After World War II, Europe was changing radically, and its place in the world was changing as well. European powers had colonized around the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the 20th century, it all came crashing down. Of...

Africa is like a sleeping giant, says journalist and satirist Adeola Fayehun at the beginning of this hilarious, incisive talk. "The truth is I am trying to wake up this giant. That's why I air the dirty laundry of those in charge."...

At age 14, in poverty and famine, a Malawian boy built a windmill to power his family's home. Now at 22, William Kamkwamba, who speaks at TED, here, for the second time, shares in his own words the moving tale of invention that changed...

When ultraviolet sunlight hits our skin, it affects each of us differently. Depending on skin color, it'll take only minutes of exposure to turn one person beetroot-pink, while another requires hours to experience the slightest change....

Stretched across a tree-peppered expanse in Southern Africa lies the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, a medieval stone city of astounding wealth. Located in the present-day country of Zimbabwe, it's the site of the second largest settlement...

Hans Rosling reframes 10 years of UN data with his spectacular visuals, lighting up an astonishing -- and under-reported -- piece of front-page good news: We're winning the war against child death. Along the way, he debunks one flawed...

Conservationist and TED Fellow Moreangels Mbizah studied the famous Cecil the lion until he was shot by a trophy hunter in 2015. She wonders how things could've gone differently, asking: "What if the community that lived next to Cecil...

Africa’s Sahara desert is a prime location, some say, to build arrays of solar panels and wind turbines. But scientists are aware that building these structures can potentially have large-scale effects on the surrounding environment that...

People have been exploring the oceans since prehistoric times, way before they had GPS to help them figure out where they were. Here are 6 ingenious ways our ancestors navigated the oceans.

With the non-avian dinosaurs extinct, it was time for mammals to take over. Finally, in the tiniest sliver of the history of life, humans emerge.

TED Fellow Tom Osborn wants more young people to have access to the mental health support they need. With the Shamiri Institute, he and his team are training 18- to 22-year-olds to deliver evidence-based mental health care to their peers...

Nobody knows exactly when humans began to create fermented beverages. The earliest known evidence comes from 7,000 BCE in China, where residue in clay pots has revealed that people were making an alcoholic beverage from fermented rice,...

In which John Green teaches you the history of the Indian Ocean Trade. John weaves a tale of swashbuckling adventure, replete with trade in books, ivory, and timber. Along the way, John manages to cover advances in seafaring technology,...

In which John Green teaches you about one of the least funny subjects in history: slavery. John investigates when and where slavery originated, how it changed over the centuries, and how Europeans and colonists in the Americas arrived at...

On the edge of the vast Sahara desert, citizens snuck out of the city of Timbuktu and took to the wilderness. They buried chests in the desert sand, hid them in caves, and sealed them in secret rooms. Inside these chests was a treasure...

In 1904, Chief Lontulu laid 110 twigs in front of a foreign commission. Every twig represented a person in his village who died because of King Leopold's brutal regime in the Congo. His testimony joined hundreds of others to help bring...

Hank brings you the news of a newly discovered dinosaur he is kind of afraid to look at, a way to sequence your genome in less time than it takes to get your clothes dry cleaned, & two new adventures that will take place in space - one...

In this video Paul Andersen explores population dynamics of the human population. The population has show exponential growth since the industrial revolution and all countries will eventually move through the demographic transition. If...

Join Jessi, Bill and Webb to learn all about the place we call home!

Why do Africa and South America fit together? Anyone who's ever looked at a map can see that Earth's continents are kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. The idea that continents are constantly moving and weren't always in their current spots is...

In which John Green teaches you about Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart. You'll learn about Igboland, a region in modern day Nigeria, prior to the arrival of the British Empire. Achebe tells the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo...

Over the last four episodes, we’ve examined some of the stories that make up the idea of a “revolution” in knowledge-making in Europe. But we can’t understand this idea fully, without unpacking another one—the so called Age of...

There are some diseases, like Zika or malaria, that get a lot of media coverage. However, every year, millions of people are infected with diseases that are just as deadly that we never hear anything about.

An experiment gone wrong, a lab accident, and a government conspiracy… The origin of the killer bee sounds like a zombie movie come to life.