Kang Lee has devoted his career to understanding the development of social cognition and behavior.

Food is a shared necessity -- but also a shared way of thinking, argues Carolyn Steel. Looking at food networks offers an unusual and illuminating way to explore how cities evolved.

As medicine advances, so does the complexity and price of healthcare. For inspiration on ways to keep healthcare affordable, Jan Denecker shares three simple, yet effective innovations from the developing world, where constraints on resources have caused the healthcare industry to adopt a mentality of doing more with less.

Farmers stand at the center of the world, says Andrew Youn, cofounder of One Acre Fund, an agricultural organization that's empowering sub-Saharan farm families with the loans, seeds, fertilizer and training needed to increase crop yields and end hunger. Meet Therese Niyonsaba, a Rwandan farmer who shares how the program helped her family prospe...

All new products must pass through the "valley of death" before they reach the market. Many never make it out, and sometimes that's OK -- if they don't work, don't fill a need or for any number of reasons. One of the fields where this problem is most pressing is zero-carbon technologies. Why is it vulnerable to this trap, and can we change it? E...

Can we end hunger and poverty, halt climate change and achieve gender equality in the next 15 years? The governments of the world think we can. Meeting at the UN in September 2015, they agreed to a new set of Global Goals for the development of the world to 2030. Social progress expert Michael Green invites us to imagine how these goals and thei...

Our planet is a wonder, a perfectly improbable incubator for life. It’s also in danger because of our indifference. Reflections on both those truths.

Robert Waldinger is the Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history.

Image-maker Alexander Tsiaras shares a powerful medical visualization, showing human development from conception to birth and beyond. (Some graphic images.)

A TEDGlobal Fellow, Catarina Mota plays with "smart materials" -- like shape-memory alloys and piezoelectric structures that react to voltage -- and encourages others to do so too.

Michael Green is part of the team that has created the Social Progress Index, a standard to rank societies based on how they meet the needs of citizens.

Britain's former prime minister Gordon Brown played a key role in shaping the G20 nations' response to the world's financial crisis, and was a powerful advocate for a coordinated global response to problems such as climate change, poverty and social justice.

Africa needs new energy sources to fuel its development, but the continent should invest in renewable energy instead of cheap, polluting alternatives like coal, says climate inclusion activist Chibeze Ezekiel. He tells the story of how he worked with local communities in Ghana to halt the construction of the country's first coal power plant -- a...

The fourth industrial revolution is upon us: machines infused with intelligence. This transformation will change how manufacturing works today, making it faster and cheaper because a machine will know when it makes a mistake and correct itself. Markus Lorenz estimates that the next generation of industrialization could save the food industry alo...

In this talk from RSA Animate, bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways it has shaped human development and society.

Developing countries need strong alliances between the public and private sectors to rebuild after COVID-19, says Achim Steiner, administrator for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). From building virus tracking systems to supporting clean energy projects and expanding health care, hear how the UNDP is creating partnerships between ...

Sophal Ear leads research on post-conflict countries -- looking at the effectiveness of foreign aid and the challenge of development in places like his native land, Cambodia.

What are your dreams? Better yet, what are your broken dreams? Dan Pallotta dreams of a time when we are as excited, curious and scientific about the development of our humanity as we are about the development of our technology. "What we fear most is that we will be denied the opportunity to fulfill our true potential," Pallotta says. "Imagine l...

Asher Hasan's social enterprise Naya Jeevan (the name means "new life" in Urdu and Hindi) is the emerging world's first HMO for the urban, working poor.

Danielle Wood leads the Space Enabled research group at the MIT Media Lab, where she works to tear down the barriers that limit the benefits of space exploration to only the few, the rich or the elite. She identifies six technologies developed for space exploration that can contribute to sustainable development across the world -- from observati...

In Hans Rosling’s hands, data sings. Global trends in health and economics come to vivid life. And the big picture of global development -- with some surprisingly good news -- snaps into sharp focus.

During the peak of the Ebola crisis, the recovery process in Africa was not going according to plan. Failure after sobering failure forced health consultant Shalini Unnikrishnan to recognize that they had approached the crisis from the wrong direction. In this impassioned talk, she urges the response to the next pandemic to be centered on the pe...

After a crisis, how can we tell if water is safe to drink? Current tests are slow and complex, and the delay can be deadly, as in the cholera outbreak after Haiti's earthquake in 2010. TED Fellow Sonaar Luthra previews his design for a simple tool that quickly tests water for safety -- the Water Canary.

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.

If you: do laundry, are (or have been) pregnant, tidy up, shop for your household or do similar labor, then by GDP standards, you're unproductive. In this visionary talk, economist Marilyn Waring seeks to correct the failures of this narrow-minded system, detailing why we deserve a better way to measure growth that values not just our own liveli...

Women aren't micro--so why do they only get micro-loans? Reporter Gayle Tzemach Lemmon argues that women running all types of firms-- from home businesses to major factories-- are the overlooked key to economic development.

Surgeon and author Sherwin Nuland discusses the development of electroshock therapy as a cure for severe, life-threatening depression -- including his own. It's a moving and heartfelt talk about relief, redemption and second chances.

Swami Dayananda Saraswati unravels the parallel paths of personal development and attaining true compassion. He walks us through each step of self-realization, from helpless infancy to the fearless act of caring for others.

Andrologist John Amory is developing innovative male contraception that gives men a new option for taking responsibility to prevent unintended pregnancy. He details the science in development -- and why the world needs a male pill.

The world is becoming increasingly open, and that has implications both bright and dangerous. Marc Goodman paints a portrait of a grave future, in which technology's rapid development could allow crime to take a turn for the worse.