TED Talks
Susan Lim: Transplant cells, not organs
Pioneering surgeon Susan Lim performed the first liver transplant in Asia. But a moral concern with transplants (where do donor livers come from ...) led her to look further, and to ask: Could we be transplanting cells, not whole organs?...
TED Talks
Sean Carroll: Distant time and the hint of a multiverse
Cosmologist Sean Carroll attacks -- in an entertaining and thought-provoking tour through the nature of time and the universe -- a deceptively simple question: Why does time exist at all? The potential answers point to a surprising view...
TED Talks
iO Tillett Wright: Fifty shades of gay
iO Tillett Wright has photographed 2,000 people who consider themselves somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum -- and asked many of them: Can you assign a percentage to how gay or straight you are? Most people, it turns out, consider themselves...
Crash Course
The Soviet Bloc Unwinds: Crash Course European History
In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, protests and unrest continued continued across Europe, and the Soviet Union was having increasing trouble holding its sphere of influence together. Today you'll learn about the labor strikes of...
SciShow
How To Make a Mutant Flu
Hank dishes out updates on the mutant flu virus and the James Webb Space Telescope, and gives us some new bits about new exoplanets, secret space planes, and a study that shows that music evolves according to Darwin's rules.
SciShow
Are We Overdue for a Megaquake?
If you live in the U.S. you may have heard that the Pacific Northwest is supposedly overdue for an earthquake of colossal, devastating proportions. If that’s true, how can we better understand the threat and be prepared for the day it...
TED Talks
Wajahat Ali: The case for having kids
The global fertility rate, or the number of children per woman, has halved over the last 50 years. What will having fewer babies mean for the future of humanity? In this funny, eye-opening talk, journalist (and self-described exhausted...
TED Talks
Brenda Laurel: Why not make video games for girls?
At TED in 1998, Brenda Laurel asks: Why are all the top-selling videogames aimed at little boys? She spent two years researching the world of girls (and shares amazing interviews and photos) to create a game that girls would love.
TED Talks
TED: How the US government spies on people who protest -- including you | Jennifer Granick
What's stopping the American government from recording your phone calls, reading your emails and monitoring your location? Very little, says surveillance and cybersecurity counsel Jennifer Granick. The government collects all kinds of...
TED Talks
TED: The beauty and complexity of finding common ground | Matt Trombley
How can we disagree with one another, respectfully and productively? In this thoughtful talk, team builder Matt Trombley reflects on "agonism" -- the tendency to take a rigid stance on issues -- and shares why finding aspects of...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The dark history of the Chinese Exclusion Act | Robert Chang
In 1882, the United States Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first federal law that restricted immigration based explicitly on nationality. In practice, the Act banned entry to all ethnically Chinese immigrants besides...
TED Talks
TED: The reporting system that sexual assault survivors want | Jessica Ladd
We don't have to live in a world where 99 percent of rapists get away with it, says TED Fellow Jessica Ladd. With Callisto, a new platform for college students to confidentially report sexual assault, Ladd is helping survivors get the...
TED Talks
Kelsey Leonard: Why lakes and rivers should have the same rights as humans
Water is essential to life. Yet in the eyes of the law, it remains largely unprotected -- leaving many communities without access to safe drinking water, says legal scholar Kelsey Leonard. In this powerful talk, she shows why granting...
TED Talks
Juan Enriquez: The life code that will reshape the future
Scientific discoveries, futurist Juan Enriquez notes, demand a shift in code, and our ability to thrive depends on our mastery of that code. Here, he applies this notion to the field of genomics.
TED Talks
Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity
Over the past few centuries, Western cultures have been very good at creating general prosperity for themselves. Historian Niall Ferguson asks: Why the West, and less so the rest? He suggests half a dozen big ideas from Western culture...
TED Talks
Steven Wise: Chimps have feelings and thoughts. They should also have rights
Chimpanzees are people too, you know. Ok, not exactly. But lawyer Steven Wise has spent the last 30 years working to change these animals' status from "things" to "persons." It's not a matter of legal semantics; as he describes in this...
Crash Course
Migration: Crash Course European History
Between 1840 and 1914, an estimated 40 million people left Europe. This is one of the most significant migrations in human history. So, who was leaving Europe? And why? Crash Course is on Patreon! You can support us directly by signing...
TED Talks
Priti Krishtel: Why are drug prices so high? Investigating the outdated US patent system
Between 2006 and 2016, the number of drug patents granted in the United States doubled -- but not because there was an explosion in invention or innovation. Drug companies have learned how to game the system, accumulating patents not for...
TED Talks
TED: Capitalism will eat democracy -- unless we speak up | Yanis Varoufakis
Have you wondered why politicians aren't what they used to be, why governments seem unable to solve real problems? economist Yanis Varoufakis, the former Minister of Finance for Greece, says that it's because you can be in politics today...
TED Talks
TED: Could this laser zap malaria? | Nathan Myhrvold
Nathan Myhrvold and team's latest inventions -- as brilliant as they are bold -- remind us that the world needs wild creativity to tackle big problems like malaria. And just as that idea sinks in, he rolls out a live demo of a new,...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Brian A. Pavlac: Ugly History: Witch Hunts
In the German town of Nördlingen in 1593, innkeeper Maria Höll found herself accused of witchcraft. She was arrested for questioning, and denied the charges. She insisted she wasn't a witch through 62 rounds of torture before her...
TED Talks
TED: A prediction for the future of Iran | Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses mathematical analysis to predict (very often correctly) such messy human events as war, political power shifts, Intifada ... After a crisp explanation of how he does it, he offers three predictions on the...
SciShow
SciShow Talk Show: Dr. Heiko Langner on Birds and Bioaccumulation
Crash Course Chemistry Consultant, Dr. Heiko Langner talks to Hank about lab safety, geochemical research, and cleaning up super fund sites. Afterward, Jessi Knudsen from Animal Wonders joins them with Zapper, the Alexandrian Parakeet....
SciShow
3 Ways to Save Earth from an Asteroid
Hank gives us the skinny on three plans NASA scientists have come up with to save Earth from an asteroid impact. Hopefully we'll never have to use any of them.