Paddy Ashdown believes we are living in a moment in history where power is changing in ways it never has before. In a spellbinding talk he outlines the three major global shifts that he sees coming.

What if Andy Warhol had it wrong, and instead of being famous for 15 minutes, we're only anonymous for that long? In this short talk, Juan Enriquez looks at the surprisingly permanent effects of digital sharing on our personal privacy....

When Ameera Harouda hears the sounds of bombs or shells, she heads straight towards them. "I want to be there first because these stories should be told," says Gaza's first female "fixer," a role that allows her to guide journalists into...

In a war, it turns out that violence isn't the biggest killer of civilians. What is? Illness, hunger, poverty -- because war destroys the institutions that keep society running, like utilities, banks, food systems and hospitals....

Two developments in quantum computing in the past couple of weeks are the harbingers of a whole new era of smart technology. Google announced that it's building a quantum computer designed by a company called D-Wave in partnership with...

We decided it would be cool to have guests come into the studio and talk about science with Hank.

Lorrie Faith Cranor studied thousands of real passwords to figure out the surprising, very common mistakes that users -- and secured sites -- make to compromise security. And how, you may ask, did she study thousands of real passwords...

We've invested so much in police departments as protectors that we have forgotten what it means to serve our communities, says Baltimore Police officer Lt. Colonel Melvin Russell. It's led to coldness and callousness, and it's...

"Full access to a person's phone is the next best thing to full access to a person's mind," says cybersecurity expert Eva Galperin. In an urgent talk, she describes the emerging danger of stalkerware -- software designed to spy on...

Appearing by telepresence robot, Edward Snowden speaks at TED2014 about surveillance and Internet freedom. The right to data privacy, he suggests, is not a partisan issue, but requires a fundamental rethink of the role of the internet in...

Del Harvey heads up Twitter’s Trust and Safety Team, and she thinks all day about how to prevent worst-case scenarios -- abuse, trolling, stalking -- while giving voice to people around the globe. With deadpan humor, she offers a window...

Today Craig finishes up our series on U.S. Government and Politics by talking about both the least and most important aspect of government: foreign policy. Foreign policy is important because it has the potential to affect the largest...

Playwright Eve Ensler explores our modern craving for security -- and why it makes us less secure. Listen for inspiring, heartbreaking stories of women making change.

António Guterres thinks that we can solve the global refugee crisis -- and he offers compelling, surprising reasons why we must try. In conversation with TED's Bruno Giussani, Guterres discusses the historical causes of the current...

Say hello to the decentralized economy -- the blockchain is about to change everything. In this lucid explainer of the complex (and confusing) technology, Bettina Warburg describes how the blockchain will eliminate the need for...

After he ended up on a watch list by accident, Hasan Elahi was advised by his local FBI agents to let them know when he was traveling. He did that and more ... much more.

Randomness is important for all kinds of things, from science to security, but to generate true randomness, engineers have turned to some pretty odd tricks!

For the past few years, airports have been working with game theorists to step up their security game.

Tech that can decode your brain activity and reveal what you're thinking and feeling is on the horizon, says legal scholar and ethicist Nita Farahany. What will it mean for our already violated sense of privacy? In a cautionary talk,...

Today nine nations collectively control more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, each hundreds of times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We don't need more nuclear weapons; we need a new generation to face the...

Imagine global security driven by collaboration -- among agencies, government, the private sector and the public. That's not just the distant hope of open-source fans, it's the vision of James Stavridis, a US Navy Admiral. Stavridis...

Today we're going to talk about hackers and their strategies for breaking into computer systems. Now, not all hackers are malicious cybercriminals intent on stealing your data (these people are known as Black Hats). There are also...

Our interpersonal relationships start forming as soon as we’re born, and psychologists have studied how those early connections can set the stage for the other relationships we form later in life.

Long lines, being patted down, and having your hands swabbed don't make for a wonderful day, but Michael Aranda explains the machines you encounter in airport security and the science and technology behind them.