TED Talks
TED: Could you recover from illness ... using your own stem cells? | Nabiha Saklayen
What if diseases could be treated with a patient's own cells, precisely and on demand? Biotech entrepreneur Nabiha Saklayen explains how we could harness advances in biology, machine learning and lasers to create personalized stem cell...
TED Talks
Gregory Stock: To upgrade is human
In this prophetic 2003 talk -- just days before Dolly the sheep was stuffed -- biotech ethicist Gregory Stock looked forward to new, more meaningful (and controversial) technologies, like customizable babies, whose adoption might drive...
TED Talks
Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species?
Throughout human evolution, multiple versions of humans co-existed. Could we be mid-upgrade now? Juan Enriquez sweeps across time and space to bring us to the present moment -- and shows how technology is revealing evidence that suggests...
TED Talks
Juan Enriquez: The life code that will reshape the future
Scientific discoveries, futurist Juan Enriquez notes, demand a shift in code, and our ability to thrive depends on our mastery of that code. Here, he applies this notion to the field of genomics.
TED Talks
TED: What will humans look like in 100 years? | Juan enriquez
We can evolve bacteria, plants and animals -- futurist Juan enriquez asks: Is it ethical to evolve the human body? In a visionary talk that ranges from medieval prosthetics to present day neuroengineering and genetics, enriquez sorts out...
TED Talks
Daniel Kraft: A better way to harvest bone marrow
Daniel Kraft demos his Marrow Miner -- a new device that quickly harvests life-saving bone marrow with minimal pain to the donor. He emphasizes that the adult stem cells found in bone marrow can be used to treat many terminal conditions,...
TED Talks
Susan Solomon: The promise of research with stem cells
Calling them "our bodies' own repair kits," Susan Solomon advocates research using lab-grown stem cells. By growing individual pluripotent stem cell lines, her team creates testbeds that could accelerate research into curing diseases --...
TED Talks
Grégoire Courtine: The paralyzed rat that walked
A spinal cord injury can sever the communication between your brain and your body, leading to paralysis. Fresh from his lab, Grégoire Courtine shows a new method -- combining drugs, electrical stimulation and a robot -- that could...
TED Talks
Mary Lou Jepsen: Could future devices read images from our brains?
As an expert on cutting-edge digital displays, Mary Lou Jepsen studies how to show our most creative ideas on screens. And as a brain surgery patient herself, she is driven to know more about the neural activity that underlies invention,...
TED Talks
TED: A secret weapon against Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases | Nina Fedoroff
Where did Zika come from, and what can we do about it? Molecular biologist Nina Fedoroff takes us around the world to understand Zika's origins and how it spread, proposing a controversial way to stop the virus -- and other deadly...
TED Talks
Joanne Chory: How supercharged plants could slow climate change
Plants are amazing machines -- for millions of years, they've taken carbon dioxide out of the air and stored it underground, keeping a crucial check on the global climate. Plant geneticist Joanne Chory is working to amplify this special...
TED Talks
TED: What you need to know about CRISPR | Ellen Jorgensen
Should we bring back the wooly mammoth? Or edit a human embryo? Or wipe out an entire species that we consider harmful? The genome-editing technology CRISPR has made extraordinary questions like these legitimate -- but how does it work?...
TED Talks
Heather Barnett: What humans can learn from semi-intelligent slime
Inspired by biological design and self-organizing systems, artist Heather Barnett co-creates with physarum polycephalum, a eukaryotic microorganism that lives in cool, moist areas. What can people learn from the semi-intelligent slime...
TED Talks
TED: A brain implant that turns your thoughts into text | Tom Oxley
What if you could control digital devices using just the power of thought? That's the incredible promise behind the Stentrode -- an implantable brain-computer interface that collects and wirelessly transmits information directly from the...
TED Talks
TED: How to read the genome and build a human being | Riccardo Sabatini
Secrets, disease and beauty are all written in the human genome, the complete set of genetic instructions needed to build a human being. Now, as scientist and entrepreneur Riccardo Sabatini shows us, we have the power to read this...
TED Talks
Carl Schoonover: How to look inside the brain
There have been remarkable advances in understanding the brain, but how do you actually study the neurons inside it? Using gorgeous imagery, neuroscientist and TED Fellow Carl Schoonover shows the tools that let us see inside our brains.
TED Talks
Tal Golesworthy: How I repaired my own heart
Tal Golesworthy is a boiler engineer -- he knows piping and plumbing. When he needed surgery to repair a life-threatening problem with his aorta, he mixed his engineering skills with his doctors' medical knowledge to design a better...
TED Talks
Allan Jones: A map of the brain
How can we begin to understand the way the brain works? The same way we begin to understand a city: by making a map. In this visually stunning talk, Allan Jones shows how his team is mapping which genes are turned on in each tiny region,...
TED Talks
Nick Bostrom: A philosophical quest for our biggest problems
Oxford philosopher and transhumanist Nick Bostrom examines the future of humankind and asks whether we might alter the fundamental nature of humanity to solve our most intrinsic problems.
TED Talks
Freeman Dyson: Let's look for life in the outer solar system
Physicist Freeman Dyson suggests that we start looking for life on the moons of Jupiter and out past Neptune, in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. He talks about what such life would be like -- and how we might find it.
TED Talks
Hadyn Parry: Re-engineering mosquitos to fight disease
In a single year, there are 200-300 million cases of malaria and 50-100 million cases of dengue fever worldwide. So: Why haven't we found a way to effectively kill mosquitos yet? Hadyn Parry presents a fascinating solution: genetically...
TED Talks
TED: The radical possibilities of man-made DNA | Floyd E. Romesberg
Every cell that's ever lived has been the result of the four-letter genetic alphabet: A, T, C and G -- the basic units of DNA. But now that's changed. In a visionary talk, synthetic biologist Floyd E. Romesberg introduces us to the first...
TED Talks
TED: Greg Gage: How to control someone else's arm with your brain
Greg Gage is on a mission to make brain science accessible to all. In this fun, kind of creepy demo, the neuroscientist and TED Senior Fellow uses a simple, inexpensive DIY kit to take away the free will of an audience member. It's not a...
TED Talks
Greg Gage: How to control someone else's arm with your brain
Greg Gage is on a mission to make brain science accessible to all. In this fun, kind of creepy demo, the neuroscientist and TED Senior Fellow uses a simple, inexpensive DIY kit to take away the free will of an audience member. It's not a...