From Shakespeare's plays to modern TV dramas, the unscrupulous schemer for whom the ends always justify the means has become a familiar character type we love to hate. For centuries, we've had a single word to describe such characters:...

James Cameron's big-budget (and even bigger-grossing) films create unreal worlds all their own. In this personal talk, he reveals his childhood fascination with the fantastic -- from reading science fiction to deep-sea diving -- and how...

iPad storyteller Joe Sabia introduces us to Lothar Meggendorfer, who created a bold technology for storytelling: the pop-up book. Sabia shows how new technology has always helped us tell our own stories, from the walls of caves to his...

What would it be like to have a limitless memory? Can the meaning of life be found in an infinite library? Is time a labyrinth or a single moment? Jorge Luis Borges explored these questions of infinity in his many works. His body of...

Everyone knows the name Charles Darwin, but his lesser known frenemy, Alfred Russel Wallace, was developing a lot of the same ideas around the same time.

Around 750-1250 CE, the Islamic empire made incredible scientific advancements that still influence many fields of research today. What we know about some of the great minds of that time, as well as what we’ve learned from modern...

Have you ever sat in a doctor's office for hours, despite having an appointment? Has a hotel turned down your reservation because it's full? Have you been bumped off a flight that you paid for? These are all symptoms of overbooking, a...

As Alice wanders through the dreamscape of Looking-Glass Land in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There," she happens across a book written in an unintelligible language. Inside, she discovers an epic poem...

Why is J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy so compelling? How about The Matrix or Harry Potter? What makes these disparate worlds come alive are clear, consistent rules for how people, societies -- and even the laws of physics --...

Paul Andersen defines the major elements of feedback loops. The receptors and effectors both sense and respond to changes in their environment. The following examples are used to illustrate the importance of feedback loops in...

Did you know there's a way to make art using the light from the sun? It's called a cyanotype, and Mister Brown is going to tell you all about how they work, and how to make your own!

What IS Angular Momentum?

In 1815, Lord Byron proposed a challenge to a few literary guests he had gathered in his house on Lake Geneva: Who could write the most chilling ghost story? This question sparked an idea in eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley who, over the...

The Secret Social Life of Plants

Learn about the famous red hat wearing underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau!

In this video Paul Andersen answers this question about chromosomes. He explains how the base pairs of DNA form genes which are organized into the chromosomes of the overall genome.

What's better than slipping and sliding in your backyard on a hot summer day? It's so much fun! But, how does this fun happen? It has a little something to do with friction!

In 1958, after receiving a letter describing the deaths of songbirds due to the pesticide known as DDT, Rachel Carson began an investigation into the misuse of chemicals and their toll on nature. In 1962, she published her findings in...

The Five Stages of Grief show up in media everywhere from The Simpsons to Robot Chicken, but scientists have long been working on better ways to think about grief.

For the past 70 years, scientists in Britain have been studying thousands of children through their lives to find out why some end up happy and healthy while others struggle. It's the longest-running study of human development in the...

Elizabeth Gilbert was once an "unpublished diner waitress," devastated by rejection letters. And yet, in the wake of the success of 'Eat, Pray, Love,' she found herself identifying strongly with her former self. With beautiful insight,...

2,300 years ago, the rulers of Alexandria set out to fulfill a very audacious goal: to collect all the knowledge in the world under one roof. In its prime, the Library of Alexandria housed an unprecedented number of scrolls and attracted...

John Green teaches you about Virginia Woolf's modernist novel, To the Lighthouse. Let's face it. You're not reading To the Lighthouse for the plot. There's not a whole lot of plot, unless you count the tension about the beef stew. You're...

In which John Green examines JD Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye. John pulls out the old school literary criticism by examining the text itself rather than paying attention to the biographical or historical context of the novel...