TED-Ed

Explore how alcohol interacts with your brain, and how it can interrupt the brain’s memory networks, leading to blackouts.--Alcohol has been shown to have strange and selective effects on the brain. Many intoxicated people can perform complex tasks like holding a detailed conversation or navigating a walk home. Yet for those experiencing a blackout, the memory of these events is quickly forgotten....

Explore how scientists use environmental DNA (eDNA) in a technique called DNA metabarcoding to find and track species.--Scientists have been staking out a forest in Montana for an animal that’s notoriously tricky to find. Camera traps haven’t offered definitive evidence, and experts can’t identify its tracks with certainty. But within the past decades, researchers have developed methods that can d...

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/martin-seligman-on-positive-psychologyMartin Seligman talks about psychology -- as a field of study and as it works one-on-one with each patient and each practitioner. As it moves beyond a focus on disease, what can modern psychology help us to become? Talk by Martin Seligman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The TED-Ed website allows you to engage in or create dynamic lessons around the hundreds of thousands of educational videos on YouTube. In this video, the familiar illustration assembled at the beginning of each TED-Ed video finds his [computer generated] voice and gives viewers a tour of ed.ted.com. The features explored include the ability to add multiple choice questions, open answer questions,...

Explore how the Rafflesia plant uses parasitic strategies to grow the world’s largest flower, and find out why it smells so bad.--Deep inside the Sumatran rainforest, a carrion fly descends, guided by the scent of its favorite place to lay eggs: rotting animal carcasses. But when it lands, it isn’t on liquifying flesh, but instead on the world’s biggest, and perhaps strangest, flower— Rafflesia ar...

Discover what led American colonists in 1773 to toss tea into the Boston Harbor in what became known as the Boston Tea Party.--Before the Revolutionary War, American colonists were taxed heavily for importing tea from Britain. The colonists, not fans of "taxation without representation", reacted by dumping tea into the Boston Harbor, a night now known as the Boston Tea Party. Ben Labaree gets into...

Explore the construction of the futurist city Chandigarh, a project of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and planned by Le Corbusier.--In 1947, India achieved independence from British rule — but this freedom came at a tremendous cost. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, was eager to usher his country towards a brighter, united future. And one of the projects that would prove most essent...

Discover the creatures known as trilobites, one of Earth’s most successful early animals, and find out what led to their extinction.--Prevailing for around 270 million years and encompassing more than 20,000 distinct species, trilobites are some of the most successful lifeforms in Earth’s history. When they sprung into existence, they were among the most diverse and sophisticated organisms on the...

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/social-animal-david-brooksTapping into the findings of his latest book, NYTimes columnist David Brooks unpacks new insights into human nature from the cognitive sciences -- insights with massive implications for economics and politics as well as our own self-knowledge. In a talk full of humor, he shows how you can't hope to understand humans as separate...

Dig into the Fijian myth of Dakuwaqa, the shape-shifting shark god who is determined to take over all of Fiji's islands.--Long ago, the ancestral gods of Fiji settled on the Pacific archipelago. They eventually metamorphosed into various forms, with the god Dakuwaqa transforming into a shark. But he was unsatisfied. He became proud and greedy and wanted to establish himself as the mightiest god, a...

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/let-s-use-video-to-reinvent-education-salman-khanSalman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom scr...

Dig into the science of how microwave ovens use electromagnetic waves to heat your food, and what you should avoid cooking in them.--In 1945, engineer Percy Spencer was standing near a RADAR device that produced high-intensity microwaves and noticed that his candy bar had melted. He then exposed popcorn kernels to the magnetron device, and sure enough, they popped. Soon after, the first microwave...

The world needs clean water, and more and more, we're pulling it from the oceans, desalinating it, and drinking it. But what to do with the salty brine left behind? In this intriguing short talk, TED Fellow Damian Palin proposes an idea: Mine it for other minerals we need, with the help of some collaborative metal-munching bacteria. Talk by Damian Palin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit meg...

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/3-things-i-learned-while-my-plane-crashed-ric-eliasRic Elias had a front-row seat on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. What went through his mind as the doomed plane went down? At TED, he tells his story publicly for the first time. Talk by Ric Elias. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphon...

Get to know the story of the Three Sisters, and what we can learn about sustainably growing food from Indigenous practices.--Suffering illness and despair, Chief Handsome Lake prepared for death. Then, he had a vision. He was walking through a planted field and heard a woman call out. She told him that the recent devastation had left her and her sisters with little hope for the future and asked if...

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/on-being-wrong-kathryn-schulzMost of us will do anything to avoid being wrong. But what if we're wrong about that? "Wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility. Talk by Kathryn Schulz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trace Malik Ambar’s historic rise from enslaved youth to brilliant military tactician and kingmaker in the Indian sultanate.--In 1624, Mughal Emperor Jahangir received word of yet another defeat at the hands of his greatest enemy: Malik Ambar. Jahangir was so obsessed with defeating his rival, he commissioned a painting of himself shooting an arrow at Ambar’s skull. So, who was this brilliant tact...

Discover an infamous bet between two professors, which sought to predict whether the earth would run out of resources due to a growing human population.--In 1980, Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon bet $1,000 on a question with stakes that couldn’t be higher: would the earth run out of resources to sustain a growing human population? They bet $200 on the price of five metals. If the price of a metal de...

Backed by stunning illustrations, David Christian narrates a complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in a riveting 18 minutes. This is "Big History": an enlightening, wide-angle look at complexity, life and humanity, set against our slim share of the cosmic timeline. Talk by David Christian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Practice more problem-solving at https://brilliant.org/TedEd--Today is the annual wizard tournament featuring competitors from three schools, and you’re in charge. The wizards have entered the maze and compete in your chosen events in utmost secrecy; only you and they see what happens. But a dark wizard appears and casts a forgetting curse— throwing the results into question. Can you figure out wh...

Sign up for our newsletter and never miss an episode: http://bit.ly/TEDEdNewsletterWith humor and persistence, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock dives into the hidden but influential world of brand marketing on his quest to make a completely sponsored film about sponsorship. (And yes, onstage naming rights for this talk were sponsored too. By whom and for how much? He'll tell you.)Talk by Morgan Spurlock....

Get to know the life of enigmatic poet and writer Fernando Pessoa, who wrote not as himself but as other people he invented.--On November 30th, 1935, dozens of writers passed away. They came from different backgrounds, espoused divergent beliefs, and wrote in a variety of styles. Yet almost 30,000 pages of their work was stashed in a trunk in an apartment in Lisbon, Portugal. So, what mysterious s...

Rebecca Onie asks audacious questions: What if waiting rooms were a place to improve daily health care? What if doctors could prescribe food, housing and heat in the winter? At TEDMED she describes Health Leads, an organization that does just that -- and does it by building a volunteer base as elite and dedicated as a college sports team. Talk by Rebecca Onie. Learn more about your ad choices. Vis...

We think of space as a silent place. But physicist Janna Levin says the universe has a soundtrack -- a sonic composition that records some of the most dramatic events in outer space. (Black holes, for instance, bang on spacetime like a drum.) An accessible and mind-expanding soundwalk through the universe. Talk by Janna Levin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trace the history of coffee, from its first known origins to its rise in popularity due to trade routes and cultivation.--One day around 850 CE, a goatherd observed that his goats started acting abnormally after nibbling on some berries. The herder tried them himself, and soon enough, he was just as hyper. As the story goes, this was humanity’s first run-in with coffee. So, how did coffee go from...