Imagine a country with abundant power -- oil and gas, sunshine, wind (and money) -- but missing one key essential for life: water. Infrastructure engineer Fahad Al-Attiya talks about the unexpected ways that the small Middle Eastern...

You use paper towels to dry your hands every day, but chances are, you're doing it wrong. In this enlightening and funny short talk, Joe Smith reveals the trick to perfect paper towel technique.

If you've ever wanted to get up-close and personal with the Moon, you might want to look up this Monday, because the moon will look larger and brighter than it has for decades.

When teachers and families work together, everyone wins, says education technology entrepreneur and TED Fellow Heejae Lim. She shines a light on an underutilized resource in US public education -- a family's love for their children --...

Hank talks about the Maya, and helps dispel some myths about their historic civilization, revealing how, ultimately, they were just like us: smart, flawed, and awesome.

Architecture is more than a clever arrangement of bricks. In this eloquent talk, Michael Murphy shows how he and his team look far beyond the blueprint when they're designing. Considering factors from airflow to light, theirs is a...

The origins of the cameras we use today were invented in the 19th century. Or were they? A millenia before, Arab scientist Alhazen was using the camera obscura to duplicate images, with Leonardo da Vinci following suit 500 years later...

Find out why more species live near the equator!

In order to truly understand differences among animal lifespans, we need to stop thinking about a specific number and start thinking about a distribution.

On their 20th birthday, identical twin astronauts volunteer for an experiment. Terra will remain on Earth, while Stella will board a spaceship. Stella's ship will travel to visit a star that is 10 light-years away, then return to Earth....

Every year the moon’s orbit gets a little bigger and it moves just a little farther away. Should we worry about the Moon breaking free?

They're millions of digits long, and it takes an army of mathematicians and machines to hunt them down -- what's not to love about monster primes? Adam Spencer, comedian and lifelong math geek, shares his passion for these odd numbers,...

What exactly is the carbon cycle? Nathaniel Manning provides a basic look into the cyclical relationship of carbon, humans and the environment.

This Amoeba Sisters video introduces science lab safety guidelines with memorable illustrations and an accompanying handout listed under "safety". This video includes the discussion of proper lab attire, importance of proper disposal of...

The researchers have found that almost all the illegal ivories are from recent poaching. Meanwhile, humans are not only animals that are farsighted!

What's the deal with that sharp pain in your side when you're trying to win that marathon? SciShow has the answers!

Many of the bewildering correlations in our world - like that between Beryllium-7 and the Asian monsoon - are a result of huge and unseen forces that tie them together.

SciShow Space shares the latest developments from around the universe, including news about the first material ever collected from outside the solar system, and a backyard astronomers’ guide to two upcoming planetary conjunctions.

Is it a bird? A plane? A supernova? No! It turned out to be something else! We've also now studied the weather on a gas giant exoplanet!

Can we solve the problem of ocean plastic pollution and end extreme poverty at the same time? That's the ambitious goal of The Plastic Bank: a worldwide chain of stores where everything from school tuition to cooking fuel and more is...

It might sound like a concept from science fiction, but artificial intelligence is already facilitating the development process behind some pharmaceuticals.

In 1978, Diane Hartley was writing her undergraduate architecture thesis when she made a shocking discovery. After weeks of poring over the Citicorp Center's building plans, she'd stumbled on an oversight that threatened to topple the...

History is written by the victors, as the saying goes -- but what would it look like if it was written by everyone? Journalist and TED Fellow Mikhail Zygar is on a mission to show us with Project1917, a "social network for dead people"...

There’s a huge seasonal difference in death rates that is propelled by a variety of factors including pathogen behavior and anatomical response to temperature changes.