av Mikael Winterkvist | jul 29, 2019 | Ted
Russell Foster is a circadian neuroscientist: He studies the sleep cycles of the brain. And he asks: What do we know about sleep? Not a lot, it turns out, for something we do with one-third of our lives. In this talk, Foster shares three popular theories about why we sleep, busts some myths about how much sleep we need at different ages — and hints at some bold new uses of sleep as a predictor of mental health.
av Mikael Winterkvist | jul 27, 2019 | Ted
The Internet connects billions of people and machines; it’s the backbone of modern life. But tech pioneer Danny Hillis thinks the Internet just wasn’t designed to grow this big — and he fears that one big cyber-attack or glitch could shut it down and take civilization with it. To head off a digital dark age, he sounds a clarion call to develop a Plan B: a parallel system to fall back on if — or when — the Internet crashes.
av Mikael Winterkvist | jul 23, 2019 | Ted
Henry Markram says the mysteries of the mind can be solved — soon. Mental illness, memory, perception: they’re made of neurons and electric signals, and he plans to find them with a supercomputer that models all the brain’s 100,000,000,000,000 synapses.
av Mikael Winterkvist | jul 22, 2019 | Ted
”Bonk” author Mary Roach delves into obscure scientific research, some of it centuries old, to make 10 surprising claims about sexual climax, ranging from the bizarre to the hilarious. (This talk is aimed at adults. Viewer discretion advised.)
av Mikael Winterkvist | jul 21, 2019 | Ted
Refugee and immigrants rights attorney Melanie Nezer shares an urgently needed historical perspective on the crisis at the southern US border, showing how citizens can hold their governments accountable for protecting the vulnerable. ”A country shows strength through compassion and pragmatism, not through force and through fear,” she says.
av Mikael Winterkvist | jul 20, 2019 | Ted
When humanity first landed on the moon in 1969, the typeface Futura was right there with them. In this fascinating history of typography, designer Douglas Thomas shares Futura’s role in launching the Apollo 11 spacecraft — and how it became one of the most used fonts in the world.
