Can you imagine a future where wars are fought not with bombs and bullets but computer viruses and pacemaker shutdowns? Cyberware is unique in that it is not covered by existing legal framework and it often inspires more questions than...

Looking to get ahead in your career? Start by being respectful to your coworkers, says leadership researcher Christine Porath. In this science-backed talk, she shares surprising insights about the costs of rudeness and shows how little...

For ages I’ve been thinking about doing a video analyzing time travel in fiction and doing a comparison of different fictional time travels – some do use wormholes, some relativistic/faster than light travel with time dilation, some...

Is Your Brain Too Old For Video Games?

Comment nos émotions influencent nos décisions



Neuroscientiste Julie Grezes est motivée par l'idée que le cerveau humain est un « cerveau social » permettant aux êtres humains de communiquer et de collaborer avec de...

As we continue explore free will, today Hank considers a middle ground between hard determinism and libertarian free will: compatibilism. This view seeks to find ways that our internally motivated actions can be understood as free in a...

Over the years, people have come up with some truly awful apologies. From classic non-apologies, to evasive excuses, and flimsy corporate promises, it's all too easy to give a bad apology. Good apologies generally share certain elements,...

Reinforcement learning is particularly useful in situations where we want to train AIs to have certain skills we don’t fully understand ourselves. Unlike some of the techniques we’ve discussed so far, reinforcement learning generally...

The Montreal Protocol proved that the world could come together and take action on climate change. Thirty years after the world's most successful environmental treaty was signed, atmospheric scientist Sean Davis examines the world we...

There are some deeply ingrained stereotypes about Dungeons & Dragons, and those stereotypes usually begin and end with people shouting "NERD!!!" But the reality of the D&D universe is a whole lot more complex. Rather than being an escape...

Self-driving cars have been “coming soon” for years. What’s so hard about making a machine that drives itself!?

Mumbling fantastical gibberish; devouring blocks of cheese in the nude; peeing in places that aren't toilets; and jumping out of windows. These are all things people have reportedly done while sleepwalking, a behavior that can be...

Over the last decade, humanitarian organizations have digitized many of their systems, from registering refugees with biometric IDs to transporting cargo via drones. This has helped deliver aid around the world, but it's also brought new...

Every day, we move and operate within systems of power that other people have constructed. But we're often uncomfortable talking about power. Why? Eric Liu describes the six sources of power and explains how understanding them is key to...

This week we explore final ethical theory in this unit: Aristotle’s virtue theory. Hank explains the Golden Mean, and how it exists as the midpoint between vices of excess and deficiency. We’ll also discuss moral exemplars, and introduce...

Mounting his skinny steed, Don Quixote charges an army of giants. It is his duty to vanquish these behemoths in the name of his beloved lady, Dulcinea. There's only one problem: the giants are merely windmills. What is it about this tale...

What we call language is something more specific than communication. Language is about sharing what's in our minds: stories, opinions, questions, the past or future, imagined times or places, ideas. It is fundamentally open-ended, and...

There's a common misconception that if you like to meticulously organize your things, keep your hands clean, or plan out your weekend to the last detail, you might be OCD. In fact, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is a serious...

Sometimes our behavior and our beliefs just… don’t match. And a lot of times this mismatch can lead to stress. What’s happening in our brains when we’re inconsistent? Can we learn anything from this discomfort?

Paul Andersen explains how signal transduction pathways are used by cells to convert chemical messages to cellular action. Epinephrine is used as a sample messenger to trigger the release of glucose from cells in the liver. The...

Even when you know what you want to do, sometimes actually doing the thing is hard. Luckily, research suggests a few ways you can make it a little easier.

Can two people who make the same bad decision bear different levels of moral responsibility? Today, we try to address this question with the concept of moral luck. Hank explains the difference between moral and causal responsibility, and...

Soil doesn't seem like it's "alive", yet it functions like a living thing in lots of key ways.

Marco Tempest uses charming stagecraft to demo EDI, the multi-purpose robot designed to work very closely with humans. Less a magic trick than an intricately choreographed performance, Tempest shows off the robot’s sensing technology,...