What a year! These 14 talks challenged our perceptions of love, happiness, what the future will hold ... and, um, the very nature of reality itself.

Benoit Mandelbrot's work led the world to a deeper understanding of fractals, a broad and powerful tool in the study of roughness, both in nature and in humanity's works.

A real-life circus composer, Sxip Shirey makes haunting melodies from familiar objects and reconfigured sounds.

What if you could search the surface of the Earth the same way you search the internet? Will Marshall and his team at Planet use the world's largest fleet of satellites to image the entire Earth every day. Now they're moving on to a new project: using AI to index all the objects on the planet over time -- which could make ships, trees, houses an...

A glimpse inside what we're teaching artificially intelligent machines and a cautionary tale of what could happen if we get it wrong.

Gabe Barcia-Colombo creates madcap art inspired both by Renaissance era curiosity cabinets and the modern-day digital chronicling of everyday life. Think: miniature people projected in objects and a DNA Vending Machine.

Computer vision expert Abe Davis pioneers methods to extract audio from silent digital videos, even footage shot on ordinary consumer cameras.

Shih Chieh Huang doesn’t make art that’s meant to be admired from afar. He dissects and disassembles the detritus of our lives—household appliances, lights, computer parts, toys—and transforms them into surreal experiences.

Laurie Santos studies primate psychology and monkeynomics -- testing problems in human psychology on primates, who (not so surprisingly) have many of the same predictable irrationalities we do.

Kate Hartman creates devices and interfaces for humans, houseplants, and glaciers. Her work playfully questions the ways in which we relate and communicate.

A clay cylinder covered in Akkadian cuneiform script, damaged and broken, the Cyrus Cylinder is a powerful symbol of religious tolerance and multi-culturalism. In this enthralling talk Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, traces 2600 years of Middle Eastern history through this single object.

Philippe Starck designs deluxe objects and posh condos and hotels around the world. Always witty and engaged, he takes special delight in rethinking everyday objects.

The writer and presenter of the BBC Radio 4 series "A History of the World in 100 Objects" and the accompanying book.

Alan Crickmore works with Storybook Dads, a charity that promotes family ties between prisoners and their children.

Rodin Lyasoff makes improbable objects fly.

TED Fellow Moriba Jah studies and predicts the motion of objects in space in an effort to make space safe, secure, and sustainable.

Tom Shannon's mixed-material sculpture seems to levitate -- often it actually does -- thanks to powerful magnets and clever arrangements of suspension wire. He designed the TED Prize trophy.

Logging countless hours behind an X-ray machine, Nick Veasey illuminates the labyrinthine secrets hidden beneath the exteriors of everyday objects.

Chip Colwell is an archaeologist who tries to answer the tangled question: Who owns the past?

Dave Isay was shocked to learn he was in the running for the 2015 TED Prize. And yet, his TED Prize wish — to grow StoryCorps’ digital archive of the collective wisdom of humanity — was granted, fueled by $1 million and the vigor of TED’s global community. Could your idea win the TED Prize? In a word: yes. Nominations for the 2017 TED Pri...

Ivan Poupyrev works at the forefront of interaction design, using technology as a raw ingredient to change the way we interact with the physical world.

The first MacArthur-winning cartoonist, Ben Katchor has collected both cult and mainstream hat tips for his wry, poetic creations that find uncanny humor (and color) in the commonplace deeds of a bygone New York City.

Inspired by art in all its forms, Daniel Lismore combines multiple inspirations from around the world into vibrant expressions of cultural appreciation.

Whether he’s taking on insecure hotspots, inept passwords, or lax OS designers, James Lyne exposes technology’s vulnerabilities while elevating the security awareness of everyday users.

Subtle motion happens around us all the time, including tiny vibrations caused by sound. New technology shows that we can pick up on these vibrations and actually re-create sound and conversations just from a video of a seemingly still object. But now Abe Davis takes it one step further: Watch him demo software that lets anyone interact with the...

Roads need constant repair. Rain, snow and other moisture seeps into the asphalt and -- if it freezes -- expands, breaking it apart and creating potholes. In today’s talk, given at TEDxDelft, civil engineer Erik Schlangen reveals a fascinating solution: a road that is able to heal. He gives a demonstration of a new type of asphalt, which in...

Rajesh Rao seeks to understand the human brain through computational modeling, on two fronts: developing computer models of our minds, and using tech to decipher the 4,000-year-old lost script of the Indus Valley civilization.

Astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize winner George Smoot studies the cosmic microwave background radiation -- the afterglow of the Big Bang. His pioneering research into deep space and time is uncovering the structure of the universe itself.

TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. This weekend, two new playlists are available: Work Smarter and Objects of Desire. Work smarter Business advice can be horribly rote and hackneyed. But not the advice given in these 11 talks, which come from unexp...

A part of the Bangalore-based artist duo Pors & Rao, TED Senior Fellow Aparna Rao works with electro-mechanical systems and interactive installations.