TED Talks
Barry Schwartz: Our loss of wisdom
Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for "practical wisdom" as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help...
TED Talks
Paul Romer: Why the world needs charter cities
How can a struggling country break out of poverty if it's trapped in a system of bad rules? Economist Paul Romer unveils a bold idea: "charter cities," city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations. (Could Guantánamo...
TED Talks
Robert Thurman: Expanding your circle of compassion
It's hard to always show compassion -- even to the people we love, but Robert Thurman asks that we develop compassion for our enemies. He prescribes a seven-step meditation exercise to extend compassion beyond our inner circle.
TED Talks
Jinsop Lee: Design for all 5 senses
Good design looks great, yes -- but why shouldn't it also feel great, smell great and sound great? Designer Jinsop Lee (a TED Talent Search winner) shares his theory of 5-sense design, with a handy graph and a few examples. His hope: to...
TED Talks
Anant Agarwal: Why massive open online courses (still) matter
2013 was a year of hype for MOOCs (massive open online courses). Great big numbers and great big hopes were followed by some disappointing first results. But the head of edX, Anant Agarwal, makes the case that MOOCs still matter -- as a...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Can you solve the killer robo-ants riddle? - Dan Finkel
The good news is that your experimental robo-ants are a success. The bad news is that you accidentally gave them the ability to shoot deadly lasers . . . and you can't turn it off. Can you stop them from escaping their habitat before the...
TED Talks
Deb Roy: The birth of a word
MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language -- so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son's life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home video to watch...
TED Talks
TED: Let's rethink America's military strategy | Thomas Barnett
In this bracingly honest talk, international security strategist Thomas Barnett outlines a post-Cold War solution for the foundering U.S. military that is both sensible and breathtaking in its simplicity: Break it in two.
TED Talks
TED: Why you should define your fears instead of your goals | Tim Ferriss
The hard choices -- what we most fear doing, asking, saying -- are very often exactly what we need to do. How can we overcome self-paralysis and take action? Tim Ferriss encourages us to fully envision and write down our fears in detail,...
TED Talks
TED: How we rescued the "dancing bears" | Kartick Satyanarayan
Traditionally, the Kalandar community of India has survived by capturing sloth bear cubs and training them to "dance" through extreme cruelty. Kartick Satyanarayan has been able to put an end to this centuries-old practice, and in so...
TED Talks
TED: The interspecies internet? An idea in progress | Diana Reiss, Peter Gabriel, Neil Gershenfeld and Vint Cerf
Apes, dolphins and elephants are animals with remarkable communication skills. Could the internet be expanded to include sentient species like them? A new and developing idea from a panel of four great thinkers -- dolphin researcher...
TED Talks
TED: Why we will rely on robots | Rodney Brooks
Scaremongers play on the idea that robots will simply replace people on the job. In fact, they can become our essential collaborators, freeing us up to spend time on less mundane and mechanical challenges. Rodney Brooks points out how...
TED Talks
TED: Inside an Antarctic time machine | Lee Hotz
Science columnist Lee Hotz describes a remarkable project at WAIS Divide, Antarctica, where a hardy team are drilling into ten-thousand-year-old ice to extract vital data on our changing climate.
SciShow
Will the Opportunity Rover Survive This Dust Storm?
The global dust storm on Mars is threatening the Opportunity rover and the wind on Venus might be changing the length of its days.
SciShow
The First Robot Swarm, and Evolution's Misfit
Hank shares the nuts-and-bolts of the world’s first robot swarm, and explains what the creepy, cute and extinct animal known as Hallucigenia can teach us about evolution.
Crash Course Kids
What's My Property
What exactly can we tell about an unknown substance by it's properties. We already know that a substance is matter that’s made of one kind of atom or molecule, and that has specific properties and that some substances are elements, which...
TED Talks
Albert-László Barabási: The real relationship between your age and your chance of success
Backed by mathematical analysis, network theorist Albert-László Barabási explores the hidden mechanisms that drive success -- no matter your field -- and uncovers an intriguing connection between your age and your chance of making it big.
PBS
Should the First Mars Mission Be All Women?
Okay, going to Mars is going to be expensive. Not only that, but who we choose to pick on that trip also needs to have the statistically lowest chance of perishing. So it might be the case that our best scenario is all female crew!
TED Talks
Karen Armstrong: My wish: The Charter for Compassion
People want to be religious, says scholar Karen Armstrong; we should help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help build a Charter for Compassion -- to restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious...
TED Talks
Jay Walker: My library of human imagination
Jay Walker, curator of the Library of Human Imagination, conducts a surprising show-and-tell session highlighting a few of the intriguing artifacts that backdropped the 2008 TED stage.
TED Talks
Odes to vice and consequences - Felix Dennis
* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Media big shot Felix Dennis roars his fiery, funny, sometimes racy original poetry, revisiting haunting memories...
TED Talks
Michael Shermer: The pattern behind self-deception
Michael Shermer says the human tendency to believe strange things -- from alien abductions to dowsing rods -- boils down to two of the brain's most basic, hard-wired survival skills. He explains what they are, and how they get us into...
TED Talks
Scott Summit: Beautiful artificial limbs
Prosthetics can't replicate the look and feel of lost limbs but they can carry a lot of personality. Designer Scott Summit shows 3D-printed, individually designed prosthetic legs that are unabashedly artificial and completely personal --...
TED Talks
Ramsey Musallam: 3 rules to spark learning
It took a life-threatening condition to jolt chemistry teacher Ramsey Musallam out of ten years of "pseudo-teaching" to understand the true role of the educator: to cultivate curiosity. In a fun and personal talk, Musallam gives 3 rules...