Celebrating Jean-Michel Basquiat today with this beautiful animation!
From the TED-Ed Lesson The chaotic brilliance of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat - Jordana Moore Saggese
Animation by Héloïse Dorsan Rachet
Oh, hi, didn’t see you there.
Excuse us while we get ready for a little summer vacation! See you again in the Fall!
From the TED-Ed Lesson Which sunscreen should you choose? - Mary Poffenroth with animation by Rob Kohr & Travis Spangler
teded reblogged
How 3 animators interpreted the same Whitman poem in different ways
One of the most amazing things about poetry is its seemingly infinite capacity for interpretation. To illustrate that fact, TED-Ed launched a great poetic experiment. We gave one Walt Whitman poem to three of our in-house animators, and asked them to interpret it using three different styles of animation. They were each given a recording of the text to work from, which was supplied by three local poets who also interpreted the text using their voices. The result? A stunning video that breathes three very different lives into Walt Whitman’s timeless poem, “A Noiseless Patient Spider.”
Interpretation #1 by Jeremiah Dickey
Medium: Paint on Glass
Interpretation #2 by Biljana Labovic
Medium: Video
Interpretation #3 by Lisa LaBracio
Medium: Scratchboard
Watch all of the interpretations here: A poetic experiment: Walt Whitman, interpreted by three animators - Justin Moore
Happy Birthday to Walt Whitman today!
Today, we celebrate Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday! Happy birthday, Walt!!
teded reblogged
Today, the treadmill is one of the most common ways to get in your weekly workout, but did you know that in the 1800s, treadmills were created to punish English prisoners?
The original version was invented in 1818 by English engineer Sir William Cubitt. While the prisoners stepped on 24 spokes of a large paddle wheel, the rotation made gears pump out water, crush grain, or power mills, which is where the name “treadmill” originated.
Watch the dark and twisted history of the treadmill: The treadmill’s dark and twisted past - Conor Heffernan
Animation by Yukai Du
Fun Fact Friday!
What is imposter syndrome?
Even after writing eleven books and winning several prestigious awards, Maya Angelou couldn’t escape the nagging doubt that she hadn’t really earned her accomplishments.
Albert Einstein experienced something similar: he described himself as an “involuntary swindler” whose work didn’t deserve as much attention as it had received. Accomplishments at the level of Angelou’s or Einstein’s are rare, but their feeling of fraudulence is extremely common. Why can’t so many of us shake feelings that we haven’t earned our accomplishments, or that our ideas and skills aren’t worthy of others’ attention?
Psychologist Pauline Rose Clance was the first to study this unwarranted sense of insecurity. She and her patients experienced something that goes by a number of names-- imposter phenomenon, imposter experience, and imposter syndrome. Together with colleague Suzanne Imes, Clance first studied imposterism in female college students and faculty. Their work established pervasive feelings of fraudulence in this group. Since that first study, the same thing has been established across gender, race, age, and a huge range of occupations, though it may be more prevalent and disproportionately affect the experiences of underrepresented or disadvantaged groups.
To call it a syndrome is to downplay how universal it is. It's not a disease or an abnormality, and it isn’t necessarily tied to depression, anxiety, or self-esteem. Where do these feelings of fraudulence come from? People who are highly skilled or accomplished tend to think others are just as skilled. This can spiral into feelings that they don’t deserve accolades and opportunities over other people. And as Angelou and Einstein experienced, there’s often no threshold of accomplishment that puts these feelings to rest.
The good news? Talking about imposter syndrome helps! Hearing that an advisor or mentor has experienced feelings of imposterism can help relieve those feelings. The same goes for peers. Even simply finding out there’s a term for these feelings can be an incredible relief. Once you’re aware of the phenomenon, you can combat your own imposter syndrome by collecting and revisiting positive feedback. One scientist who kept blaming herself for problems in her lab started to document the causes every time something went wrong. Eventually, she realized most of the problems came from equipment failure, and came to recognize her own competence. We may never be able to banish these feelings entirely, but we can have open conversations about academic or professional challenges. With increasing awareness of how common these experiences are, perhaps we can feel freer to be frank about our feelings and build confidence in some simple truths: you have talent, you are capable, and you belong.
Learn more about imposter syndrome by watching the TED-Ed Lesson What is imposter syndrome and how can you combat it? - Elizabeth Cox
Animation by Sharon Colman
teded reblogged
We just love this Earth Day TED-Ed medley so much, we have to celebrate it again.
For Earth Day, we decided to create a short video that shows off the animated Earths from all of our TED-Ed lessons. We gathered more than 60 beautifully designed Planet Earths from over 600 animated lessons, and we’re so excited to share the results with you!
We hope this medley helps to celebrate our ONE beautiful Planet Earth each and every day.
Love the Earth, and the Earth will love you back! Happy Earth Day, Tumblr! Thanks for joining us this week!
And, an extra special shout out to the amazing composer behind this video - Cem Misirlioglu // WORKPLAYWORK.
Happy Earth Day tumblr!!
teded reblogged
How Stress Affects the Brain
Are you sleeping restlessly, feeling irritable or moody, forgetting little things, and feeling overwhelmed and isolated? Don’t worry. We’ve all been there. You’re probably just stressed out. Stress isn’t always a bad thing. It can be handy for a burst of extra energy and focus, like when you’re playing a competitive sport, or have to speak in public. But when its continuous, the kind most of us face day in and day out, it actually begins to change your brain. Chronic stress, like being overworked or having arguments at home, can affect brain size, its structure, and how it functions, right down to the level of your genes.
Stress begins with something called the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis, series of interactions between endocrine glands in the brain and on the kidney, which controls your body’s reaction to stress. When your brain detects a stressful situation, your HPA axis is instantly activated and releases a hormone called cortisol, which primes your body for instant action. But high levels of cortisol over long periods of time wreak havoc on your brain. For example, chronic stress increases the activity level and number of neural connections in the amygdala, your brain’s fear center. And as levels of cortisol rise, electric signals in your hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with learning, memories, and stress control, deteriorate.
The hippocampus also inhibits the activity of the HPA axis, so when it weakens, so does your ability to control your stress. That’s not all, though. Cortisol can literally cause your brain to shrink in size.
Too much of it results in the loss of synaptic connections between neurons and the shrinking of your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain the regulates behaviors like concentration, decision-making, judgement, and social interaction. It also leads to fewer new brain cells being made in the hippocampus. This means chronic stress might make it harder for you to learn and remember things, and also set the stage for more serious mental problems, like depression and eventually Alzheimer’s disease.
It’s not all bad news, though. There are many ways to reverse what cortisol does to your stressed brain. The most powerful weapons are exercise and meditation, which involves breathing deeply and being aware and focused on your surroundings. Both of these activities decrease your stress and increase the size of the hippocampus, thereby improving your memory.
So don’t feel defeated by the pressures of daily life. Get in control of your stress before it takes control of you.
From the TED-Ed Lesson How stress affects your brain - Madhumita Murgia
Animation by Andrew Zimbelman
Today is National Stress Awareness Day. Dedicate some time today to sit back and chill, if you can. You deserve it.
Today, we celebrate Robert Frost’s birthday.
We are excited to start our day with an animation of his poem “The Road Not Taken” from our recent animated poetry series.
For an analysis of the poem, check out this video and for more animated poetry, check out this series.
Animation directed by Ellen Su.
teded reblogged
Happy Spring, Tumblr!! We are so ready for this!
From the TED-Ed Lesson The weird and wonderful metamorphosis of the butterfly - Franziska Bauer
Animation by Avi Ofer
teded reblogged
Happy Birthday, Albert Einstein!
From the TED-Ed Lesson How fiction can change reality - Jessica Wise
Animation by Augenblick Studios
Kitty Carnival Games.
From the TED-Ed Lesson The history of the world according to cats - Eva-Maria Geigl
Animation by Chintis Lundgren
teded reblogged
Happy Birthday to Virginia Woolf!
From the TED-Ed Lesson Why should you read Virginia Woolf? - Iseult Gillespie
Animation by Sarah Saidan
teded reblogged
Happy Birthday to French philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir!
“Love lets us reach beyond ourselves.”
Simone de Beauvoir proposed that love is the desire to integrate with another and that it infuses our lives with meaning. However, she was less concerned with why we love and more interested in how we can love better. She saw that the problem with traditional romantic love is it can be so captivating that we are tempted to make it our only reason for being. Yet, dependence on another to justify our existence easily leads to boredom and power games.
To avoid this trap, Beauvoir advised loving authentically, which is more like a great friendship: lovers support each other in discovering themselves, reaching beyond themselves, and enriching their lives and the world, together.
From the TED-Ed Lesson Why do we love? A philosophical inquiry - Skye C. Cleary
Animation by Avi Ofer
Any of you make a New Year’s Resolution to quit smoking? Here’s some inspiration.
For those who quit smoking, there’s a huge positive upside with almost immediate and long-lasting physical benefits.
Just 20 minutes after a smoker’s final cigarette, their heart rate and blood pressure begin to return to normal. After 12 hours, carbon monoxide levels stabilize, increasing the blood’s oxygen-carrying capacity. A day after ceasing, heart attack risk begins to decrease as blood pressure and heart rates normalize. After two days, the nerve endings responsible for smell and taste start to recover. Lungs become healthier after about one month, with less coughing and shortness of breath. The delicate hair-like cilia in the airways and lungs start recovering within weeks, and are restored after 9 months, improving resistance to infection. By the one-year anniversary of quitting, heart disease risk plummets to half as blood vessel function improves. Five years in, the chance of a clot forming dramatically declines, and the risk of stroke continues to reduce. After ten years, the chances of developing fatal lung cancer go down by 50%, probably because the body’s ability to repair DNA is once again restored. Fifteen years in, the likelihood of developing coronary heart disease is essentially the same as that of a non-smoker.
There’s no point pretending this is all easy to achieve. Quitting can lead to anxiety and depression, resulting from nicotine withdrawal. But fortunately, such effects are usually temporary. And quitting is getting easier, thanks to a growing arsenal of tools. Nicotine replacement therapy through gum, skin patches, lozenges, and sprays may help wean smokers off cigarettes. They work by stimulating nicotine receptors in the brain and thus preventing withdrawal symptoms, without the addition of other harmful chemicals. Counseling and support groups, cognitive behavioral therapy, and moderate intensity exercise also help smokers stay cigarette-free. That’s good news, since quitting puts you and your body on the path back to health.
From the TED-Ed Lesson How do cigarettes affect the body? - Krishna Sudhir
Animation by TED-Ed / Franz Palomares
This goes out to all of you Tumblr folk who will be performing New Year’s Resolutions for approximately the next 6 days.
From the TED-Ed Lesson How do cigarettes affect the body? - Krishna Sudhir
Animation by TED-Ed / Franz Palomares
teded reblogged
It’s no secret. At least a few of us at TED-Ed are great big #Vonnegut fans! We’re so excited to share this lesson and to recommend his books to you!
Kurt Vonnegut found the tidy, satisfying arcs of many stories at odds with reality, and he set out to explore the ambiguity between good and bad fortune in his own novels. He tried to make sense of human behavior by studying the shapes of stories — ditching straightforward chronologies and clear-cut fortunes.
Mia Nacamulli dives into the sometimes dark, yet hopeful works of Vonnegut in Why should you read Kurt Vonnegut?
Animation by TED-Ed / Lisa LaBracio