We all have bias -- especially the unconscious kind -- and it's preventing us from doing our best work. Gone unchecked, bias can make employees feel resentful, frustrated and silenced, and it can even lead to outright discrimination and...

Fewer children in the United States are getting vaccinated. That’s bad news for those kids, and also for public health in general. Often, the response is to argue and debate and get angry at people who are we see as making terrible,...

Stigma around weight is pervasive in the United States. But as author and podcaster Aubrey Gordon outlines in her New York Times bestseller book, anti-fat bias is also counterproductive, exacerbating health disparities and interfering...

Fewer children in the United States are getting vaccinated. That's bad news for those kids, and also for public health in general. Often, the response is to argue and debate and get angry at people who are we see as making terrible,...

AI algorithms make important decisions about you all the time -- like how much you should pay for car insurance or whether or not you get that job interview. But what happens when these machines are built with human bias coded into their...

The math of backpropagation, the algorithm by which neural networks learn.

Neuroscientist Beau Lotto conducted an ambitious study with Cirque du Soleil on the emotion of awe and its psychological and behavioral benefits. In this talk and live performance, he shares some of their findings -- and stands back as...

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,...

The math of backpropagation, the algorithm by which neural networks learn.

Magicians have a handy ace up their sleeve: Your brain, and they're not the only ones who know how to use it.

Certain cognitive biases cause humans to make unsafe decisions in a pandemic, making a terrible disease even worse.

You do way more housework than your slob of a roommate, right? Well, turns out your roommate might think you're the slob. Our brains are just wired that way.

Even with public trust at an all-time low, Wikipedia continues to maintain people's confidence. How do they do it? Former CEO of Wikimedia Foundation Katherine Maher delves into the transparent, adaptable and community-building ways the...

The math of backpropagation, the algorithm by which neural networks learn.

Like all of us, economist Tyler Cowen loves a good story. But in this intriguing talk, he asks us to step away from thinking of our lives -- and our messy, complicated irrational world -- in terms of a simple narrative.

Scientists have discovered over 5,000 exoplanets in the last few decades, but where are the Exo-Earths?

Reading someone’s mind is an impossible task, but even just guessing at why they do the things they do is a lot harder than it might seem.

Many companies have offered diversity trainings to teach their employees about implicit biases. But what does that mean, and is it really helping anything?

The science of the multicolored dress.

This video is about how Russian physicist Aleksandr Fridman corrected Albert Einstein about the expansion of the universe. Einstein thought that general relativity implied that space had to be static and...

The feeling of security and the reality of security don't always match, says computer-security expert Bruce Schneier. In his talk, he explains why we spend billions addressing news story risks, like the "security theater" now playing at...

A fortuneteller's ability to read your future might seem magical, but those “psychic powers” have way more to do with psychology than the supernatural. Chapters cognitive biases 0:09 COLD READING 0:29 Barnum effect 1:28 subjective...

When you think of matrices as transforming space, rather than as grids of numbers, so much of linear algebra starts to make sense.

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,...