TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Diagnosing a zombie: Brain and behavior - Tim Verstynen & Bradley Voytek
How are different brain stimulations involved with human behaviors--and how can observing a zombie help us understand the brain? In the second part of the Diagnosing Zombies series, two scientists continue to ponder the erratic behaviors...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why does your voice change as you get older? - Shaylin A. Schundler
The human voice is capable of incredible variety and range. As we age, our bodies undergo two major changes which explore that range. So how exactly does our voice box work, and what causes these shifts in speech? Shaylin A. Schundler...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What does the liver do? - Emma Bryce
There's a factory inside you that weighs about 1.4 kilograms and runs for 24 hours a day. It's your liver: the heaviest organ in your body, which simultaneously acts as a storehouse, a manufacturing hub, and a processing plant. Emma...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The power of creative constraints - Brandon Rodriguez
Imagine you were asked to invent something new. It could be whatever you want, made from anything you choose, in any shape or size. That kind of creative freedom sounds so liberating, doesn't it?
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Why do we cry? The three types of tears - Alex Gendler
Whether we cry during a sad movie, while chopping onions, or completely involuntarily, our eyes are constantly producing tears. Alex Gendler tracks a particularly watery day in the life of Iris (the iris) as she cycles through basal,...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How your digestive system works - Emma Bryce
Constantly churning inside of you, the digestive system performs a daily marvel: it transforms your food into the vital nutrients that sustain your body and ensure your survival. Emma Bryce traces food's nine-meter-long, 40-hour journey...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Secrets of the X chromosome - Robin Ball
The sequence of DNA that we inherit from our parents encodes directions for making our cells and giving us specific traits. Identical twins have the same DNA sequence, so how can one twin end up with a genetic disorder while the other...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Eye vs. camera - Michael Mauser
Your eyes don’t always capture the world exactly as a video camera would. But the eyes are remarkably efficient organs, the result of hundreds of millions of years of coevolution with our brains. Michael Mauser outlines the similarities...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Why the insect brain is so incredible - Anna St_ckl
The human brain is one of the most sophisticated organs in the world, a supercomputer made of billions of neurons that control all of our senses, thoughts, and actions. But there was something Charles Darwin found even more impressive:...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Sugar: Hiding in plain sight - Robert Lustig
While sugar is easy to spot in candy, soft drinks and ice cream, it also hides out in foods you might not expect -- including peanut butter, pasta sauce and even bologna! Robert Lustig decodes confusing labels and sugar's many aliases to...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What are stem cells? - Craig A. Kohn
Is personalized medicine for individual bodies in our future? Possibly -- with the use of stem cells, undifferentiated cells with the power to become any tissue in our bodies. Craig A. Kohn describes the role of these incredible,...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How do animals experience pain? - Robyn J. Crook
Humans know the surprising prick of a needle, the searing pain of a stubbed toe, and the throbbing of a toothache. We can identify many types of pain and have multiple ways of treating it - but what about other species? How do the...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Bird migration, a perilous journey - Alyssa Klavans
Nearly 200 species of songbirds migrate south for winter, some traveling up to 7,000 miles. No easy task, the annual journey is dangerous to birds due to landscape change -- so much so, that only half the birds that migrate south will...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: What can you learn from ancient skeletons? - Farnaz Khatibi
Ancient skeletons can tell us a great deal about the past, including the age, gender and even the social status of its former owner. But how can we know all of these details simply by examining some old, soil-caked bones? Farnaz Khatibi...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What makes muscles grow? - Jeffrey Siegel
We have over 600 muscles in our bodies that help bind us together, hold us up, and help us move. Your muscles also need your constant attention, because the way you treat them on a daily basis determines whether they will wither or grow....
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How does the immune system work? - Emma Bryce
Inside you, a daily battle is being waged and your immune system is at the frontline. Most of the time, you may not even notice it's there, but over the course of your life your immune system will guard you against hundreds of...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Is there a disease that makes us love cats? - Jaap de Roode
Today, about a third of the world's population is infected with a strange disease called toxoplasmosis - and most of them never even know it. And while the parasite can multiply in practically any host, it can only reproduce sexually in...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Self-assembly: The power of organizing the unorganized - Skylar Tibbits
From something as familiar as our bodies to things vast as the formation of galaxies, we can observe the process of self-assembly, or when unordered parts come together in an organized structure. Skylar Tibbits explains how we see...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How do vaccines work? - Kelwalin Dhanasarnsombut
The first ever vaccine was created when Edward Jenner, an English physician and scientist, successfully injected small amounts of a cowpox virus into a young boy to protect him from the related (and deadly) smallpox virus. But how does...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why do women have periods?
A handful of species on Earth share a seemingly mysterious trait: a menstrual cycle. We're one of the select few mammals on Earth that menstruate, and we also do it more than any other animal, even though it's a waste of nutrients, and...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Should we be looking for life elsewhere in the universe? - Aomawa Shields
As the number of _potentially habitable" planets that astronomers find continues to rise, we seem ever closer to answering the question, _Are we alone in the universe?" But should we be looking for life elsewhere? If we were to find life...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The science of attraction - Dawn Maslar
Romantic chemistry is all about warm, gooey feelings that gush from the deepest depths of the heart-right? Not quite. Actually, the real boss behind attraction is your brain, which runs through a very quick, very complex series of...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The surprising reason you feel awful when you're sick - Marco A. Sotomayor
It starts with a tickle in your throat that becomes a cough. Your muscles begin to ache, you grow irritable, and you lose your appetite. It's official: you've got the flu. It's logical to assume that this miserable medley of symptoms is...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Is DNA the future of data storage? - Leo Bear-McGuinness
In the event of a nuclear fallout, every piece of digital and written information could all be lost. Luckily, there is a way that all of human history could be recorded and safely stored beyond the civilization's end. And the key...