"We're all going to die -- and poems can help us live with that." In a charming and funny talk, literary critic Stephen Burt takes us on a lyrical journey with some of his favorite poets, all the way down to a line break and back up to the human urge to imagine.

We're all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits -- from happiness to obesity -- can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don't even know.

To find the path to long life and health, Dan Buettner and team study the world's "Blue Zones," communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. In his talk, he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep them spry past age 100.

In 1947, explorers noticed a strange phenomenon while crossing the Pacific Ocean. Somehow, small squid known to live deep beneath the waves kept appearing on the roof of their boat. The crew was mystified— until they saw the squids soaring above the sea for roughly 50 meters. How and why do these marine creatures take to the sky? Robert Siddall ...

By the end of the 19th century, nearly 40% of American cars were electric. But these vehicles had a few major problems — early car batteries were expensive and inefficient, and the vehicles were twice the price of a gas-powered car. And so for the next several decades, gas-powered cars dominated the market. Can electric cars reclaim their place ...

What should modern leadership look like? Entrepreneur and former Icelandic presidential candidate Halla Tómasdóttir thinks global leaders need to change their ways -- or risk becoming irrelevant. In a conversation with curator Bryn Freedman, she shows how anybody can step up and make a difference, even if you don't yet have power. "There's a lea...

The prisoner strapped under a descending pendulum blade. A raven who refuses to leave the narrator's chamber. A beating heart buried under the floorboards. Poe's macabre and innovative stories of gothic horror have left a timeless mark on literature. But just what is it that makes Edgar Allan Poe one of the greatest American authors? Scott Peepl...

Liver cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to detect, but synthetic biologist Tal Danino had a left-field thought: What if we could create a probiotic, edible bacteria that was "programmed" to find liver tumors? His insight exploits something we're just beginning to understand about bacteria: their power of quorum sensing, or doing someth...

It's not the passage of time that makes it so hard to get older. It's ageism, a prejudice that pits us against our future selves -- and each other. Ashton Applewhite urges us to dismantle the dread and mobilize against the last socially acceptable prejudice. "Aging is not a problem to be fixed or a disease to be cured," she says. "It is a natura...

We have lots in common with our closest primate relatives. But comparatively, humans seem a bit... underdressed. Instead of thick fur covering our bodies, many of us mainly have hair on top of our heads— and a few other places. So, how did we get so naked? And why do we have hair where we do? Nina G. Jablonski explores the evolution of human hai...

How do we explain the unexplainable? This question has inspired numerous myths, religious practices and scientific inquiries. But Zen Buddhists practicing throughout China from the 9th to 13th century asked a different question – why do we need an explanation? Puqun Li details the bewildering and ambiguous philosophical thought experiments these...

It was one of the strangest trials in Dutch history. The defendant in a 1947 case was an art forger who had counterfeited millions of dollars worth of paintings. But he wasn't arguing his innocence— in fact, his life depended on proving that he had committed fraud. Who was this artist, and why was he on trial for his life? Noah Charney investiga...

How do you get what you want, using just your words? Aristotle set out to answer exactly that question over two thousand years ago with a treatise on rhetoric. Camille A. Langston describes the fundamentals of deliberative rhetoric and shares some tips for appealing to an audience's ethos, logos, and pathos in your next speech. [Directed by Hect...

Tissue engineer and TED Fellow Nina Tandon is growing artificial hearts and bones. To do that, she needs new ways of caring for artificially grown cells -- techniques she's developed by the simple but powerful method of copying their natural environments.

When we experience loss, grief travels with us everywhere -- even work. What can companies do to support grieving employees? Sharing his own story of unimaginable heartbreak, Tilak Mandadi offers three ways organizations can cultivate a culture of workplace empathy, creating an environment that encourages community, productivity and joy. (This t...

In this powerful talk from TEDGlobal, Rebecca MacKinnon describes the expanding struggle for freedom and control in cyberspace, and asks: How do we design the next phase of the Internet with accountability and freedom at its core, rather than control? She believes the internet is headed for a "Magna Carta" moment when citizens around the world d...

What is AI, really? Jeff Dean, the head of Google's AI efforts, explains the underlying technology that enables artificial intelligence to do all sorts of things, from understanding language to diagnosing disease -- and presents a roadmap for building better, more responsible systems that have a deeper understanding of the world. (Followed by a ...

There are three billion working people on this planet, and only 40 percent of them report being happy at work. Michael C. Bush shares his insights into what makes workers unhappy -- and how companies can benefit their bottom lines by fostering satisfaction.

The starving orphan seeking a second helping of gruel. The spinster wasting away in her tattered wedding dress. The stone-hearted miser plagued by the ghost of Christmas past. More than a century after his death, these remain recognizable figures from the work of Charles Dickens. But what are the features of Dickens' writing that make it so spec...

Terrorists and extremists aren't all naturally violent sociopaths -- they're deliberately recruited and radicalized in a process that doesn't fit into a neat pattern. Erin Marie Saltman discusses the push and pull factors that cause people to join extremist groups and explains innovative ways of preventing and countering radicalization.

Photographer and TED Fellow Isadora Kosofsky is a chronicler of love, loss and loneliness. In this searching talk, she shares photos from her four years documenting the lives of a senior citizen love triangle -- and reveals what they can teach us about the universal search for identity and belonging.

How can we harness the power of superintelligent AI while also preventing the catastrophe of robotic takeover? As we move closer toward creating all-knowing machines, AI pioneer Stuart Russell is working on something a bit different: robots with uncertainty. Hear his vision for human-compatible AI that can solve problems using common sense, altr...

Why do we like an original painting better than a forgery? Psychologist Paul Bloom argues that human beings are essentialists -- that our beliefs about the history of an object change how we experience it, not simply as an illusion, but as a deep feature of what pleasure (and pain) is.

From the TED archives: The legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser dives deep into a new painting inspired by Piero della Francesca. From here, he muses on what makes a convincing poster, by breaking down an idea and making it new.

Despite the rise of e-books, physical books aren't going anywhere. Graphic designer Chip Kidd shares why their design is so lasting.

A king cobra has enough venom to kill 10 people in a single bite. Recounting his near-death experience after being bitten by one of these majestic yet deadly snakes, conservationist and TED Fellow Gowri Shankar shares the epiphany he had when the antivenom failed: there's more than one unique species of king cobra.

Gardens are mirrors of our lives, says environmental artist tobacco brown, and we must cultivate them with care to harvest their full beauty. Drawing on her experience bringing natural public art installations to cities around the world, brown reveals what gardening can teach us about creating lives of compassion, connection and grace.

At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? For many, it's simply comfort, respect, love. BJ Miller is a hospice and palliative medicine physician who thinks deeply about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his patients. Take the time to savor this moving talk, which asks big questions about how we think on death and honor...

We use rituals to mark the early stages of our lives, like birthdays and graduations -- but what about our later years? In this meditative talk about looking both backward and forward, Bob Stein proposes a new tradition of giving away your things (and sharing the stories behind them) as you get older, to reflect on your life so far and open the ...

What if Andy Warhol had it wrong, and instead of being famous for 15 minutes, we're only anonymous for that long? In this short talk, Juan Enriquez looks at the surprisingly permanent effects of digital sharing on our personal privacy. He shares insight from the ancient Greeks to help us deal with our new "digital tattoos."