The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “TED-Ed”

What Makes the Octopus and Its Consciousness So Extraordinary
What Makes the Octopus and Its Consciousness So Extraordinary

A humbling inquiry into a tentacled intelligence so wonderfully different from our own.

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The Science of Why We Cry and the Three Types of Tears
The Science of Why We Cry and the Three Types of Tears

What stress hormones have to do with the social machinery of sympathy.

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How Sitting Is Harming Your Body and What You Can Do to Counter Its Perils
How Sitting Is Harming Your Body and What You Can Do to Counter Its Perils

“Bodies are built for motion — not for stillness.”

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Three Animators Bring to Life Three Beautiful Readings of Walt Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider”
Three Animators Bring to Life Three Beautiful Readings of Walt Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider”

“And you, O my Soul, where you stand, surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space…”

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How Do You Know You Exist? A Mind-Bending Animated Homage to Descartes Exploring the Conundrum of Reality
How Do You Know You Exist? A Mind-Bending Animated Homage to Descartes Exploring the Conundrum of Reality

“When you’re awake, you know you’re awake. But when you aren’t, you don’t know you aren’t.”

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What Depression Is Really Like
What Depression Is Really Like

“The gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.”

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How the Clouds Got Their Names
How the Clouds Got Their Names

How a boy who spent his schooldays staring out the classroom window shaped the science of the skies.

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Why Some People Are Left-Handed
Why Some People Are Left-Handed

An evolutionary parable of how the contradictory forces of competition and cooperation shaped human destiny.

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What Makes a Hero: Joseph Campbell’s Seminal Monomyth Model for the Eleven Stages of the Hero’s Journey, Animated
What Makes a Hero: Joseph Campbell’s Seminal Monomyth Model for the Eleven Stages of the Hero’s Journey, Animated

“It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward.”

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In Praise of Melancholy and How It Enriches Our Capacity for Creativity
In Praise of Melancholy and How It Enriches Our Capacity for Creativity

How the American obsession with happiness at the expense of sadness robs us of the capacity for a full life.

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