Decision theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky has a simple message: superintelligent AI could probably kill us all. So the question becomes: Is it possible to build powerful artificial minds that are obedient, even benevolent? In a fiery talk,...

Months before Apollo 8 took humans around the Moon for the first time, two Russian tortoises (plus some other lunar tourists) had already made it back home. This was Zond 5 — the first mission to return to Earth after visiting another...

We’ve made a lot of progress recently in curing two deadly diseases that have been difficult to treat!

While children are only a small minority of those who test positive for COVID-19, we’re starting to see evidence of a rare, but serious, complication in children that resembles a condition known as Kawasaki disease. Here’s what doctors...

This week, a group of researchers use nuclear fallout to figure out how old liver cells are, while another gets one step closer to predicting volcanic eruptions.

Even though we are still in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists are trying to figure out the ways in which this disease may stick with people in the long term - from lasting lung damage to potentially triggering...

From poking their own eyes, to drinking a patient's vomit, some extremely passionate scientists have done pretty outrageous things to themselves in the name of science.

When birds and squirrels cache food for the winter, it means they have to remember where to find that food later. Their strategies for finding their hidden feasts includes memory tricks and changing brains.

You've heard of Breast Cancer, Skin Cancer, Colon Cancer, and many others. But this specific cancer was something entirely different—it took a research team five months to diagnose this specific cancer case, and that’s due purely to its...

We generally think of pregnancy as a continuous process, but scientists have recently discovered mechanisms that allow for certain mammals to put the development of a fetus on pause.

Hank discusses the challenges involved in manned space travel to Mars, and sends us a message from his 17-year-old self.

Have you had a normal menstrual cycle and then you suddenly miss a period? There are different reasons why this can happen, and if you don't experience a period you were expecting, you’ll probably want to talk to your health care...

The temperature drops and you're more likely to get a cold: Is this correlation or causation?

For one hundred days in 1994, the African country of Rwanda suffered a horrific campaign of mass murder. Neighbor turned against neighbor as violence engulfed the region, resulting in the deaths of over one-tenth of the country's...

In 2013, an Ebola outbreak began in Guinea. The country had no formal response system and the outbreak became the largest Ebola epidemic in recorded history. Guinea then completely overhauled their response system, and were able to...

Right now, hundreds of thousands of people are "stuck" in the US criminal justice system. They've completed all of their requirements for release, but nobody knows it because the system is run on old databases that don't talk to each...

At the end of the Civil War, though slavery was technically illegal in all states, it still persisted in the last bastions of the Confederacy. This was the case when Union General Gordon Granger marched his troops into Galveston, Texas...

Pakistan contributes less than one percent to the global greenhouse gas emissions perpetrating climate change, yet one-third of the country was recently inundated with "biblical" floods that killed hundreds and displaced millions. If...

In a lyrical talk full of radical imagination, poet Aja Monet and community organizer phillip agnew share the story of how they fell in love and what they've learned about the powerful connection between great social movements and...

What if we could "grow" clothes from microbes, furniture from living organisms and buildings with exteriors like tree bark? TED Fellow Suzanne Lee shares exciting developments from the field of biofabrication and shows how it could help...

The milk industry produces in excess of 840 million tons of products each year. Why do humans drink so much milk? And given that all mammals lactate, why do we favor certain types of milk over others? Jonathan J. O'Sullivan describes how...

When a new pathogen emerges, our bodies and healthcare systems are left vulnerable. And when this pathogen causes the outbreak of a pandemic, there’s an urgent need for a vaccine to create widespread immunity with minimal loss of life....

* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Accepting his 2007 TED Prize, war photographer James Nachtwey shows his life's work and asks TED to help him...

Be spreaders of facts and truths, says scientist and immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci. Having advised seven US presidents on various disease outbreaks including COVID-19, he shares insights on the present and future of pandemics, backed up...