This week we’re going underground to explore geotechnical and seismic engineering. We’ll look at how structures connect to the ground and transmit loads through their foundations, and how those foundations need to provide a high bearing...

Todd Humphreys forecasts the near-future of geolocation when millimeter-accurate GPS "dots" will enable you to find pin-point locations, index-search your physical possessions ... or to track people without their knowledge. And the...

These giant balls of mucus may seem like a bizarre sight in the open ocean, but all this snot serves a purpose, both for the tiny creatures that produce it and for the entire ocean ecosystem!

The earth is a big place to keep clean. With Litterati -- an app for users to identify, collect and geotag the world's litter -- TED Resident Jeff Kirschner has created a community that's crowdsource-cleaning the planet. After tracking...

Some of the biggest evolution questions finally answered.

Building a skyscraper? Forget about steel and concrete, says architect Michael Green, and build it out of … wood. As he details in this intriguing talk, it's not only possible to build safe wooden structures up to 30 stories tall (and,...

It's been a weird 100 years for artists and creators, says musician and entrepreneur Jack Conte. The traditional ways we've turned art into money (like record sales) have been broken by the internet, leaving musicians, writers and...

Human-robot hybrids are advancing quickly, but the applications aren't just for complete synthetic humans. There's a lot we can learn about ourselves in the process.

In a wildly entertaining discussion with Richard Saul Wurman, architect Frank Gehry gives TEDsters his take on the power of failure, his recent buildings, and the all-important "Then what?" factor.

You've never seen buildings like this. The stunning bamboo homes built by Elora Hardy and her team in Bali twist, curve and surprise at every turn. They defy convention because the bamboo itself is so enigmatic. No two poles of bamboo...

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...

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...

Venomous snakes produce some of the world’s deadliest substances, so they have to be pretty careful about how they use it. But what happens if they accidentally inject themselves with their own harmful cocktail?

Nathaniel Kahn shares clips from his documentary "My Architect," about his quest to understand his father, the legendary architect Louis Kahn. It's a film with meaning to anyone who seeks to understand the relationship between art and love.

Only four percent of construction workers are female -- that's totally unacceptable, but it's also a huge opportunity both for women and for the trades, says youth educator and builder Emily Pilloton-Lam. She makes the case for putting...

How will we live elsewhere in the galaxy? On earth, natural resources for creating structures are abundant, but sending these materials up with us to the Moon or Mars is clunky and cost-prohibitive. enter architect Xavier De Kestelier,...

Sting's early life was dominated by a shipyard—and he dreamed of nothing more than escaping the industrial drudgery. But after a nasty bout of writer's block that stretched on for years, Sting found himself channeling the stories of the...

Solar sail technology was once only theoretical, but it's now being developed to propel spaceships. How did the first solar sails get into space, and why?

Technologist and TED Fellow Gautam Shah invites us to imagine how the metaverse could redefine the relationships between humans and other species. By giving individual wild animals a personal identity (such as Fio, a young orangutan in...

In the year leading up to this talk, the web tool Twitter exploded in size (up 10x during 2008 alone). Co-founder Evan Williams reveals that many of the ideas driving that growth came from unexpected uses invented by the users themselves.

Rob Legato creates movie effects so good they (sometimes) trump the real thing. In this warm and funny talk, he shares his vision for enhancing reality on-screen in movies like Apollo 13, Titanic and Hugo.

Our neighboring star Betelgeuse got noticeably dimmer a few months ago, and thanks to the Hubble telescope, we recently figured out what was going on. Also, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico suffered some damage this week.

In this episode of Crash Course History of Science, we travel to the Americas to ask the question, "When are we?" and get some answers. We'll look at the Maya, Inca, and Olmec civilizations and how they recorded their science.

Satellite imaging has revolutionized our knowledge of the Earth, with detailed images of nearly every street corner readily available online. But Planet Labs' Will Marshall says we can do better and go faster -- by getting smaller. He...