In the first of a new TED-Ed series designed to catalyze curiosity, TED Curator Chris Anderson shares his boyhood obsession with quirky questions that seem to have no answers.

You and nine other individuals have been captured by super-intelligent alien overlords. The aliens think humans look quite tasty, but their civilization forbids eating highly logical and cooperative beings. Unfortunately, they're not sure whether you qualify, so they decide to give you all a test. Can you solve this hat riddle?

Sometimes, against a uniform, bright background such as a clear sky or a blank computer screen, you might see things floating across your field of vision. What are these moving objects, and how are you seeing them?

For the microscopic lab worm C. elegans, life equates to just a few short weeks on Earth. The bowhead whale, on the other hand, can live over two hundred years. Why are these lifespans so different? And what does it really mean to 'age' anyway?

Everyone hates mosquitoes. Besides the annoying buzzing and biting, mosquito-borne diseases like malaria kill over a million people each year (plus horses, dogs and cats). And over the past 100 million years, they've gotten good at their job -- sucking up to three times their weight in blood, totally undetected. So shouldn't we just get rid of them?

We hear anywhere from 10 to 200 lies a day. And although we've spent much of our history coming up with ways to detect these lies by tracking physiological changes in their tellers, these methods have proved unreliable. Is there a more direct approach?

We have over 600 muscles in our bodies that help bind us together, hold us up, and help us move. Your muscles also need your constant attention, because the way you treat them on a daily basis determines whether they will wither or grow. Jeffrey Siegel illustrates how a good mix of sleep, nutrition and exercise keep your muscles as big and strong as possible.

Water is essentially everywhere in our world, and the average human is composed of between 55 and 60% water. So what role does water play in our bodies, and how much do we actually need to drink to stay healthy?

Perpetual motion machines -- devices that can do work indefinitely without any external energy source -- have captured many inventors' imaginations because they could totally transform our relationship with energy. There's just one problem- they don't work. Why not?

When you eat something loaded with sugar, your taste buds, your gut and your brain all take notice. This activation of your reward system is not unlike how bodies process addictive substances such as alcohol or nicotine -- an overload of sugar spikes dopamine levels and leaves you craving more.

You and your team have crash-landed on an ancient planet. Can you appease the three alien overlords who rule it and get your team safely home? Created by logician Raymond Smullyan, and popularized by his colleague George Boolos, this riddle has been called the hardest logic puzzle ever.

Since the dawn of humanity, an estimated 100.8 billion people have lived and died, a number that increases by about 0.8% of the world's population each year. What happens to all of those peoples' bodies after they die? And will the planet eventually run out of burial space? Farnaz Khatibi Jafari traces the evolution of how humanity has treated bodies and burials.

They're cute, they're lovable, and judging by the 26 billion views on over 2 million YouTube videos of them, one thing is certain- cats are very entertaining. But their strange feline behaviors, both amusing and baffling, leave many of us asking- Why do cats do that? Tony Buffington explains the science behind some of your cat's strangest behaviors.

Each day, the animal kingdom produces roughly enough poop to match the volume of water pouring over Victoria Falls. So why isn't the planet covered in the stuff? You can thank the humble dung beetle for eating up the excess. Eleanor Slade and Paul Manning explain how these valiant insects make quick work of an endless stream of feces.

How do you get what you want, using just your words? Aristotle set out to answer exactly that question over two thousand years ago with a treatise on rhetoric.

The placebo effect is an unexplained phenomenon wherein drugs, treatments, and therapies that aren't supposed to have an effect -- and are often fake -- miraculously make people feel better. What's going on? Emma Bryce dives into the mystery of placebos' bizarre benefits.

Few individuals have influenced the world and many of today's thinkers like Plato. He created the first Western university and was teacher to Ancient Greece's greatest minds, including Aristotle. But even he wasn't perfect. Along with his great ideas, Plato had a few that haven't exactly stood the test of time.

In the United States, it's estimated that 30 percent of adults and 66 percent of adolescents are regularly sleep-deprived. This isn't just a minor inconvenience- staying awake can cause serious bodily harm.

The oldest glue in the world is over 8,000 years old and comes from a cave near the Dead Sea. Today, we have enough types of tape and glue to build and repair almost anything. But what gives glue and tape their stickiness? And is one stronger than the other? Elizabeth Cox explores the world of adhesives.

Would a mile-high skyscraper ever be possible? Explore the physics behind some of the tallest buildings and megastructures in the world. -- In 1956, architect Frank Lloyd Wright proposed a mile-high skyscraper, a building five times as high as the Eiffel Tower. While this massive tower was never built, today bigger and bigger buildings are going up around the world. How did these impossible ideas turn into architectural opportunities? Stefan Al explains how these megastructures became fixtures of our city skylines.

Tornadoes are the most violent storms on Earth, with wind velocities that can exceed 200 miles per hour. How do these terrifying cyclones form?

You're stranded in a rainforest, and you've eaten a poisonous mushroom. To save your life, you need an antidote excreted by a certain species of frog. Unfortunately, only the female frog produces the antidote. The male and female look identical, but the male frog has a distinctive croak.

When faced with a big challenge where potential failure seems to lurk at every corner, you've probably heard the advice, "Be more confident!" But where does confidence come from, and how can you get more of it?

Narcissism isn't just a personality type that shows up in advice columns; it's actually a set of traits classified and studied by psychologists. But what causes it? And can narcissists improve on their negative traits?

It's obvious that knowing more than one language can make certain things easier -- like traveling or watching movies without subtitles. But are there other advantages to having a bilingual (or multilingual) brain? Mia Nacamulli details the three types of bilingual brains and shows how knowing more than one language keeps your brain healthy, complex and actively engaged.

Has anyone ever told you, "Stand up straight!" or scolded you for slouching at a family dinner? Comments like that might be annoying--but they're not wrong. Your posture is the foundation for every movement your body makes and can determine how well your body adapts to the stresses on it.

When under anesthesia, you can't move, form memories, or -- hopefully -- feel pain. And while it might just seem like you are asleep for that time, you actually aren't. What's going on?

Depression is the leading cause of disability in the world; in the United States, close to ten percent of adults struggle with the disease. But because it's a mental illness, it can be a lot harder to understand than, say, high cholesterol. Helen M. Farrell examines the symptoms and treatments of depression, and gives some tips for how you might help a friend who is suffering.

Decades after the fall of the Third Reich, it feels impossible to understand how Adolf Hitler, the tyrant who orchestrated one of the largest genocides in human history, could ever have risen to power in a democratic country. So how did it happen, and could it happen again? Alex Gendler and Anthony Hazard dive into the history and circumstances that allowed Hitler to become Fuhrer of Germany.

Check out our Patreon page- https-//www.patreon.com/teded View full lesson- http-//ed.ted.com/lessons/the-atlantic-slave-trade-what-your-textbook-never-told-you-anthony-hazard Slavery has occurred in many forms throughout the world, but the Atlantic slave trade -- which forcibly brought more than 10 million Africans to the Americas -- stands out for both its global scale and its lasting legacy. Anthony Hazard discusses the historical, economic and personal impact of this massive historical injustice. Lesson by Anthony Hazard, animation by NEIGHBOR.

هر روز، دریایی از تصمیمات پیش روی ما قرار می گیرد، و تقریبا غیر ممکن است که هر بار بهترین انتخاب را انجام دهیم. اما راه های زیادی برای بهبود شانس ما وجود دارد - و یکی از روش های بسیار موثر تفکر انتقادی است.

ده سال تحقیق و 500 مصاحبه چهره به چهره ریچارد سنت جان به مجموعه ای از هشت ویژگی مشترک در رهبران موفق در سرتاسر جهان منجر شد.

Mastering any physical skill takes practice. Practice is the repetition of an action with the goal of improvement, and it helps us perform with more ease, speed, and confidence. But what does practice actually do to make us better at things?

How good are you with money? What about reading people's emotions? How healthy are you, compared to other people you know? Knowing how our skills stack up against others is useful in many ways. But psychological research suggests that we're not very good at evaluating ourselves accurately. In fact, we frequently overestimate our own abilities. David Dunning describes the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Sitting down for brief periods can help us recover from stress or recuperate from exercise. But nowadays, our lifestyles make us sit much more than we move around. Are our bodies built for such a sedentary existence?

Romantic chemistry is all about warm, gooey feelings that gush from the deepest depths of the heart...right? Not quite. Actually, the real boss behind attraction is your brain, which runs through a very quick, very complex series of calculations when assessing a potential partner. Dawn Maslar explores how our five senses contribute to this mating game, citing some pretty wild studies along the way.

Mansa Musa, the 14th century African king of the Mali Empire, is said to have amassed a fortune that possibly made him one of the wealthiest people who ever lived.

On March 15th, 44 BCE, Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of about 60 of his own senators. Why did these self-titled Liberators want him dead? And why did Brutus, whose own life had been saved by Caesar, join in the plot?

What if immortality wasn't just the stuff of epic comic book stories? Is it scientifically possible to be immortal? In this series, Joy Lin tackles six superpowers and reveals just how scientifically realistic they can be to us mere mortals.

It's perfectly human to grapple with questions, like 'Where do we come from?' and 'How do I live a life of meaning?' These existential questions are central to the five major world religions -- and that's not all that connects these faiths.

On August 13, 1961, construction workers began tearing up streets and erecting barriers in Berlin. This night marked the beginning of one of history's most infamous dividing lines- the Berlin Wall. Construction continued for a decade as the wall cut through neighborhoods, separated families, and divided not just Germany, but the world.

Why are all the gas stations, cafes and restaurants in one crowded spot? As two competitive cousins vie for ice-cream-selling domination on one small beach, discover how game theory and the Nash Equilibrium inform these retail hotspots.

The average person experiences dozens of individual itches each day. We've all experienced the annoyance of an inconvenient itch -- but have you ever pondered why we itch in the first place? Is there actually an evolutionary purpose to the itch, or is it simply there to annoy us?

In the 3rd millennium BCE, Mesopotamian kings recorded and interpreted their dreams on wax tablets. In the years since, we haven't paused in our quest to understand why we dream. And while we still don't have any definitive answers, we have some theories.

Our skin is the largest organ in our bodies, with a surface area of about 20 square feet in adults. When we are cut or wounded, our skin begins to repair itself through a complex, well-coordinated process. Sarthak Sinha takes us past the epidermis and into the dermis to investigate this regenerative response.

The Great Wall of China is a 13,000-mile dragon of earth and stone that winds its way through the countryside of China. As it turns out, the wall's history is almost as long and serpentine as its structure. Megan Campisi and Pen-Pen Chen detail the building and subsequent decay of this massive, impressive wall.

Deep inside Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library lies a 240 page tome. Recently carbon dated to around 1420, its pages feature looping handwriting and hand drawn images seemingly stolen from a dream. It is called the Voynich manuscript, and it's one of history's biggest unsolved mysteries. The reason why? No one can figure out what it says. Stephen Bax investigates this cryptic work.

تفاوت واقعی بین موجودات زنده و بدن مرده چیست؟