Is it possible that overfishing, super germs, and global warming are all caused by the same thing? In 1968, a man named Garrett Hardin sat down to write an essay about overpopulation. Within it, he discovered a pattern of human behavior...

When General Stanley McChrystal started fighting al Qaeda in 2003, information and secrets were the lifeblood of his operations. But as the unconventional battle waged on, he began to think that the culture of keeping important...

Today, in our series finale, we're going to talk about the great white whale of navigating online information: your social media feed. Social media shapes both our online and offline behaviors from how we engage in communities and...

When we tell women that sex isn't worth the risk during pregnancy, what we're telling her is that her sexual pleasure doesn't matter ... that she in fact doesn't matter, says sex researcher Sofia Jawed-Wessel. In this eye-opening talk,...

Feeling safe is a human right -- but in many African countries, colonial-era laws make it dangerous for LGBTQIA+ people to gather and share their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Creating a space that leaves no...

When Nicolas Bourbaki applied to the American Mathematical Society in the 1950s, he was already one of the most influential mathematicians of his time. He'd published articles in international journals and his textbooks were required...

There's no single formula for a great talk, but there is a secret ingredient that all the best ones have in common. TED curator Chris Anderson shares this secret -- along with four ways to make it work for you. Do you have what it takes...

In a forward-looking talk, author Bina Venkataraman answers a pivotal question of our time: How can we secure our future and do right by future generations? She parses the mistakes we make when imagining the future of our lives,...

Life doesn't go from A to B -- it's messy, says sailing legend Tracy Edwards. In this inspiring talk, she tells how she went from teenage misfit to skipper of the first all-female crew in the toughest race on the seas -- and how she now...

As digital assets like cryptocurrency and NFTs become more mainstream, design thinker and head of Instagram Adam Mosseri believes that creators are uniquely positioned to benefit. These blockchain-enabled technologies could remove the...

Our oceans are unexplored and undersampled -- today, we still know more about other planets than our own. How can we get to a better understanding of this vast, important ecosystem? Explorer Sebastien de Halleux shares how a new fleet of...

Professional Arab women juggle more responsibilities than their male counterparts, and they face more cultural rigidity than Western women. What can their success teach us about tenacity, competition, priorities and progress? Tracing her...

We will get out of this pandemic, says Maria Van Kerkhove, the COVID-19 Technical Lead of the World Health Organization (WHO). The question is how fast -- and if we'll take what we've learned from the past two years and apply it to the...

As you surf the Web, information is being collected about you. Web tracking is not 100% evil -- personal data can make your browsing more efficient; cookies can help your favorite websites stay in business. But, says Gary Kovacs, it's...

Dixon Chibanda is one of 12 psychiatrists in Zimbabwe -- for a population of more than 16 million. Realizing that his country would never be able to scale traditional methods of treating those with mental health issues, Chibanda helped...

There are some captivating things when you look up at the night sky, but our location in the Milky Way may be fogging up our view.

At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?

To achieve lasting change sometimes requires the hard, even radical, choice of partnering with people you'd least expect. Justice reform advocate Nisha Anand shares her story of working with her ideological opposite to make history and...

Could DAOs, or "decentralized autonomous organizations," be the key to building the next great city? Experimental urbanist Scott Fitsimones shares how these mission-driven, blockchain-governed, collectively owned organizations could...

Suspicious emails: unclaimed insurance bonds, diamond-encrusted safe deposit boxes, close friends marooned in a foreign country. They pop up in our inboxes, and standard procedure is to delete on sight. But what happens when you reply?...

A long time ago in New York City, Steve Addis stood on a corner holding his 1-year-old daughter in his arms; his wife snapped a photo. The image has inspired an annual father-daughter ritual, where Addis and his daughter pose for the...

Around the world, women still struggle for equality in basic matters like access to education, equal pay and the right to vote. But how to enlist everyone, men and women, as allies for change? Meet Elizabeth Nyamayaro, head of UN Women's...

What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto -- a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.

They predate the dinosaurs and they outnumber us by trillions, yet you might not ever have the pleasure of seeing one. So let us introduce to you, the nematode.