TED Talks Daily

Ghost stories reveal much more than the ghouls and spirits that haunt them. Settle in for a spooky delight as theater educator Coya Paz Brownrigg lays out three types of bone-chilling tales and exhumes the grave truths they hold about longing, meaning and the cultural value of eerie encounters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rituals for the dead span much of the natural world, seen in practices from humans and elephants to bees, dolphins and beyond. With charm and playful insight, animal behaviorist Kaeli Swift delves into the life (and death) habits of crows and shares what their responses could reveal about our own relationship to mortality. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After a mysterious wave of tics and twitches swept through a small-town high school in New York, documentary podcaster Dan Taberski set out to investigate what was really happening. Drawing on extensive research and intimate interviews with the people involved, he explores the roots of mass hysteria — and what it reveals about the line between illness and belonging. What happens when the very thing that makes us sick ... is also what connects us? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Scientist Saad Bhamla is on a mission to answer a question most people don't think to ask: How do insects pee? Taking inspiration from the incredible "butt flickers" of the glassy-winged sharpshooter, Bhamla presents a fascinating study of the physics behind how bugs take care of business and invites us to be more curious about the seemingly mundane. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this fascinating, hilarious and ever-so-slightly creepy talk, science writer Ed Yong tells the story of his favorite parasites -- animals and organisms that live on the bodies (and brains!) of other organisms, causing them to do their bidding. Do humans have them too? Maybe ... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.