TED Talks
TED: The emergent patterns of climate change | Gavin Schmidt
You can't understand climate change in pieces, says climate scientist Gavin Schmidt. It's the whole, or it's nothing. In this illuminating talk, he explains how he studies the big picture of climate change with mesmerizing models that...
TED Talks
James Flynn: Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents'
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...
SciShow
Alan Turing and The Imitation Game
The Imitation Game comes out tonight, but before its release, Hank got to talk with the film's director Morten Tyldum and screenwriter Graham Moore about bringing one of the world's most brilliant mathematicians to film.
TED Talks
Virginia Postrel: On glamour
In a timely talk, cultural critic Virginia Postrel muses on the true meaning, and the powerful uses, of glamour -- which she defines as any calculated, carefully polished image designed to impress and persuade.
TED Talks
Steve Silberman: The forgotten history of autism
Decades ago, few pediatricians had heard of autism. In 1975, 1 in 5,000 kids was estimated to have it. Today, 1 in 68 is on the autism spectrum. What caused this steep rise? Steve Silberman points to “a perfect storm of autism awareness”...
Crash Course
War and Civilization: Crash Course World History 205
In which John Green investigates war, and what exactly it may or may not be good for. Was war a result of human beings organizing into larger and more complex agricultural social orders, or did war maybe create agriculture and...
TED Talks
TED: How will we survive when the population hits 10 billion? | Charles C. Mann
By 2050, an estimated 10 billion people will live on earth. How are we going to provide everybody with basic needs while also avoiding the worst impacts of climate change? In a talk packed with wit and wisdom, science journalist Charles...
TED-Ed
Can you outsmart the apples and oranges fallacy? | Elizabeth Cox
It's 1997. The United States Senate has called a hearing about global warming. Some expert witnesses point out that past periods in Earth's history were warmer than the 20th century. Because such variations existed long before humans,...
Crash Course
Modern Thought and Culture in 1900: Crash Course European History
Europe was in transition politically and culturally at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, we're looking at the dawn of modern science, and the rise of Modernism in the arts, especially in music, dance, and visual arts. We'll look...
Crash Course
Why Human Ancestry Matters: Crash Course Big History 205
This week, Emily Graslie is teaching you about human ancestry and geneaology, how we got to be the species we are, and why that matters in our zoomed out look at Big History.
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The poet who painted with his words - Genevieve Emy
Among the great poets of literary history, certain names like Homer, Shakespeare and Whitman are instantly recognizable. However, there's an early 20th century great poet whose name you may not know: Guillaume Apollinaire. Genevieve Emy...
TED Talks
Robert Gordon: The death of innovation, the end of growth
The US economy has been expanding wildly for two centuries. Are we witnessing the end of growth? Economist Robert Gordon lays out 4 reasons US growth may be slowing, detailing factors like epidemic debt and growing inequality, which...
TED Talks
Alex Tabarrok: How ideas trump crises
The "dismal science" truly shines in this optimistic talk, as economist Alex Tabarrok argues free trade and globalization are shaping our once-divided world into a community of idea-sharing more healthy, happy and prosperous than...
TED Talks
Alison Killing: There’s a better way to die, and architecture can help
In this short, provocative talk, architect Alison Killing looks at buildings where death and dying happen -- cemeteries, hospitals, homes. The way we die is changing, and the way we build for dying ... well, maybe that should too. It's a...
Crash Course
Government Regulation: Crash Course Government and Politics
Today, we’re going to wrap up our discussion of economic policy by looking at government regulation. We're going to talk about the government's goals for the U.S. economy and the policies it employs to achieve those goals. Ever since the...
PBS
How Two Microbes Changed History
What if I told you that, more than two billion years ago, some tiny living thing started to live inside another living thing .... and never left? And now, the descendants of both of those things are in you?
TED Talks
TED: How we can design timeless cities for our collective future | Vishaan Chakrabarti
There's a creeping sameness in many of our newest urban buildings and streetscapes, says architect Vishaan Chakrabarti. And this physical homogeneity -- the result of regulations, mass production, safety issues and cost considerations,...
Crash Course
Electronic Computing: Crash Course Computer Science
So we ended last episode at the start of the 20th century with special purpose computing devices such as Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machines. But as the scale of human civilization continued to grow as did the demand for more...
Crash Course
Nonviolence and Peace Movements: Crash Course World History 228
In which John Green teaches you about nonviolence and peace movements in the 20th century. What is nonviolence? What is a peace movement? Well. traditionally, humans often resort to violence when they come into conflict. In the 20th...
TED-Ed
A brief history of divorce | Rod Phillips
Formally or informally, human societies across place and time have made rules to bind and dissolve couples. The stakes of who can obtain a divorce, and why, have always been high. Divorce is a battlefield for some of society's most...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: History vs. Vladimir Lenin - Alex Gendler
Vladimir Lenin overthrew Russian Czar Nicholas II and founded the Soviet Union, forever changing the course of Russian politics. But was he a hero who toppled an oppressive tyranny or a villain who replaced it with another? Alex Gendler...
Crash Course
Democracy, Authoritarian Capitalism, and China: Crash Course World History 230
In which John Green teaches you about the end of World History, and the end of the world as we know it, kind of. For the last hundred years or so, it seemed that one important ingredient for running an economically successful country was...
Crash Course
History of Media Literacy, Part 2: Crash Course Media Literacy
Jay continues our journey through the history of media literacy with the arrival of movies, television, and the other screens that now permeate our lives – along with some of the different approaches to media literacy that these...
SciShow
Blue Whales and The Smartphone Morality Experiment
Hank shares news about the biggest animal in the history of ever -- blue whales -- and explains the lessons learned in a new study of human morality, using smartphones.