What is a vector? Is it an arrow in space? A list of numbers?

A quick explanation of e^(pi i) in terms of motion and differential equations

Mandatory lockdowns, quarantines and shelter-in-place orders meant to contain COVID-19 have created a shadow pandemic of domestic abuse, says physician Kemi DaSilva-Ibru. Sharing alarming statistics on the rise of gender-based violence...

As the sun rises over a quiet coral reef, one animal breaks the morning silence. Named for its vibrant scales and beak-like teeth, the parrotfish devours a particularly crunchy breakfast: rocks. Why would any creature take bites out of...

In a rich conversation full of practical insights, former Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard and former Finance Minister of Nigeria Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala reflect on their experiences as women leaders in positions of global power --...

Less than 13 percent of police officers in the United States are women -- despite their proven effectiveness in diffusing violent situations and reducing the use of force. Drawing on more than two decades of experience as a police...

What exactly is a topological space?

When you think about math, what do you think of? Numbers? Equations? Patterns maybe? How about.... knots? As in, actual tangles and knots?

In a dystopian world, your resistance group is humanity's last hope. Unfortunately, you've all been captured by the tyrannical rulers and brought to the ancient coliseum for their deadly entertainment. Will you be able to solve the...

Billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, each with .... rather a lot of particles in them. And then there's dark matter, black holes, planets, and the particles and radiation in between the stars and galaxies. But.... is the...

Foraminifera - tiny, single-celled marine life forms - build gorgeous houses that record how much ice there is on the planet. FYI: We try to leave jargon out of our videos, but if you want to learn more about this topic, here are some...

Divergence, curl, and their relation to fluid flow and electromagnetism

The enigmatic equation e^{pi i} = -1 is usually explained using Taylor's formula during a calculus class. This video offers a different perspective, which involves thinking about numbers as actions, and about e^x as something which turns...

Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision protecting people's right to have an abortion in the United States, will be overturned within a year, says reproductive rights attorney Kathryn Kolbert. In this electrifying call to...

An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform, winding graphs around circles.

Symmetric keys are essential to encrypting messages. How can two people share the same key without someone else getting a hold of it? Upfront asymmetric encryption is one way, but another is Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

We've found a microbe that might someday protect us from malaria parasites, and bees might have help with their jobs soon, thanks to bubble pollination!

TED curator Chris Anderson shares his obsession with questions that no one (yet) knows the answers to. A short intro leads into two questions: Why can't we see evidence of alien life? And how many universes are there?

What is integration? Why is it computed as the opposite of differentiation? What is the fundamental theorem of calculus?

A discovery-oriented introduction to error correction codes.

Computer Color is Broken

Chris Anderson gave this talk in 2002, prior to taking over leadership of TED. Co-founder Richard Saul Wurman was leaving, and TED's future was in the balance. He seeks to persuade TEDsters that what was then a for-profit conference had...

How do you know you're a person who has lived your life, rather than a just-formed brain full of artificial memories, momentarily hallucinating a reality that doesn't actually exist? That may sound absurd, but it's kept several...

The big blue buildings of Ikea have sprouted solar panels and wind turbines; inside, shelves are stocked with LED lighting and recycled cotton. Why? Because as Steve Howard puts it: “Sustainability has gone from a nice-to-do to a...