Why can't laptop screens be viewed outside like e-readers can? It turns out, they use very different technology. But engineers are working on closing the gap.

Devastating vulnerabilities are hiding in the technology in programs, protocols, and hardware all around us. Most of the time, you can find ways to protect yourself.

Architecture can't ignore the realities of climate change. For time-tested solutions that perform under extreme conditions, designer Alyssa-Amor Gibbons says we should look to traditional buildings. Taking us to her home of Barbados,...

Today, we're going to discuss the critical role graphical user interfaces, or GUIs played in the adoption of computers. Before the mid 1980's the most common way people could interact with their devices was through command line...

If you've ever gone outside really early on a cold day in fall, you might have seen a thin layer of sparkly ice crystals covering everything! That ice is called frost, and it can only form if the weather is exactly...

Should we keep the outdoors out of hospitals? Ecologist and TED Fellow Jessica Green has found that mechanical ventilation does get rid of many types of microbes, but the wrong kinds: the ones left in the hospital are much more likely to...

How do your pupils work and why do some substances make them dilate?

So as you may have noticed from last episode, computers keep getting faster and faster, and by the start of the 1950s they had gotten so fast that it often took longer to manually load programs via punch cards than to actually run them!...

In which Mike Rugnetta teaches you about the hero of The Congo, Mwindo! Mike will tell you the stories of Mwindo's birth, his many deaths, and his evolution from a braggy superhuman baby to a wise, superhuman leader of his people. Along...

The border between our physical world and the digital information surrounding us has been getting thinner and thinner. Designer and engineer Jinha Lee wants to dissolve it altogether. As he demonstrates in this short, gasp-inducing talk,...

Devastating vulnerabilities are hiding in the technology in programs, protocols, and hardware all around us. Most of the time, you can find ways to protect yourself.

Hank Green presides over this battle between the other two hosts of Eons. They know dinosaurs, but how much do they really know about industrial grease?

Sometimes, against a uniform, bright background such as a clear sky or a blank computer screen, you might see things floating across your field of vision. What are these moving objects, and how are you seeing them? Michael Mauser...

In war we often see only the frontline stories of soldiers and combat. AT TEDGlobal 2010, Zainab Salbi tells powerful "backline" stories of women who keep everyday life going during conflicts, and calls for women to have a place at the...

Kevin Surace suggests we rethink basic construction materials -- such as the familiar wallboard -- to reduce the huge carbon footprint generated by the manufacturing and construction of our buildings. He introduces EcoRock, a clean,...

One afternoon, Kees Moeliker got a research opportunity few ornithologists would wish for: A flying duck slammed into his glass office building, died, and then ... what happened next would change his life. [Note: Contains graphic images...

If you’re not lounging on the beach on a hot summer day, why would you think to put on sunscreen? Well, you might need sunscreen more often than you think.

The International Ultraviolet Explorer was the first of its kind, giving us glimpses into phenomena like supernovas and Halley's comet. So why do we hear so little about it?"

Mumbling fantastical gibberish; devouring blocks of cheese in the nude; peeing in places that aren't toilets; and jumping out of windows. These are all things people have reportedly done while sleepwalking, a behavior that can be...

Quick, think of three words to describe yourself. TIME'S UP! What did you think of? Chances are you thought of descriptive words that we call Properties. In this episode of Crash Course Kids, Sabrina talks about how properties help us...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has destroyed so much -- including hundreds of schools, where the country's children were forging their futures -- but it has not stopped Ukrainians from pursuing knowledge and curiosity. In a deeply...

The Sun delivers more energy to Earth in one hour than all of humanity uses in an entire year. How can we make this power more accessible to everyone, everywhere? Solar designer Marjan van Aubel shows how she's turning everyday objects...

This video is about why words flip left & right (aka horizontally) in a mirror but not up & down (aka vertically). The answer has to do with specular reflection, mirrors being like windows into another world (alternate...

Water can dissolve more substances than anything else on earth...so why doesn't it dissolve everything away?