Want to do more than talk to your refrigerator and control your lights with your phone? Hank explains how close we are to the smart home that can do everything for us.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the most complex telescope we’ve ever sent into space. But, Webb is not, in fact, in space… yet.

Why does modern technology promise efficiency, but leave us constantly feeling pressed for time? Anthropologist Kathryn Bouskill explores the paradoxes of living in a fast-paced society and explains why we need to reconsider the...

Architecture is more than a clever arrangement of bricks. In this eloquent talk, Michael Murphy shows how he and his team look far beyond the blueprint when they're designing. Considering factors from airflow to light, theirs is a...

In this episode we looked at robots and the engineering principles of robots. We learned how robots use sensors to interpret their environment, how actuators and effectors allow a robot to manipulate the objects around it to accomplish a...

"There's a flip side to everything," the saying goes, and in 2 minutes, Derek Sivers shows this is true in a few ways you might not expect.

There's a creeping sameness in many of our newest urban buildings and streetscapes, says architect Vishaan Chakrabarti. And this physical homogeneity -- the result of regulations, mass production, safety issues and cost considerations,...

Step one is probably having access to billions of dollars, but what about the following steps?

By 2100, the UN estimates that the world's population will grow to just over 11 billion people. Architect Vishaan Chakrabarti wants us to start thinking about how we'll house all these people -- and how new construction can fight climate...

Why do we have to choose between nationalism and globalism, between loving our countries and caring for the world? In a talk with lessons for avowed nationalists and globalists alike, Wanis Kabbaj explains how we can challenge this...

In 1978, Diane Hartley was writing her undergraduate architecture thesis when she made a shocking discovery. After weeks of poring over the Citicorp Center's building plans, she'd stumbled on an oversight that threatened to topple the...

Earthworms may be good for your garden, but they also have the potential to disrupt forest ecosystems across much of North America.

Perhaps you’ve punched out a paper doll or folded an origami swan? TED Fellow Manu Prakash and his team have created a microscope made of paper that's just as easy to fold and use. A sparkling demo that shows how this invention could...

Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it's impossible. Over the past centuries, archaeologists, historians, and engineers have reconstructed a great deal of the technology and science used to build the Egyptian pyramids. This...

What would happen if one day all of humanity's artificial satellites suddenly disappeared? Within hours, most of the planet's traffic would grind to a halt, the world economy would shut down, and most countries would declare a state of...

Turns out, two atomic clocks are indeed better than one. And what role does sleep play in memory suppression?

IDEO's David Kelley says that product design has become much less about the hardware and more about the user experience. He shows video of this new, broader approach, including footage from the Prada store in New York.

To expand their range on visits to the moon, astronauts needed a way to travel faster, go farther, and carry more than walking provided. Thankfully, they had the Lunar Roving Vehicle.

Starting in 80 CE, residents of Rome and visitors from across the Roman Empire would fill the stands of the Colosseum to see gladiators duel, animals fight and chariots race around the arena. And for the grand finale, water poured into...

Taylor Wilson was 14 when he built a nuclear fusion reactor in his parents' garage. Now 19, he returns to the TED stage to present a new take on an old topic: fission. Wilson, who has won backing to create a company to realize his...

Hank summarizes the five reasons why infrared telescopes were supposed to be impossible to build, and then describes how a team of scientists and engineers overcame those obstacles to build the James Webb Space Telescope.

In order to become a butterfly, a caterpillar's body dissolves almost completely and is rebuilt from its own juices. Butterflies are just a few of the 800,000 insect species that transition from larvae to adults through complete...

Spoken-word poet Sarah Kay was stunned to find she couldn't be a princess, ballerina and astronaut all in one lifetime. In this talk, she delivers two powerful poems that show us how we can live other lives. Sarah is also the host of...

What if you were on a high floor of a skyscraper and the building started swaying? Today we’ll explore statics and dynamics, and what they mean for the structures we design. We look at the idea of static equilibrium, forces, and torques,...