TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: How Spontaneous Brain Activity Keeps You Alive
Nathan S. Jacobs takes us inside the always active, surprisingly spontaneous brain. [5:18]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: How Do Vaccines Work?
The first ever vaccine was created when Edward Jenner, an English physician and scientist, successfully injected small amounts of a cowpox virus into a young boy to protect him from the related (and deadly) smallpox virus. But how does...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: The Benefits of a Good Night's Sleep
Shai Marcu shows how sleep restructures your brain in a way that's crucial for how our memory works. [5:44]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: What We Know (And Don't Know) About Ebola
Alex Gendler details what Ebola is and why it's so hard to study. [4:01]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: What Happens When You Remove the Hippocampus?
When Henry Molaison cracked his skull in an accident, he began blacking out and having seizures. In an attempt to cure him, daredevil surgeon Dr. William Skoville removed his hippocampus. Luckily, the seizures did go away- but so did his...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: How Bees Help Plants Have Sex
Fernanda S. Valdovinos explains how intricate pollination networks work and how it can all change from one season to the next. [5:25]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: Population Pyramids: Powerful Predictors of the Future
Kim Preshoff explains how using a visual tool called a population pyramid helps policymakers and social scientists make sense of the statistics, using three different countries' pyramids as examples. [5:01]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: How We'll Stop Polio for Good
Aylward lays out the plan to continue the scientific miracle that ended polio in most of the world- and to snuff it out everywhere, forever. [23:00]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: Sugar: Hiding in Plain Sight
Robert Lustig decodes confusing labels and sugar's many aliases to help determine just how much of that sweet carbohydrate makes its way into our diets. [4:04]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: The Science of Spiciness
Rose Eveleth details the science and history behind spicy foods, giving insights into why some people continue to pay the painful price for a little spice. [3:54]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: What Percentage of Your Brain Do You Use?
Two thirds of the population believes a myth that has been propagated for over a century: that we use only 10% of our brains. Hardly! Our neuron-dense brains have evolved to use the least amount of energy while carrying the most...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: Should We Eat Bugs?
What's tasty, abundant and high in protein? Bugs! Although less common outside the tropics, entomophagy, the practice of eating bugs, was once extremely widespread throughout cultures. Insects hold promise for food security and the...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: How We Conquered the Deadly Smallpox Virus
For 10,000 years, humanity suffered from the scourge of smallpox. The virus killed almost a third of its victims within two weeks and left survivors horribly scarred. But Simona Zompi commends the brave souls- a Buddhist nun, a boy, a...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: Can We Eat to Starve Cancer?
William Li presents a new way to think about treating cancer and other diseases: anti-angiogenesis, preventing the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial first step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that cut off the supply...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: The Physics of Human Sperm vs. the Physics of the Sperm Whale
Traveling is extremely arduous for microscopic sperm- think of a human trying to swim in a pool made of other humans. We can compare the journey of a sperm to that of a sperm whale by calculating the Reynolds number, a prediction of how...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: Gravity and the Human Body
Our bodies function necessarily under the presence of gravity; how blood pumps, a sense of balance and bone growth are all due to life in a world where gravity is an inescapable reality. Armed with experiments from neuroscientists David...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: Protecting the Brain Against Concussion
Neuropsychologist Kim Gorgens makes the case for better protecting our brains against the risk of concussion- with a compelling pitch for putting helmets on kids. [9:22]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: The Terrors of Sleep Paralysis
Ami Angelowicz describes just how pervasive (but harmless) sleep paralysis is and introduces a cast of characters from sleep paralysis around the world. [4:49]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: What Is Dyslexia?
Kelli Sandman-Hurley urges us to think again about dyslexic brain function and to celebrate the neurodiversity of the human brain. [4:35]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: Toward a New Understanding of Mental Illness
Today, thanks to better early detection, there are 63% fewer deaths from heart disease than there were just a few decades ago. Thomas Insel, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, wonders: Could we do the same for...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: Medicine's Future? There's an App for That
Daniel Kraft offers a fast-paced look at the next few years of innovations in medicine, powered by new tools, tests and apps that bring diagnostic information right to the patient's bedside. [18:22]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: Cheese, Dogs and a Pill to Kill Mosquitoes and End Malaria
We can use a mosquito's own instincts against her. Bart Knols demos the imaginative solutions his team is developing to fight malaria- including limburger cheese and a deadly pill. [10:20]
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: A New Way to Diagnose Autism
Early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder can improve the lives of everyone affected, but the complex network of causes make it incredibly difficult to predict. Ami Klin describes a new early detection method that uses eye-tracking...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: Your Brain Is More Than a Bag of Chemicals
Modern psychiatric drugs treat the chemistry of the whole brain, but neurobiologist David Anderson believes in a more nuanced view of how the brain functions. He illuminates new research that could lead to targeted psychiatric...