Long before there were strip malls, skyscrapers, and combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bells, nature had its own architects: all kinds of creatures create all kinds of structures for living, raising offspring, or maybe just the occasional...

It's time to give paper passports a digital upgrade, says entrepreneur Karoli Hindriks. Looking to Estonia's technology-driven government for inspiration, she envisions a world where immigration is no longer hindered by bureaucracy and...

Accepting the 2007 TED Prize, Bill Clinton asks for help in bringing health care to Rwanda -- and the rest of the world.

In this video, we'll learn about the US Supreme Court decision in Scott vs Sanford, handed down in 1857. The case ultimately rejected the idea that Black people could be citizens of the United States, and this helped entrench the...

We’ve discovered what appears to be the first known moon outside of the solar system and new models of Europa’s surface predict the presence of ice blades!

What if the government ran more like Silicon Valley? Engineer Matt Cutts shares why he decided to leave Google (where he worked for nearly 17 years) for a career in the US government -- and makes the case that if you really want to make...

Although it's funding is nowhere NEAR the amount Hollywood invests in moviemaking each year, crowdfunding is a way better indicator of what the audience wants to see, the one area Hollywood has failed in time and time again. Will...

Sci-Fi worlds may have giant worms or twin suns, but those are pretty cozy compared to these wild worlds.

Money is pollution's biggest driving force -- particularly, the cash invested in dirty energy projects, says financial responsibility campaigner Lucie Pinson. She shares a three-pronged approach to stop banks from funding fossil fuel...

Keller Rinaudo wants everyone on earth to have access to basic health care, no matter how hard it is to reach them. With his start-up Zipline, he has created the world's first drone delivery system to operate at national scale,...

Cognitive researcher Nancy Etcoff looks at happiness -- the ways we try to achieve and increase it, the way it's untethered to our real circumstances, and its surprising effect on our bodies.

At TED@Cannes, Gary Wolf gives a 5-min intro to an intriguing new pastime: using mobile apps and always-on gadgets to track and analyze your body, mood, diet, spending -- just about everything in daily life you can measure -- in...

Hank has some thoughts on the news that several Italian scientists who were convicted of 29 counts manslaughter for making an "inadequate risk-assessment" before an earthquake.

Since November of 2000, there have always been people on board the International Space Station. That’s nearly 20 straight years of humans living in space! But the ISS isn’t just the world’s coolest playground, it’s also a...

As manager of the Rosetta mission, Fred Jansen was responsible for the successful 2014 landing of a probe on the comet known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In this fascinating and funny talk, Jansen reveals some of the intricate...

Tan Le's astonishing new computer interface reads its user's brainwaves, making it possible to control virtual objects, and even physical electronics, with mere thoughts (and a little concentration). She demos the headset, and talks...

Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish -- and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational "death valley" we now face,...

Charity Wayua put her skills as a cancer researcher to use on an unlikely patient: the government of her native Kenya. She shares how she helped her government drastically improve its process for opening up new businesses, a crucial part...

A billion people in the world lack access to all-season roads. Could the structure of the internet provide a model for how to reach them? Andreas Raptopoulos of Matternet thinks so. He introduces a new type of transportation system that...

Learn why you may experience jumping in your sleep, and how you can prevent it!

The kilogram is the basic unit of mass in the metric system, but there's a serious problem: the standard that defines how much mass a kilogram actually has isn't reliable anymore

In this video Paul Andersen shows conceptual thinking in a mini-lesson on the conservation of matter.


TERMS
Matter - physical
substances
Atoms - the basic un
it of elements
Conservation - the quantity of a...

Young poet, educator and activist Malcolm London performs his stirring poem about life on the front lines of high school. He tells of the "oceans of adolescence" who come to school "but never learn to swim," of "masculinity mimicked by...

If you think punching an asteroid to knock it off the course to Earth’s destruction is purely for science fiction, you might only be right a for a little longer! Plus, scientists are being thrown for a loop with the orbits of planets...