What if smallholder farmers could use their produce and livestock to pay for goods and services? TED Fellow and alternative currency enthusiast Fariel Salahuddin is working to make this a reality in places including rural Pakistan, where...

What if we could use brain waves to treat Alzheimer's? Professor and neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai details a promising new approach to artificially stimulate gamma brain waves using light and sound therapy, to increase connectivity and...

Supply chain challenges are real, but they're not new, says global trade expert Dustin Burke. In the face of disruptions ranging from natural disasters to pandemics, how do we make sure supply chains can keep up? Burke offers a...

Difficult emotions can get under your skin if you're not careful. Sport and performance consultant Jessica Woods calls this the "jumping cholla effect," inspired by a sneaky kind of cactus that detaches and burrows its spines into...

For the nearly 20 million Americans with a felony record, punishment doesn't end after their prison sentence. Sociologist Reuben Jonathan Miller sheds light on the aftershocks of mass incarceration through the stories of people who've...

Animal behavior isn't complicated, but it is complex. Nicolas Perony studies how individual animals -- be they Scottish Terriers, bats or meerkats -- follow simple rules that, collectively, create larger patterns of behavior. And how...

Mandatory lockdowns, quarantines and shelter-in-place orders meant to contain COVID-19 have created a shadow pandemic of domestic abuse, says physician Kemi DaSilva-Ibru. Sharing alarming statistics on the rise of gender-based violence...

Shocking, but true: the United States has the highest rate of deaths for new mothers of any developed country -- and 60 percent of them are preventable. With clarity and urgency, physician Elizabeth Howell explains the causes of maternal...

Wael Ghonim helped touch off the Arab Spring in his home of egypt ... by setting up a simple Facebook page. As he reveals, once the revolution spilled onto the streets, it turned from hopeful to messy, then ugly and heartbreaking. And...

Imagine seeking safety abroad and instead being detained and forced to defend yourself in a high-stakes legal battle — alone. Law professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández explains how the asylum process in the US became warped into...

Could we use the energy from light and sound to detect disease? TED Fellow Lei Li shares the exciting promise of photoacoustic imaging: an affordable, painless and accurate method of converting light into sound in order to create...

Can playing video games make you more productive? Gabe Zichermann shows how games are making kids better problem-solvers, and will make us better at everything from driving to multi-tasking.

Climate change is the epic challenge of our lives, and community leaders like Rahwa Ghirmatzion and Zelalem Adefris are already working on sustainable, resilient solutions. Through their organizations in Buffalo and Miami, they're...

Nearly 1,800 newsrooms have shuttered across the US since 2004, leaving many communities unseen, unheard and in the dark. In this passionate talk and rallying cry, journalist Chuck Plunkett explains why he rebelled against his employer...

MOMA design curator Paola Antonelli previews the groundbreaking show Design and the Elastic Mind -- full of products and designs that reflect the way we think now.

Journalist Mustafa Akyol talks about the way that some local cultural practices (such as the seclusion of women) have become linked, in the popular mind, to the articles of faith of Islam. Has the world's general idea of the Islamic...

How can architects build a new world of sustainable beauty? By learning from nature. Michael Pawlyn describes three habits of nature that could transform architecture and society: radical resource efficiency, closed loops, and drawing...

As a global community, we all want to end poverty. Mia Birdsong suggests a great place to start: Let's honor the skills, drive and initiative that poor people bring to the struggle every day. She asks us to look again at people in...

T. Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison, founders of the health nonprofit GirlTrek, are on a mission to reduce the leading causes of preventable death among Black women -- and build communities in the process. How? By getting one million...

Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, talks about his quest to make all knowledge computational -- able to be searched, processed and manipulated. His new search engine, Wolfram Alpha, has no lesser goal than to model and explain the...

Author Robert Wright explains "non-zero-sumness" -- the network of linked fortunes and cooperation that has guided our evolution to this point -- and how we can use it to help save humanity today.

In a rich conversation full of practical insights, former Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard and former Finance Minister of Nigeria Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala reflect on their experiences as women leaders in positions of global power --...

Every 12 years, a megacity springs up in India for the Kumbh Mela religious festival -- what's built in ten weeks is completely disassembled in one. What can we learn from this fully functioning, temporary settlement? In a visionary...

Genomics pioneer Craig Venter takes a break from his epic round-the-world expedition to talk about the millions of genes his team has discovered so far in its quest to map the ocean's biodiversity.