Reporter Janine di Giovanni has been to the worst places on Earth to bring back stories from Bosnia, Sierra Leone and most recently Syria. She tells stories of human moments within large conflicts -- and explores that shocking transition...

Baldur was the gentlest and most beloved being in all of Asgard. But lately, he had been plagued by gruesome visions foretelling his own imminent death. Determined to protect her son from these grim prophecies, Queen Frigg travelled...

Unless you saw the spider bite you, that swollen, bite-looking lesion on your arm is probably something else, and blaming it on an innocent 8-legged critter might do more harm than good.

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...

When faced with a parent suffering from Alzheimer's, most of us respond with denial ("It won't happen to me") or extreme efforts at prevention. But global health expert and TED Fellow Alanna Shaikh sees it differently. She's taking three...

Legendary actor Nicolas Cage is renowned for his reliably weird roles across many genres of modern film. Is he just a victim of a bad agent, or does he instead follow the philosophy of Taoism, or as its modern derivative is known - YOLO...

In this emotionally charged conversation with journalist Kurt Andersen, designer David Rockwell discusses the process of building a viewing platform at Ground Zero shortly after 9/11.

You might have heard that one year in a dog’s life is equivalent to seven in a human’s. But it turns out that the real ratio is both higher AND lower—depending on your dog’s current age.

In ancient Rome, Vestal Virgins were tasked with keeping vigil over the flame of Vesta, the virgin goddess of the hearth. The flame represented two things: the continuation of Rome as a power in the world and the continuing virginity of...

Science fiction writer Monica Byrne imagines rich worlds populated with characters who defy our racial, social and gender stereotypes. In this performance, Byrne appears as a hologram named Pilar, transmitting a story of love and loss...

In a lyrical, unexpectedly funny talk about heavy topics such as frayed relationships and the death of a loved one, elizabeth Lesser describes the healing process of putting aside pride and defensiveness to make way for soul-baring and...

Salmon make a hardcore journey upstream to their spawning grounds to reproduce, and it almost always ends with death. But some live to reproduce again, and more than once!

When artist Damon Davis went to join the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after police killed Michael Brown in 2014, he found not only anger but also a sense of love for self and community. His documentary "Whose Streets?" tells the story...

Spiderwebs are designed to trap bug-sized creatures. So how come spiders don't get stuck?

If you want to go out and start your own cemetery in the uK, says Alison Killing, "you kind of can." She thinks a lot about where we die and are buried -- and in this talk, the architect and TED Fellow offers an eye-opening economic and...

An analysis of samples taken from the Iceman’s stomach has revealed new details about what people were eating thousands of years ago!

Lux Narayan starts his day with scrambled eggs and the question: "Who died today?" Why? By analyzing 2,000 New York Times obituaries over a 20-month period, Narayan gleaned, in just a few words, what achievement looks like over a...

Sisyphus was both a clever ruler who made his city prosperous, and a devious tyrant who seduced his niece and killed visitors to show off his power. While his violation of the sacred hospitality tradition greatly angered the gods, it...

Hank brings us the story of Elizabeth Blackburn, the Nobel Prize-winning Australian woman who discovered telomeres and telomerase, and helped scientists begin to understand the process of aging at a genetic level.

In a disturbing — but fascinating — walk through history, Frances Larson examines humanity's strange relationship with public executions … and specifically beheadings. As she shows us, they have always drawn a crowd, first in the public...

Painter Alyssa Monks finds beauty and inspiration in the unknown, the unpredictable and even the awful. In a poetic, intimate talk, she describes the interaction of life, paint and canvas through her development as an artist, and as a...

"The hardest part of my cancer experience began once the cancer was gone," says author Suleika Jaouad. In this fierce, funny, wisdom-packed talk, she challenges us to think beyond the divide between "sick" and "well," asking: How do you...

Statistics are persuasive. So much so that people, organizations, and whole countries base some of their most important decisions on organized data. But any set of statistics might have something lurking inside it that can turn the...

As soon as Pharaoh Khufu ascended the throne circa 2575 BCE, work on his eternal resting place began. The structure's architect, Hemiunu, determined he would need 20 years to finish the royal tomb. But what he could not predict was that...