With Marvel's "America Chavez," Gabby Rivera wrote a new kind of superhero -- one who can punch portals into other dimensions while also embracing her gentle, goofy, soft side. In a funny, personal talk, Rivera shares how her own...

A hostile artificial intelligence called NIM has taken over the world's computers. You're the only person skilled enough to shut it down, and you'll only have one chance. Can you survive and shut off the artificial intelligence? Dan...

Diving under the Antarctic ice to get close to the much-feared leopard seal, photographer Paul Nicklen found an extraordinary new friend. Share his hilarious, passionate stories of the polar wonderlands, illustrated by glorious images of...

Robots and algorithms are getting good at jobs like building cars, writing articles, translating -- jobs that once required a human. So what will we humans do for work? Andrew McAfee walks through recent labor data to say: We ain't seen...

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...

As the world's attention focuses on the perils of oil exploration, we present Richard Sears' talk from early February 2010. Sears, an expert in developing new energy resources, talks about our inevitable and necessary move away from oil....

What's a proven way to lower your energy costs? Would you believe: learning what your neighbor pays. Alex Laskey shows how a quirk of human behavior can make us all better, wiser energy users, with lower bills to prove it.

On September 6, 1522, the "Victoria" sailed into harbor in southern Spain. The battered vessel and its 18 sailors were all that remained of a fleet that had departed three years before. Yet her voyage was considered a success, for the...

A dung beetle has a brain the size of a grain of rice, and yet it shows a tremendous amount of intelligence when it comes to rolling its food source -- animal excrement -- home. How? It all comes down to a dance.

More than 500 years after its creation, Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" is arguably the world's most famous painting. Many scholars consider it an outstanding work of Renaissance art— but history is full of great paintings. So, how did...

We have all changed someone's life -- usually without even realizing it. In this funny talk, Drew Dudley calls on all of us to celebrate leadership as the everyday act of improving each other's lives.

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...

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...

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?

Since ancient Greece, humans have controlled populations via reproduction, retaining some traits and removing others. But in the 19th century, a new scientific movement dedicated to this endeavor emerged: eugenics. Scientists believed...

Since the widespread use of antibiotics began in the 1940s, we've tried to develop new drugs faster than bacteria can evolve -- but this strategy isn't working. Drug-resistant bacteria known as superbugs killed nearly 700,000 people last...

Something massive, with roughly 1,000 times the area of earth, is blocking the light coming from a distant star known as KIC 8462852, and nobody is quite sure what it is. As astronomer Tabetha Boyajian investigated this perplexing...

When two bodies wearing identical wetsuits washed ashore in Norway and the Netherlands, journalist Anders Fjellberg and photographer Tomm Christiansen started a search to answer the question: who were these people? What they found and...

Good sound is easy to miss because, usually, you're not paying attention to it. You're just simply, "in the story." But, sound recordists and engineers need to have a lot of technical know how as well as an instinct for story to help...

There's an organism that changed the world. It caused the first mass extinction in Earth's history and also paved the way for complex life. How? Anusuya Willis explains how cyanobacteria, simple organisms that don't even have nuclei or...

Author Steven Johnson takes us on a 10-minute tour of The Ghost Map, his book about a cholera outbreak in 1854 London and the impact it had on science, cities and modern society.

Neil Pasricha's blog 1000 Awesome Things savors life's simple pleasures, from free refills to clean sheets. In this heartfelt talk, he reveals the 3 secrets (all starting with A) to leading a life that's truly awesome.

His Holiness the Karmapa talks about how he was discovered to be the reincarnation of a revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism. In telling his story, he urges us to work on not just technology and design, but the technology and design of the...

When she was 19, Amy Purdy lost both her legs below the knee. And now ... she's a pro snowboarder (and a killer competitor on "Dancing with the Stars"!). In this powerful talk, she shows us how to draw inspiration from life's obstacles.