-tecture."...
TED Talks
David Deutsch: A new way to explain explanation
For tens of thousands of years our ancestors understood the world through myths, and the pace of change was glacial. The rise of scientific understanding transformed the world within a few centuries. Why? Physicist David Deutsch proposes...
TED Talks
Sonia Shah: 3 reasons we still haven’t gotten rid of malaria
We’ve known how to cure malaria since the 1600s, so why does the disease still kill hundreds of thousands every year? It’s more than just a problem of medicine, says journalist Sonia Shah. A look into the history of malaria reveals three...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Birth of a nickname - John McWhorter
Where do nicknames come from? Why are Ellens called Nellie and Edwards Ned? It's all a big misunderstanding from the early days of the English language, a misunderstanding that even the word nickname itself derives from. John McWhorter...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: A day in the life of a Cossack warrior - Alex Gendler
Join the Cossack soldier Stepan as he tries to keep order in the battalion and help his people regain their independence. -- The year is 1676, and a treaty has officially ended hostilities between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and...
TED Talks
Michael Archer: How we'll resurrect the gastric brooding frog, the Tasmanian tiger
The gastric brooding frog lays its eggs just like any other frog -- then swallows them whole to incubate. That is, it did until it went extinct 30 years ago. Paleontologist Michael Archer makes a case to bring back the gastric brooding...
TED Talks
TED: Hunting for dinosaurs showed me our place in the universe | Kenneth Lacovara
What happens when you discover a dinosaur? Paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara details his unearthing of Dreadnoughtus -- a 77-million-year-old sauropod that was as tall as a two-story house and as heavy as a jumbo jet -- and considers how...