Conversations with History: Cosmologist Jim Peebles

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Princeton cosmologist Jim Peebles for a discussion of his intellectual odyssey. They discuss his contributions to cosmology and the future of the field.

Celebrating jobs -- all kinds of jobs: Mike Rowe on TED.com

From EG'08: Mike Rowe, the host of Dirty Jobs, tells some compelling (and horrifying) real-life job stories. Listen for his insights and observations about the nature of hard work, and how it’s been unjustifiably degraded in society today. (Recorded in December 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 20:03.)

Why Are People Different? - YALE / PSYCHOLOGY

LECTURE DESCRIPTION
Why are people different from one another? This lecture addresses this question by reviewing the latest theories and research in psychology on two traits in particular: personality and intelligence. Students will hear about how these traits are measured, why they may differ across individuals and groups, and whether they are influenced at all by one's genes, parents or environment.

COURSE DESCRIPTION
What do your dreams mean? Do men and women differ in the nature and intensity of their sexual desires? Can apes learn sign language? Why can’t we tickle ourselves? This course tries to answer these questions and many others, providing a comprehensive overview of the scientific study of thought and behavior. It explores topics such as perception, communication, learning, memory, decision-making, religion, persuasion, love, lust, hunger, art, fiction, and dreams. We will look at how these aspects of the mind develop in children, how they differ across people, how they are wired-up in the brain, and how they break down due to illness and injury.

Helen Fisher - "Why Him? Why Her?: Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type."

Helen Fisher visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss her book "Why Him? Why Her?: Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type." This event took place on February 20, 2009, as part of the Authors@Google series.
In Why Him? Why Her?, Fisher unlocks the hidden code of desire and attachment. Each of us, it turns out, primarily express one of four broad personality types—Explorer, Builder, Director, or Negotiator—and each of these types is governed by different chemical systems in the brain. Driven by this biology, we are attracted to partners who both mirror and complement our own personality type. Based on entirely new research—including a detailed questionnaire completed by five million people in thirty-five countries—Why Him? Why Her? will change your understanding of why you love him or her and help you use nature's chemistry to find and keep your life partner.
Fisher is one of the world's leading experts on the nature of romantic love and attachment. She is the chief scientific adviser to Chemistry.com, a division of Match.com. She is the author of four previous books, two of which—The First Sex and Anatomy of Love—were New York Times Notable Books. Fisher is a research professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. She lives in New York City.

Douglas Adams - Conversations

Douglas Adams - Conversations

Galileo's Battle for the Heavens

In this two-hour special, we celebrate the story of the father of modern science and his struggle to get Church authorities to accept the truth of his astonishing discoveries. The program is based on Dava Sobel's bestselling book, Galileo's Daughter, which reveals a new side to the famously stubborn scientist—that his closest confidante was his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun.

The actor Simon Callow plays Galileo in dramatic reenactments of key moments from his life: his pioneering telescopic observations of the Moon and planets, his revolutionary experiments with falling objects, and his fateful trial before the Inquisition for heresy.

Born in 1564, Galileo lived a generation after Nicolas Copernicus published his controversial theory that the Earth was not the center of the universe around which the heavens revolved. Galileo supported the idea that the Earth turned on its axis and that it, along with the planets, revolved around the sun. The view was considered absurd by most scholars since it contradicted certain passages in the Bible and challenged the commonsense experience of the Earth as a solid, unmoving object.

But Galileo found merit in the idea, especially after he aimed a newly invented instrument called the telescope at the night sky and saw that the Moon and planets were far from the perfect realms accepted by the Catholic Church. His discovery of moons orbiting Jupiter and phases in the appearance of Venus, analogous to the phases of the Moon, supported the Copernican view.

The Church insisted that Galileo couch his speculations in hypothetical terms only. But he stepped over the line in 1632 when he published his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, in which a simpleton mouths the views of the then-reigning pope, Urban VIII. This was too much for the Pope, and Galileo was hauled before the Inquisition, which had tortured and burned to death malefactors for far less.

Galileo's clash with the Vatican put Sister Maria Celeste in an awkward position, but she continued to correspond and meet with her father and even served as his editor.

Though his life was spared, Galileo was put under house arrest, and the Dialogue was banned. But it was a Pyrrhic victory for the Church. Galileo's arguments eventually "won the war" for the Copernican theory, making it intellectually respectable to believe that the Earth in fact moves, says Harvard professor Owen Gingerich.

Part One

Part Two

Previously an obscure branch of philosophy, science was now on the road to becoming the preeminent method for discovering how the world works—thanks to Galileo.

Visit the official site here.