Brewster Kahle is building a truly huge digital library -- every book ever published, every movie ever released, all the strata of web history ... It's all free to the public -- unless someone else gets to it first.

Search engines have become our most trusted sources of information and arbiters of truth. But can we ever get an unbiased search result? Swedish author and journalist Andreas ekstrom argues that such a thing is a philosophical...

Anil Gupta is on the hunt for the developing world's unsung inventors -- indigenous entrepreneurs whose ingenuity, hidden by poverty, could change many people's lives. He shows how the Honey Bee Network helps them build the connections...

When Bran Ferren was just 9, his parents took him to see the Pantheon in Rome — and it changed everything. In that moment, he began to understand how the tools of science and engineering become more powerful when combined with art, with...

What if every scientist could share their data as easily as they tweet about their lunch? Michael Nielsen calls for scientists to embrace new tools for collaboration that will enable discoveries to happen at the speed of Twitter.

We may have found the secret ingredient to effortless 8 pack abs... In Flies and Mice. Also, a team of scientists have developed robots, made of living cells.

Brains are mysterious! Living brains are particularly tough to study, but sometimes scientists can use techniques from other disciplines to get a clearer picture. Here are some ways scientists are adapting tools developed for looking at...

Is math real or simply something made up by mathematicians? You can't physically touch a number yet using numbers we're able to build skyscrapers and launch rockets into space. Mathematician Kelsey Houston-Edwards explains this...

Biologist Juliana Machado Ferreira, a TED Senior Fellow, talks about her work helping to save birds and other animals stolen from the wild in Brazil. Once these animals are seized from smugglers, she asks, then what?

Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as...

Tattoos can transform and empower people, with some seeking them out to reconnect with their bodies due to scarring, physical abnormalities or the aftermath of a procedure or illness. Paramedical tattooist Becky Barker shares the art and...

Oxford philosopher and transhumanist Nick Bostrom examines the future of humankind and asks whether we might alter the fundamental nature of humanity to solve our most intrinsic problems.

For tens of thousands of years our ancestors understood the world through myths, and the pace of change was glacial. The rise of scientific understanding transformed the world within a few centuries. Why? Physicist David Deutsch proposes...

Patricia Ryan is a longtime English teacher who asks a provocative question: Is the world's focus on English preventing the spread of great ideas in other languages? In other words: What if Einstein had to pass the TOEFL? It's a...

Speaking at TED in 1998, Rev. Billy Graham marvels at technology's power to improve lives and change the world -- but says the end of evil, suffering and death will come only after the world accepts Christ. A legendary talk from TED's...

Gary Flake demos Pivot, a new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data online. Built on breakthrough Seadragon technology, it enables spectacular zooms in and out of web databases, and the discovery of patterns and...

If we take care of the land, the land takes care of us, says Indigenous leader Valérie Courtois. As climate change continues to devastate the planet, Indigenous guardians are helping to honor our responsibility to the land, monitoring...

In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school teaches rural women and men -- many of them illiterate -- to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors in their own villages. It's called the Barefoot College, and its founder,...

How do you build a wheelchair ready to blaze through mud and sand, all for under $200? MIT engineer Amos Winter guides us through the mechanics of an all-terrain wheelchair that's cheap and easy to build -- for true accessibility -- and...

Meet Todai Robot, an AI project that performed in the top 20 percent of students on the entrance exam for the university of Tokyo -- without actually understanding a thing. While it's not matriculating anytime soon, Todai Robot's success...

Today we're going to talk about game shows! Game shows have a long history going all the way back to the 1920s on the radio and then proliferating across media to the massive pop culture icons they are today. And they're different from...

Graham Hawkes takes us aboard his graceful, winged submarines to the depths of planet Ocean (a.k.a. "Earth"). It's a deep blue world we landlubbers rarely see in 3D.

Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf combines the teachings of the Qur'an, the stories of Rumi, and the examples of Muhammad and Jesus, to demonstrate that only one obstacle stands between each of us and absolute compassion -- ourselves.

What does the future of business look like? In an informative talk, Philip Evans gives a quick primer on two long-standing theories in strategy -- and explains why he thinks they are essentially invalid.