SciShow
How Do We Know How Old the Earth Is?
In the wake of World War 2, Clair Patterson embarked on a scientific quest to find out how old the Earth really is. His hard work paid off, but it also revealed a modern danger.
TED Talks
TED: An alternative to the "midlife crisis" | Chip Conley
Midlife doesn't have to be a scary time, says entrepreneur Chip Conley. In this short yet profound talk, he takes inspiration from the natural world to reframe our 40s, 50s and 60s as a transitional stage that's full of grace and beauty...
SciShow
5 Scientists Too Smart for Their Time
You often hear of brilliant scientific discoveries that took decades to become recognized, often by scientists too smart for their time! Join Hank and look back on a few of our episodes about scientists who deserve a little more...
SciShow
10 Things We Didn't Know 100 Years Ago
In just the last century, we've made an astounding amount of scientific progress. And thanks to some of that progress, we can now share 10 of those discoveries with you in a video on the internet!
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: A brief history of cannibalism - Bill Schutt
Human cannibalism is a lot more common than you might think. Dive into its complex history and see its uses in medicine, cultural rituals and in times of survival. -- 15th century Europeans believed they had hit upon a miracle cure: a...
TED Talks
Thomas Piketty: New thoughts on capital in the twenty-first century
French economist Thomas Piketty caused a sensation in early 2014 with his book on a simple, brutal formula explaining economic inequality: r > g (meaning that return on capital is generally higher than economic growth). Here, he talks...
TED Talks
Clay Shirky: How social media can make history
While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing...
TED Talks
Craig Costello: In the war for information, will quantum computers defeat cryptographers?
In this glimpse into our technological future, cryptographer Craig Costello discusses the world-altering potential of quantum computers, which could shatter the limits set by today's machines -- and give code breakers a master key to the...
TED Talks
Mustafa Akyol: Faith versus tradition in Islam
Journalist Mustafa Akyol talks about the way that some local cultural practices (such as the seclusion of women) have become linked, in the popular mind, to the articles of faith of Islam. Has the world's general idea of the Islamic...
MinuteEarth
The Mystery of The Exploding Appendix
Rates of appendicitis vary around the world, likely due to the forces of modernization. **Appendix** - There are many other unforeseen health changes that seem to be related to the forces of modernization, like the increase in rates of...
SciShow
5 Great Minds to Celebrate in 2021 and Beyond | Compilation
To ring in 2021, we want to celebrate some of the greatest minds in science — folks who have contributed to our understanding of the world and in some cases saved lives along the way!
TED Talks
Russell Foster: Why do we sleep?
Russell Foster is a circadian neuroscientist: He studies the sleep cycles of the brain. And he asks: What do we know about sleep? Not a lot, it turns out, for something we do with one-third of our lives. In this talk, Foster shares three...
TED Talks
TED: Beethoven the businessman | José Bowen
The revolution that made music more marketable, more personal and easier to pirate began ... at the dawn of the 19th century. José Bowen outlines how new printing technology and an improved piano gave rise to the first music industry.
TED Talks
TED: What new power looks like | Jeremy Heimans
We can see the power of distributed, crowd-sourced business models every day — witness Uber, Kickstarter, Airbnb. But veteran online activist Jeremy Heimans asks: When does that kind of "new power" start to work in politics? His...
TED Talks
TED: How cognitive surplus will change the world | Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky looks at "cognitive surplus" -- the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy editing Wikipedia, posting to Ushahidi (and yes, making LOLcats), we're building a better, more cooperative world.
TED Talks
David Epstein: Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?
When you look at sporting achievements over the last decades, it seems like humans have gotten faster, better and stronger in nearly every way. Yet as David Epstein points out in this delightfully counter-intuitive talk, we might want to...
Curated Video
Globalization II - Good or Bad?: Crash Course World History
In which John asks whether globalization is a net positive for humanity. While the new global economy has created a lot of wealth, and lifted a lot of people out of poverty, it also has some effects that aren't so hot. Wealth disparity,...
TED Talks
The surprising decline in violence - Steven Pinker
* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may...
TED Talks
Samantha Power: A complicated hero in the war on dictatorship
Would you negotiate with someone you knew to be evil, to save lives? Samantha Power tells a story of a complicated hero, Sergio Vieira de Mello. This UN diplomat walked a thin moral line, negotiating with the world's worst dictators to...
TED Talks
Benjamin Wallace: The price of happiness
Can happiness be bought? To find out, author Benjamin Wallace sampled the world's most expensive products, including a bottle of 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc, 8 ounces of Kobe beef and the fabled (notorious) Kopi Luwak coffee. His critique...
TED Talks
Bill Joy: What I'm worried about, what I'm excited about
Technologist and futurist Bill Joy talks about several big worries for humanity -- and several big hopes in the fields of health, education and future tech.
TED Talks
Clay Shirky: Why SOPA is a bad idea
What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto -- a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.
TED Talks
Jim Holt: Why does the universe exist?
Why is there something instead of nothing? In other words: Why does the universe exist (and why are we in it)? Philosopher and writer Jim Holt follows this question toward three possible answers. Or four. Or none.
TED Talks
Lawrence Lessig: Laws that choke creativity
Lawrence Lessig, the Net’s most celebrated lawyer, cites John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights and the "ASCAP cartel" in his argument for reviving our creative culture.