Are we born to be optimistic, rather than realistic? Tali Sharot shares new research that suggests our brains are wired to look on the bright side -- and how that can be both dangerous and beneficial.

Listening to both customers and colleagues to gather insights and information is a key ability that successful people possess. Tony Salvador shares some strategies for being a better listener: to lose preconceptions, be vulnerable and open to new ideas, and to not be afraid to hear what we'd rather not hear.

Two decades into his career photographer Levon Biss decided to cast aside humans and focus on a new subject: insects. In this visual talk, Biss explains how he developed a fascinating process using composite macro-photography to capture stunning images of creatures that measure mere millimeters.

Photographer Levon Biss was looking for a new, extraordinary subject when one afternoon he and his young son popped a ground beetle under a microscope and discovered the wondrous world of insects. Applying his knowledge of photography to subjects just five millimeters long, Biss created a process for shooting insects in unbelievable microscopic ...

MIT grad student Joy Buolamwini was working with facial analysis software when she noticed a problem: the software didn't detect her face -- because the people who coded the algorithm hadn't taught it to identify a broad range of skin tones and facial structures. Now she's on a mission to fight bias in machine learning, a phenomenon she calls th...

Equity expert Sara Sanford offers a certified playbook that helps companies go beyond good intentions, using a data-driven standard to actively counter unconscious bias and foster gender equity -- by changing how workplaces operate, not just how people think.

What if we could build a global waste disposal service for carbon? In this forward-thinking talk, carbon capture advisor Bas Sudmeijer proposes building CO2 networks: partnerships between cities around the world that would share the cost and geological resources needed to trap emissions deep in the earth -- and give us a shot at stalling climate...

What shapes our perceptions (and misperceptions) about science? In an eye-opening talk, meteorologist J. Marshall Shepherd explains how confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect and cognitive dissonance impact what we think we know -- and shares ideas for how we can replace them with something much more powerful: knowledge.

Search engines have become our most trusted sources of information and arbiters of truth. But can we ever get an unbiased search result? Swedish author and journalist Andreas Ekström argues that such a thing is a philosophical impossibility. In this thoughtful talk, he calls on us to strengthen the bonds between technology and the humanities, an...

AI algorithms make important decisions about you all the time -- like how much you should pay for car insurance or whether or not you get that job interview. But what happens when these machines are built with human bias coded into their systems? Technologist Kriti Sharma explores how the lack of diversity in tech is creeping into our AI, offeri...

When Kyle Quinn married his Brazilian wife and brought her home to the United States, he assumed the difficult part was over and that they could forge a happy life together. What he didn't anticipate was a front-row seat to the indignities—big and small—that immigrants face on a regular basis. In a deeply personal talk, he acknowledges how his w...

Our brains create categories to make sense of the world, recognize patterns and make quick decisions. But this ability to categorize also exacts a heavy toll in the form of unconscious bias. In this powerful talk, psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt explores how our biases unfairly target Black people at all levels of society -- from schools and ...

Ever have the sneaking suspicion your vote doesn't really matter? Software engineer Brian Olson has designed a powerful algorithm that transforms gerrymandered districts into vibrant, perfectly impartial state maps so that every vote counts.

In May 1940, with the German army ready to occupy Paris, Noor Inayat Khan was faced with a difficult choice: stand on the sidelines or join the Allied forces fighting the Nazis. After witnessing the devastation across Europe, she travelled to England to learn the art of espionage. Shrabani Basu details how a pacifist turned spy helped build the ...

How can a super-thin 3-inch disk levitate something 70,000 times its own weight? In a riveting demonstration, Boaz Almog shows how a phenomenon known as quantum locking allows a superconductor disk to float over a magnetic rail -- completely frictionlessly and with zero energy loss. Experiment: Prof. Guy Deutscher, Mishael Azoulay, Boaz Almog, o...

At TED2012, filmmaker Karen Bass shares some of the astonishing nature footage she's shot for the BBC and National Geographic -- including brand-new, previously unseen footage of the tube-lipped nectar bat, who feeds in a rather unusual way ...

Educating the poor is more than just a numbers game, says Shukla Bose. She tells the story of her groundbreaking Parikrma Humanity Foundation, which brings hope to India's slums by looking past the daunting statistics and focusing on treating each child as an individual.

Confirmation bias, loss aversion, the halo effect – inherently, humans face obstacles when making rational decisions. In the future, could purely logical cognitive computers help erase these blind spots? Dario Gil explores what the future of cognitive computers looks like and considers the uneasy question: could technology ever replace humans?

We often think of bias and prejudice as rooted in ignorance. But as psychologist Paul Bloom seeks to show, prejudice is often natural, rational ... even moral. The key, says Bloom, is to understand how our own biases work -- so we can take control when they go wrong.

Villy Wang is in the business of rewriting stereotypes, empowering youth of color to take back their narratives through storytelling. In this moving talk, Wang explains how she developed a program to train kids in filmmaking so they can create new, authentic stories and break the cycle of bias perpetuated in media.

Where are all the women and girls in film? Social scientist Stacy Smith analyzes how the media underrepresents and portrays women -- and the potentially destructive effects those portrayals have on viewers. She shares hard data behind gender bias in Hollywood, where on-screen males outnumber females three to one (and behind-the-camera workers fa...

With warmth and wit, Halla Tómasdóttir shares how she overcame media bias, changed the tone of the political debate and surprised her entire nation when she ran for president of Iceland -- inspiring the next generation of leaders along the way. "What we see, we can be," she says. "It matters that women run."

Meet Lucy. She was a math major in college, and aced all her courses in probability and statistics. Which do you think is more likely: that Lucy is a portrait artist, or that Lucy is a portrait artist who also plays poker? How do we know which statement is more likely to be true? Alex Gendler explores our tendency to look for shortcuts and the p...

In a talk that could change how you see things, designer and artist Jiabao Li introduces her conceptual projects that expose the inherent bias of digital media. From a helmet that makes you "allergic" to the color red to a browser plug-in that filters the internet in an unexpected way, Li's creations uncover how technology mediates the way we pe...

Imagine the hottest day you've ever experienced. Now imagine it's six, 10 or 12 degrees hotter. According to climate researcher Alice Bows-Larkin, that's the type of future in store for us if we don't significantly cut our greenhouse gas emissions now. She suggests that it's time we do things differently—a whole system change, in fact—and seriou...

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 -- and share six standout lessons on what it takes to lead and build solidarity in the face of gender bias and st...

What challenges arise for women climbing the ranks in leadership, and what can they do to overcome them? TED's current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers sits down with Chief Master Sergeant JoAnne S. Bass, the first woman in history to serve as the highest-ranking non-commissioned member of a US military service, for a look inside the A...

Gabriel García Márquez's novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" brought Latin American literature to the forefront of the global imagination and earned García Márquez the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. What makes the novel so remarkable? Francisco Díez-Buzo investigates. [TED-Ed Animation by Lucy Animation Studio]

Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, bet his whole company on the belief that people can trust each other enough to stay in one another's homes. How did he overcome the stranger-danger bias? Through good design. Now, 123 million hosted nights (and counting) later, Gebbia sets out his dream for a culture of sharing in which design helps foster c...

How do you turn a memory, especially one of a traumatic event, into hard evidence of a crime? Julia Shaw is working on this challenge, combining tools from memory science and artificial intelligence to change how we report workplace harassment and bias. She shares three lessons to apply if you've been harassed or discriminated against -- and int...