No matter how wealthy a country is, there's a lot it can do to improve the health of its citizens.

We might soon be following the logic of animal swarms to help us solve problems like traffic and constructing buildings in dangerous places, like Mars!

All telescopes work by gathering light from the stars, but one held the crown for square footage for collecting that light for 53 years. The amazing Arecibo.

How does a city become known as a "music city"? Publicist Elizabeth Cawein explains how thriving music scenes make cities healthier and happier and shares ideas for bolstering your local music scene -- and showing off your city's talent...

Microsoft's Stephen Lawler gives a whirlwind tour of Virtual Earth, moving up, down and through its hyper-real cityscapes with dazzlingly fluidity, a remarkable feat that requires staggering amounts of data to bring into focus.

Simplicity: We know it when we see it -- but what is it, exactly? In this funny, philosophical talk, George Whitesides chisels out an answer.

When faced with a parent suffering from Alzheimer's, most of us respond with denial ("It won't happen to me") or extreme efforts at prevention. But global health expert and TED Fellow Alanna Shaikh sees it differently. She's taking three...

There are 168 hours in each week. How do we find time for what matters most? Time management expert Laura Vanderkam studies how busy people spend their lives, and she's discovered that many of us drastically overestimate our commitments...

We might have a strong hand because having a weak hand is actually useful.

So, how do we go about being engineers? In this episode of Crash Course Kids, Sabrina talks to us about the Engineering Process and why we should do things in order, as well as many of the questions we should ask along the way. This...

Local reporters are on the front lines of important stories, but their work often goes unnoticed by national and international news outlets. TED Fellow and journalist Gangadhar Patil is working to change that. In this quick talk, he...

A flying car -- it's an iconic image of the future. But after 100 years of flight and automotive engineering, no one has really cracked the problem. Pilot Anna Mracek Dietrich and her team flipped the question, asking: Why not build a...

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...

TeD Fellow Andrew Pelling is a biohacker, and nature is his hardware. His favorite materials are the simplest ones (and oftentimes he finds them in the garbage). Building on the cellulose structure that gives an apple its shape, he...

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...

We tend to focus on the brain in psychology, but it's part of an entire system! Other organs, even your liver, play a big role in psychological health.

Nuclear power is one of the safest, cleanest forms of energy -- yet to most people, it might not feel that way. Why is that? Isabelle Boemeke, the world's first nuclear energy influencer and creator of the social media persona Isodope,...

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" asks Regina Dugan, then director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In this breathtaking talk she describes some of the extraordinary projects -- a...

In this video Paul Andersen explains how scientific phenomenon and sensemaking can be used in the science classroom to engage students and drive inquiry.

Humans have had a soft spot for these furry little mutants ever since our friendship with dogs began, but why is it that Corgi mixes often just look like a Corgi that’s wearing a costume?

Army ants move around a lot, which means they can't build a nest like other ants do. So, to build their shelters, they came up with another, way weirder solution...

For decades the space shuttle was integral to space exploration. In orbit it helped build the ISS, but on the ground it needed help from other gigantic machines.

Take a trip down the microworld as roboticists Paul McEuen and Marc Miskin explain how they design and mass-produce microrobots the size of a single cell, powered by atomically thin legs -- and show how these machines could one day be...

Rives recaps the most memorable moments of TED2006 in the free-spirited rhyming verse of a fantastical mockingbird lullaby.