Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco shows images from the Cassini voyage to Saturn, focusing on its largest moon, Titan, and on frozen Enceladus, which seems to shoot jets of ice.

At the end of 2012, the US political system was headed for the "fiscal cliff" -- a budget impasse that could only be solved with bipartisan agreement. Adam Davidson, cohost of "Planet Money," shares surprising data on how bipartisan we...

Imagine if you could surf Facebook ... from the Middle Ages. Well, it may not be as far off as it sounds. In a fun and interesting talk, Frederic Kaplan shows off the Venice Time Machine, a project to digitize 80 kilometers of books to...

We explore several exoplanets whose features make us think they shouldn't even have been able to form in the first place!

Using sleight-of-hand techniques and charming storytelling, illusionist Marco Tempest brings a jaunty stick figure to life onstage at TEDGlobal.

If, for some wild reason, we decided that breeding humongous spiders was a good idea, could we actually pull it off?

What makes us giggle and guffaw? The inability to define comedy is its very appeal; it is defined by its defiance of definition. Addison Anderson riffs on the philosophy of Henri Bergson and Aristotle to elucidate how a definition draws...

In this video Paul Andersen explains how the kinetic energy of an object if due to the motion of an object. Objects can have kinetic energy but they cannot have potential energy unless they are part of a system. He then explains how to...

With his team at SENSEable City Lab, MIT's Carlo Ratti makes cool things by sensing the data we create. He pulls from passive data sets -- like the calls we make, the garbage we throw away -- to create surprising visualizations of city...

Two-thirds of the world may not have access to the latest smartphone, but local electronic shops are adept at fixing older tech using low-cost parts. Vinay Venkatraman explains his work in "technology crafts," through which a mobile...

While most spacecraft are designed and built from scratch for one particular mission, the Phoenix Lander was pieced together from previous missions and rose from the ashes...all the way to Mars.

Neurons often get all the credit for running the brain, but the work done by Ben Barres at Stanford University proved that glial cells are far more crucial to brain functioning than we had previously realized.

From hours-long lines and limited polling locations to confusing and discriminatory registration policies, why is it so hard to vote in the US? Voting rights expert Amber McReynolds offers a proven alternative: a new process, already...

The American election system is complicated, to say the least -- but voting is one of the most tangible ways that each of us can shape our communities. How can we make the system more modern, inclusive and secure? Civic engagement...

What is a change of basis, and how do you do it?

Ed Ulbrich, the digital-effects guru from Digital Domain, explains the Oscar-winning technology that allowed his team to digitally create the older versions of Brad Pitt's face for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

Traditional lab tests for disease diagnosis can be too expensive and cumbersome for the regions most in need. George Whitesides' ingenious answer is a foolproof tool that can be manufactured at virtually zero cost.

On October 24, 2014, Alan Eustace donned a custom-built, 235-pound spacesuit, attached himself to a weather balloon, and rose above 135,000 feet, from which point he dove to Earth, breaking both the sound barrier and previous records for...

Humans should urinate at least four to six times a day, but occasionally, the pressures of modern life force us to clench and hold it in. How bad is this habit, and how long can our bodies withstand it? Heba Shaheed takes us inside the...

With what3words, Chris Sheldrick and his team have divided the entire planet into three-meter squares and assigned each a unique, three-word identifier, like famous.splice.writers or blocks.evenly.breed, giving a precise address to the...

(NOTE: This talk was given in 2010, and this field of science has developed quickly since then. Enjoy it as a piece of science history but not as the last word on this topic. Read "Criticisms & updates" below for more details.) William...

How can we tap into the potential of all students, especially those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds? Sociologist Anindya Kundu invites us to take a deeper look at the personal, social and institutional challenges that keep...

Whether you're picking a place to eat or something to watch, machine learning helps us make smarter decisions in our daily lives.

In December 1910, the exiled former leader Manuel Bonilla boarded a borrowed yacht and set sail for Honduras in hopes of reclaiming power by whatever means necessary. Bonilla had a powerful backer: the notorious organization known...