Prolonged space travel plays a severe toll on the human body: microgravity impairs muscle and bone growth, and high doses of radiation cause irreversible mutations. As we seriously consider the human species becoming space-faring, a big...

Robots! They're everywhere. We use them for all kinds of things that we can't, or don't want to do. In this episode of Crash Course Kids, Sabrina shares a problem with us that can probably be solved by building an awesome robot. So let's...

A forest planted by humans, then left to nature's own devices, typically takes at least 100 years to mature. But what if we could make the process happen ten times faster? In this short talk, eco-entrepreneur (and TED Fellow) Shubhendu...

Gluten is a sticky protein composite found in cereal grains. Hank gives us some insight into the importance of gluten in history, as well as its impact on health in our own time.

We all have some displeasing memories from the past that still make our blood boil. Why are those grudges so hard to let go of?

The abrupt shift to online learning due to COVID-19 rocked the US education system, unearthing many of the inequities at its foundation. Educator Nora Flanagan says we can reframe this moment as an opportunity to fix what's long been...

What if we could grow delicious, nutrient-dense food, indoors anywhere in the world? Caleb Harper, director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, wants to change the food system by connecting growers with technology....

Sometimes you hear music and you automatically tap your foot, or do a little dance, or walk to the beat. What’s happening in your brain that makes your body move like that? Can music’s effects on movement or speech rewire your brain?

Phil Plait was on a Hubble Space Telescope team of astronomers who thought they may have captured the first direct photo of an exoplanet ever taken. But did the evidence actually support that? Follow along as Plait shows how science...

What is this strange looking stuff? Is this branch just covered in fungus!? Well, it’s not fungus...but fungus DOES have something to do with it!

Patients in comas might look like they’re sleeping, but there are pretty fascinating things happening inside of their heads.

Kiran Bir Sethi shows how her groundbreaking Riverside School in India teaches kids life's most valuable lesson: "I can." Watch her students take local issues into their own hands, lead other young people, even educate their parents.

From a new method of drug design to an antiviral agent for herpes, Gertrude Elion's works totally transformed the world of drug development.

A visual for derivatives which generalizes more nicely to topics beyond calculus. Thinking of a function as a transformation, the derivative measure how much that function locally stretches or squishes a given region.

How to think about matrix multiplication visually as successively applying two different linear transformations.

Hank introduces us to oxygen - the element that makes it possible for most animals to live, but which is simultaneously responsible for a lot of bad things going on in our bodies.

What if instead of going to the store to buy a new toilet brush, all you had to do was walk into your office and print one out? With recent advances in 3D printing, such a scenario might not be as far away as you think. Chapters PRINT...

Some species of bacteria have a wicked survival strategy: killing members of their own species or a closely-related one. There’s a lot we don’t know about it, but it's possible that someday we could potentially harness that knowledge to...

If you visit a museum with a collection of modern and contemporary art, you're likely to see works that sometimes elicit the response, _My cat could make that, so how is it art?" But is it true? Could anyone create one of Jackson...

The world needs clean water, and more and more, we're pulling it from the oceans, desalinating it, and drinking it. But what to do with the salty brine left behind? In this intriguing short talk, TED Fellow Damian Palin proposes an idea:...

Election infrastructure in the United States is crumbling, says technologist Tiana Epps-Johnson, and, even worse, election officials are increasingly being attacked simply for doing their jobs. How can the country rebuild trust in its...

Human migration is both inevitable and growing. What are we as a global community doing to address it? asks human rights lawyer Becca Heller, who believes that every refugee and migrant deserves a safe pathway to resettlement. Through...

Scientists sent the ingredients to brew beer and age whisky into space. What they got back was surprising.

Kakenya Ntaiya turned her dream of getting an education into a movement to empower vulnerable girls and bring an end to harmful traditional practices in Kenya. Meet two students at the Kakenya Center for Excellence, a school where girls...