“Anthropologist Wade Davis muses on the worldwide web of belief and ritual that makes us human. He shares breathtaking photos and stories of the Elder Brothers, a group of Sierra Nevada indians whose spiritual practice holds the world in balance.”
“Rock-star physicist” Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive project.”
This is just an amazing lecture with some great visuals to help explain some complex ideas. Absolutely worth watching. Some interesting questions that get raised: Why bother engaging in research that is so far removed from any seeming relevance to our every day lives? Should we spend billions of dollars to fund research that may never provide any practical outcomes or make our lives materially any better? Is the quest for knowledge and understanding a valuable enough goal to justify these costs?
This lecture was filmed before the supercollider went online in 2008. It has since gone online and done some important work already and the particle he talks about, the Higgs Boson, has since been detected by the super collider as documented in the amazing documentary Particle Fever
“What happens when two monkeys are paid unequally? Fairness, reciprocity, empathy, cooperation — caring about the well-being of others seems like a very human trait. But Frans de Waal shares some surprising videos of behavioral tests, on primates and other mammals, that show how many of these moral traits all of us share.”
“Does texting mean the death of good writing skills? John McWhorter posits that there’s much more to texting — linguistically, culturally — than it seems, and it’s all good news.”
“Biologist Mark Pagel shares an intriguing theory about why humans evolved our complex system of language. He suggests that language is a piece of “social technology” that allowed early human tribes to access a powerful new tool: cooperation.”
“Most politicians choose their words carefully, to shape the reality they hope to create. But does it work? Etymologist Mark Forsyth shares a few entertaining word-origin stories from British and American history (for instance, did you ever wonder how George Washington became “president”?) and draws a surprising conclusion.”
“Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” — standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident — can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.”
One of my favorite TED Talks.
“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.” In this witty talk, Firestein gets to the heart of science as it is really practiced and suggests that we should value what we don’t know — or “high-quality ignorance” — just as much as what we know.”
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