Tribology: it's a funny-sounding word you might not have heard before, but it could change how you see and interact with the physical world, says mechanical engineer Jennifer Vail. Offering lessons from tribology -- the study of friction and wear -- Vail describes the surprisingly varied ways it impacts everyday life and how it could help us mak...

Higher education remains rooted in rigid, traditional structures and tracks -- and it's at risk of getting left behind in favor of expanded access, greater flexibility and tailored learning. Educator Tyler DeWitt explains how innovations in digital content and virtual reality are ushering in the future of learning, emphasizing why academia must ...

What does it take to build the fast, flexible, creative teams needed to challenge entrenched work culture? For transformation expert Martin Danoesastro, it all starts with one question: "What are you willing to give up?" He shares lessons learned from companies on both sides of the innovation wave on how to structure your organization so that pe...

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we're not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

Deep beneath your feet is a molten ball of energy the same temperature as the surface of the sun -- an immense clean energy source that could power the world thousands of times over, says technologist and climate activist Jamie C. Beard. How do we tap it? She lays out a surprising solution, and an unlikely alliance, to harvest geothermal energy ...

What can a young woman with an idea, an Internet connection and a bit of creativity achieve? That's all Siyanda Mohutsiwa needed to unite young African voices in a new way. Hear how Mohutsiwa and other young people across the continent are using social media to overcome borders and circumstance, accessing something they have long had to violentl...

What do woolly pigs have to do with climate change? They're part of a vital, ingenious and evolving strategy to take carbon out of the sky and store it safely -- in trees, soils, the ocean, buildings, rocks and deep underground. Every carbon removal approach takes some combination of natural resources, human ingenuity and technology, says climat...

What would Immanuel Kant say about a fender bender? In a surprisingly funny trip through the teachings of some of history's great philosophers, TV writer and producer Michael Schur (from hit shows like "The Office" and "The Good Place") talks through how to confront life's moral dilemmas -- and shows how understanding ethical theories can help y...

Philosopher-comedian Emily Levine talks (hilariously) about science, math, society and the way everything connects. She's a brilliant trickster, poking holes in our fixed ideas and bringing hidden truths to light. Settle in and let her ping your brain.

Neuroscientist Michael Merzenich looks at one of the secrets of the brain's incredible power: its ability to actively re-wire itself. He's researching ways to harness the brain's plasticity to enhance our skills and recover lost function.

Todd Humphreys forecasts the near-future of geolocation when millimeter-accurate GPS "dots" will enable you to find pin-point locations, index-search your physical possessions ... or to track people without their knowledge. And the response to the sinister side of this technology may have unintended consequences of its own.

Cognitive researcher Nancy Etcoff looks at happiness -- the ways we try to achieve and increase it, the way it's untethered to our real circumstances, and its surprising effect on our bodies.

Kindness can go a long way when it comes to reshaping a business. Having saved a fashion company from the brink of bankruptcy, entrepreneur James Rhee shares the value of investing in a culture of compassion at work -- and shows why we should all lead with our hearts.

"Building a 30-foot-high concrete structure from sea to shining sea is the most expensive and least effective way to do border security," says Congressman Will Hurd, a Republican from Texas whose district encompasses two times zones and shares an 820-mile border with Mexico. Speaking from Washington, DC in a video interview with former state att...

Michael Shermer says the human tendency to believe strange things -- from alien abductions to dowsing rods -- boils down to two of the brain's most basic, hard-wired survival skills. He explains what they are, and how they get us into trouble.

As COVID-19 continues to spread, the world is facing two existential threats at once: a public health emergency and an economic crisis. Political theorist Danielle Allen describes how we can ethically and democratically address both problems by scaling up "smart testing," which would track positive cases with peer-to-peer software on people's ce...

Daphne Koller is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free -- not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. With Coursera (cofounded by Andrew Ng), each keystroke, quiz, peer-to-peer discussion and self-graded assignment builds an unprecedented pool of data on how knowledge is processed.

Imagine waking in the middle of the night to an elephant ripping the roof from your house in search of food. This is a reality in some communities in Africa where, as wild spaces shrink, people and elephants are competing for space and resources like never before. In this engaging talk, zoologist Lucy King shares her solution to the rising confl...

Botanist Corneille Ewango talks about his work at the Okapi Faunal Reserve in the Congo Basin -- and his heroic work protecting it from poachers, miners and raging civil wars.

Customers want to feel what they buy is authentic, but "Mass Customization" author Joseph Pine says selling authenticity is tough because, well, there's no such thing. He talks about a few experiences that may be artificial but make millions anyway.

In "THE 99," Naif Al-Mutawa's new generation of comic book heroes fight more than crime -- they smash stereotypes and battle extremism. Named after the 99 attributes of Allah, his characters reinforce positive messages of Islam and cross cultures to create a new moral framework for confronting evil, even teaming up with the Justice League of Ame...

Armed with a sense of humor and laypeople's terms, Nobel winner Murray Gell-Mann drops some knowledge on TEDsters about particle physics, asking questions like, Are elegant equations more likely to be right than inelegant ones?

Speaking as both an astronomer and "a concerned member of the human race," Sir Martin Rees examines our planet and its future from a cosmic perspective. He urges action to prevent dark consequences from our scientific and technological development.

Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab, talks about his life as an inventor, starting with his high-school company selling solar energy plans and kits. Learn here about a groundbreaking system for solar cells -- and some questions we haven't yet solved.

For the dawn of a new decade, adventurer Bertrand Piccard offers us a challenge: Find motivation in what seems impossible. He shares his own plans to do what many say can't be done -- to fly around the world, day and night, in a solar-powered aircraft.

Why, why, why does our education system look so similar to the way it did 50 years ago? Millions of students were failing then, as they are now -- and it’s because we’re clinging to a business model that clearly doesn’t work. Education advocate Geoffrey Canada dares the system to look at the data, think about the customers and make systematic sh...

From rockets to stock markets, many of humanity's most thrilling creations are powered by math. So why do kids lose interest in it? Conrad Wolfram says the part of math we teach -- calculation by hand -- isn't just tedious, it's mostly irrelevant to real mathematics and the real world. He presents his radical idea: teaching kids math through com...

Many artificial intelligence researchers expect AI to outsmart humans at all tasks and jobs within decades, enabling a future where we're restricted only by the laws of physics, not the limits of our intelligence. MIT physicist and AI researcher Max Tegmark separates the real opportunities and threats from the myths, describing the concrete step...

Vilayanur Ramachandran tells us what brain damage can reveal about the connection between celebral tissue and the mind, using three startling delusions as examples.

Can Twitter be saved? In a wide-ranging conversation with TED's Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey discusses the future of the platform -- acknowledging problems with harassment and moderation and proposing some fundamental changes that he hopes will encourage healthy, respectful conversations. "Are we actuall...