The world owes much of its cultural legacy to Constantinople's walls. When Constantinople was under siege by neighboring enemies, the Roman city's elaborate system of moats, outer walls, and inner walls stood tall. Surviving numerous fire attacks, the walls were eventually brought down by more modern tools of warfare, but, thankfully, classical ...

The wheat, corn and rice we grow today may not thrive in a future threatened by climate change. Cary Fowler takes us inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a vast treasury buried within a frozen mountain in Norway, that stores a diverse group of food-crop seeds ... for whatever tomorrow may bring.

To look at the evolution of modern bird feathers, we must start a long time ago, with the dinosaurs from whence they came. We see early incarnations of feathers on dinosaur fossils, and remnants of dinosaurs in a bird's wish bone. Carl Zimmer explores the stages of evolution and how even the reasons for feathers have evolved over millions of yea...

Ali Kashani explores the unexpected roles robots might take on in our daily lives -- including bringing us lunch.

Shubhendu Sharma creates afforestation methods that make it easy to plant maintenance-free, wild and biodiverse forests.

Even as the Deepwater Horizon tragedy unfolded, Carl Safina took the stage at TEDxOilSpill to share what the facts were known at the time. In a blood-boiling cross-examination, he suggests that the consequences will stretch far beyond the Gulf -- and many so-called solutions are making the situation worse.

Historian Caro Verbeek explores the link between smell and human history — traveling from the courts of ancient Egypt to the wig shops of 1700s Amsterdam — to illustrate the fascinating role scents play in art, architecture and culture.

There have been remarkable advances in understanding the brain, but how do you actually study the neurons inside it? Using gorgeous imagery, neuroscientist and TED Fellow Carl Schoonover shows the tools that let us see inside our brains.

We need to feel better about aging in order to age better, says writer and activist Carl Honoré. How? In this spirited talk, Honoré offers a set of simple solutions to combat ageism -- as well as a host of trailblazers and changemakers who came into their own later in life, from artists and musicians to physicists and business leaders.

About this event: Join us for a TEDxMassapequaLibrary event where we look at The World of the Future – space travel, driverless cars, electric cars, alternate energy sources, cities of the future, and more!

TED Fellow Joel Jackson is the founder and CEO of Mobius Motors, set to launch a durable, low-cost SUV made in Africa.

These women fighting for justice and equality deserve center stage.

It’s 2012. And many of us no doubt imagined that flying cars would be all the rage by now. While that hasn’t happened yet, some major driving innovations are on their way down the pipeline. In a new TEDTalk, Chris Gerdes of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (awesomely abbreviated as CARS) explains that he and his team are busy ...

Soft cars, jet packs and houses made of meat are all in a day's work for urban designer, architect and TED Fellow Mitchell Joachim.

Vaitea Cowan wants to create a world where green hydrogen is readily available -- and fossil fuels are a thing of the past.

Bastian Schaefer and a team of designers at Airbus have been imagining the high-concept future of the jet airlplane -- in a future with less fuel and more passengers.

Geena Rocero is a professional model for fashion and beauty companies around the world. And she uses her platform to share a powerful story.

It's the challenge of our age: How do we end poverty? Hear ideas and results from economists, philanthropists, activists working -- in labs and on the ground -- to wipe it out.

Born out of a social media post, the Black Lives Matter movement has sparked discussion about race and inequality across the world. In this spirited conversation with Mia Birdsong, the movement's three founders share what they've learned about leadership and what provides them with hope and inspiration in the face of painful realities. Their adv...

New York Times tech columnist David Pogue performs a satirical mini-medley about iTunes and the downloading wars, borrowing a few notes from Sonny and Cher and the Village People.

Yann LeCun is chief AI scientist at Facebook and Silver Professor at New York University.

They're cute, they're lovable, and judging by the 26 billion views on over 2 million YouTube videos of them, one thing is certain: cats are very entertaining. But their strange feline behaviors, both amusing and baffling, leave many of us asking: Why do cats do that? Tony Buffington explains the science behind some of your cat's strangest behavi...

If you go to the store in search of milk, there are a dizzying number of products to choose from. There's dairy milk, but also plant-based products such as almond, soy, and oat milks. So which milk is actually best for you? And which uses the fewest resources and produces the least pollution? Jonathan J. O'Sullivan and Grace E. Cunningham dive i...

Stellar astronomer and TED Senior Fellow Lucianne Walkowicz works on NASA's Kepler mission, searching for places in the universe that could support life. So it's worth a listen when she asks us to think carefully about Mars. In this short talk, she suggests that we stop dreaming of Mars as a place that we'll eventually move to when we've messed ...

Paul Piff studies how social hierarchy, inequality and emotion shape relations between individuals and groups.

About this event: Renewables are changing how we make electricity. Electric cars are changing how we move. Batteries invented to power small devices are enabling these changes. We will explore how batteries, electric vehicles, and the electric grid are connected and how they will evolve in the decades to come.

In Brazil, "catadores" collect junk and recyclables. But while they provide a vital service that benefits all, they are nearly invisible as they roam the streets. Enter graffiti artist Mundano, a TED Fellow. In a spirited talk, he describes his project "Pimp My Carroça," which has transformed these heroic workers' carts into things of beauty and...

Cards that fly all over the table, spill onto the floor, and disappear beneath a laser beam. Welcome to the chaotic and flabbergasting magical world of Lennart Green, grand master of close-up card trickery.

Small business owners, entrepreneurs or first-timers ready to pursue an exciting new venture — this one's for you. Enjoy these talks teeming with helpful advice on how to build, sustain and lead the company of your dreams.

In her talk, Ali Carr-Chellman pinpoints three reasons boys are tuning out of school in droves, and lays out her bold plan to re-engage them: bringing their culture into the classroom, with new rules that let boys be boys, and video games that teach as well as entertain.