This week Craig Benzine is going to talk about the structure of the U.S. court system and how exactly it manages to keep things moving smoothly. We’’ll talk about trial courts, district courts, appeals courts, circuit courts, state...

Nate Silver has data that answers big questions about race in politics. For instance, in the 2008 presidential race, did Obama's skin color actually keep him from getting votes in some parts of the country? Stats and myths collide in...

Have you ever found yourself seeing images right before falling asleep? You might be experiencing hypnagogia.

This week Craig is going to continue our discussion of due process. Technically, we started last week with the 4th amendment and search and seizure, but this week we’re going to look at the 5th and 6th amendments and how they ensure a...

In 2008, the global financial crisis decimated Latvia. As unemployment skyrocketed, the government slashed public funding and raised taxes, while providing relief to the wealthy and large businesses -- all without backlash or protest...

Like Egypt, Sumer, and Mesoamerica, ancient China represents a hydraulic civilization—one that maintained its population by diverting rivers to aid in irrigation—and one that developed writing thousands of years ago. Today, we’re going...

* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences.

In 2009, 11,341 untested rape kits -- some dating back to the 1980s -- were found in an abandoned warehouse...

Jeff Han shows off a cheap, scalable multi-touch and pressure-sensitive computer screen interface that may spell the end of point-and-click.

Around the world, hundreds of thousands of lost ancient sites lie buried and hidden from view. Satellite archaeologist Sarah Parcak is determined to find them before looters do. With the 2016 TED Prize, Parcak is building an online...

Forget the latest disease in the news: Cardiovascular disease kills more people than everything else combined -- and it’s mostly preventable. Dr. Dean Ornish explains how changing our eating habits can save lives.

It's called the "Flynn effect" -- the fact that each generation scores higher on an IQ test than the generation before it. Are we actually getting smarter, or just thinking differently? In this fast-paced spin through the cognitive...

Pianist Daria van den Bercken fell in love with the baroque keyboard music of George Frideric Handel. Now, she aims to ignite this passion in others. In this talk, she plays us through the emotional roller coaster of his music — while...

It's 1990. A prospective student has filed a complaint about Virginia Military institute's admissions policy that excludes women. The state argues that VMI's single sex education is an "important governmental objective" and that the...

Transporters and Quantum Teleportation

Paddy Ashdown believes we are living in a moment in history where power is changing in ways it never has before. In a spellbinding talk he outlines the three major global shifts that he sees coming.

Imagine you're fast asleep and then suddenly awake. You want to move but can't, as if someone is sitting on your chest. And you can't even scream! This is sleep paralysis, a creepy but common phenomenon caused by an overlap in REM sleep...

Bassam Tariq is a blogger, a filmmaker, and a halal butcher -- but one thread unites his work: His joy in the diversity, the humanness of our individual experiences. In this charming talk, he shares clips from his film "These Birds Walk"...

In this well-argued talk, Timothy Bartik makes the macro-economic case for preschool education -- and explains why you should be happy to invest in it, even if you don't have kids that age (or kids at all). The economic benefits of...

Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, posed this famous question: If you put a cat in a sealed box with a device that has a 50% chance of killing the cat in the next hour, what will be the state...

Since ancient Greece, humans have controlled populations via reproduction, retaining some traits and removing others. But in the 19th century, a new scientific movement dedicated to this endeavor emerged: eugenics. Scientists believed...

In this charming talk, artist Aparna Rao shows us her latest work: cool, cartoony sculptures (with neat robotic tricks underneath them) that play with your perception -- and crave your attention. Take a few minutes to simply be delighted.

Land thrives in Indigenous hands, and there are real, tangible ways you can help return what was stolen by colonizers from tribes across North America. Indigenous scholar Lindsey Schneider addresses the ill-gotten legacy of settler...

What would happen if we could generate power from our windowpanes? In this moving talk, entrepreneur Justin Hall-Tipping shows the materials that could make that possible, and how questioning our notion of 'normal' can lead to...

Most of us can probably think of a time when we were enjoying a video game and then suddenly...it's 2 am. And that may not be entirely your fault! Video games are designed with elements that suck you in and put you in a state of flow,...