What color is a mirror? How much does a video weigh? Michael Stevens, creator of the popular educational YouTube channel Vsauce, spends his day asking quirky questions like these. In this talk he shows how asking the right, seemingly silly, questions can make incredibly effective lessons.
Category Archives: TedTalks
The pursuit of ignorance
What does real scientific work look like? As neuroscientist Stuart Firestein jokes: It looks a lot less like the scientific method and a lot more like “farting around … in the dark.” We love this witty ted talk.
The history of our world in 18 minutes
Backed by stunning illustrations, in this Ted Talk 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.
What makes a good life?
What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? If you think it’s fame and money, you’re not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you’re mistaken. As the director of a 75-year-old study on adult development, Waldinger has unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. In this Ted talk, he shares three important lessons learned from the study as well as some practical, old-as-the-hills wisdom on how to build a fulfilling, long life.
The best stats you’ve ever seen
This is a great Ted Talk and definitely worth a watch. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world.”
Dare to disagree
Most people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us in this Ted Talk, a good disagreement is central to progress. She shows us how the best partners aren’t echo chambers and how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree.
How to gain control of your free time
Ohh this Ted Talk is a goodie. Time management expert Laura Vanderkam studies how busy people spend their lives, and she’s discovered that many of us drastically overestimate our commitments each week, while underestimating the time we have to ourselves. She offers a few practical strategies to help find more time for what matters to us, so we can “build the lives we want in the time we’ve got.” Get clicking…
Fake videos of real people and how to spot them
Do you think you’re good at spotting fake videos, where famous people say things they’ve never said in real life? See how they’re made in this astonishing Ted talk. Computer scientist Supasorn Suwajanakorn shows how, as a grad student, he used AI and 3D modeling to create photorealistic fake videos of people synced to audio. Learn more about both the ethical implications and the creative possibilities of this tech and the steps being taken to fight against its misuse.
4 reasons to learn a new language
English is fast becoming the world’s universal language, and instant translation technology is improving every year. So why bother learning a foreign language? Linguist and Columbia professor John McWhorter shares four alluring benefits of learning an unfamiliar tongue.
What our language habits reveal
In an exclusive preview of his book ‘The Stuff of Thought’ Steven Pinker looks at how language expresses what goes on in our minds and how the words we choose communicate much more than we realise.