Massive-scale online collaboration – Luis von Ahn
After re-purposing CAPTCHA so each human-typed response helps digitize books, Luis von Ahn wondered how else to use small contributi...
Education
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How to defend Earth from asteroids – Phil Plait
What’s six miles wide and can end civilization in an instant? An asteroid — and there are lots of them out there. With h...
The shared experience of absurdity – Charlie Todd
Charlie Todd causes bizarre, hilarious, and unexpected public scenes: Seventy synchronized dancers in storefront windows, “gho...
How cyberattacks threaten real-world peace – Guy-Philippe Goldstein
More and more, nations are waging attacks with cyber weapons — silent strikes on another country’s computer systems that...
Finding life we can’t imagine – Christoph Adami
How do we search for alien life if it’s nothing like the life that we know? Christoph Adami shows how he uses his research int...
A civil response to violence – Emiliano Salinas
In this passionate talk that’s already caused a sensation in Mexico, Emiliano Salinas, son of former president Carlos Salinas...
We need a “moral operating system” – Damon Horowitz
Damon Horowitz reviews the enormous new powers that technology gives us: to know more — and more about each other — than...
Faith versus tradition in Islam – Mustafa Akyol
Journalist Mustafa Akyol talks about the way that some local cultural practices (such as wearing a headscarf) have become linked, in...
Distant time and the hint of a multiverse – Sean Carroll
Cosmologist Sean Carroll attacks — in an entertaining and thought-provoking tour through the nature of time and the universe &...
A lab the size of a postage stamp – George Whitesides
Traditional lab tests for disease diagnosis can be too expensive and cumbersome for the regions most in need. George Whitesides̵...