Feel like you're running low on fresh ideas? Get creative with these thought-provoking TED Talks to inspire new and experimental thinking.

You're not alone in the overwhelming sum that you carry with you. Explore what it means to be a university student in this era of massive debt, and the low-cost alternatives to battling this reality.

A microscope that costs less than $1. A post-natal incubator for $25. These TED Talks highlight exciting innovations that render formerly-expensive things affordable — whether it’s to save you money, or to save lives.

The elements had been listed and carefully arranged before Dmitri Mendeleev. They had even been organized by similar properties before. So why is Mendeelev's periodic table the one that has endured? Lou Serico explains via Ekaaluminium, an element whose existence Mendeelev predicted decades before it was discovered. [Directed by Biljana Labovic,...

Dean Ornish talks about simple, low-tech and low-cost ways to take advantage of the body's natural desire to heal itself.

At the online University of the People, anyone with a high school diploma can take classes toward a degree in business administration or computer science — without standard tuition fees (though exams cost money). Founder Shai Reshef hopes that higher education is changing "from being a privilege for the few to a basic right, affordable and acces...

Engineer RA Mashelkar shares three stories of ultra-low-cost design from India that use bottom-up rethinking, and some clever engineering, to bring expensive products (cars, prosthetics) into the realm of the possible for everyone.

India's revolutionary Aravind Eye Care System has given sight to millions. Thulasiraj Ravilla looks at the ingenious approach that drives its treatment costs down and quality up, and why its methods should trigger a re-think of all human services.

Here's what can happen when we bring education online ... and open it up to anyone.

Every month, millions of Americans face an impossible choice: pay for energy to power their homes, or pay for basic needs like food and medicine. TED Fellow DeAndrea Salvador is working to reduce energy costs so that no one has to make this kind of decision. In this quick talk, she shares her plan to help low-income families reduce their bills w...

Lindy Lou Isonhood grew up in a town where the death penalty was a fact of life, part of the unspoken culture. But after she served as a juror in a capital murder trial -- and voted "yes" to sentencing a guilty man to death -- something inside her changed. In this engaging and personal talk, Isonhood reflects on the question she's been asking he...

In a series of mind-bending demos, inventor Mary Lou Jepsen shows how we can use red light to see and potentially stimulate what's inside our bodies and brains. Taking us to the edge of optical physics, Jepsen unveils new technologies that utilize light and sound to track tumors, measure neural activity and could possibly replace the MRI machine...

As an expert on cutting-edge digital displays, Mary Lou Jepsen studies how to show our most creative ideas on screens. And as a brain surgery patient herself, she is driven to know more about the neural activity that underlies invention, creativity, thought. She meshes these two passions in a rather mind-blowing talk on two cutting-edge brain st...

Modern American health care is defined by its high costs, high overhead and inaccessibility -- especially for low-income patients. What if we could redesign the system to serve the poor and still have doctors make money? In an eye-opening (and surprisingly funny) talk, physician P.J. Parmar shares the story of the clinic he founded in Colorado, ...

Could we use the energy from light and sound to detect disease? TED Fellow Lei Li shares the exciting promise of photoacoustic imaging: an affordable, painless and accurate method of converting light into sound in order to create high-resolution images of what's going on inside our bodies. From early detection of breast cancer to steering medici...

It's not just your imagination -- you're more irritable when you're low on zzzzs. Sleep scientist Matt Walker explains how our nightly slumber affects the emotional centers in our brains, and why we can think of sleep as first aid for our feelings.

In sub-Saharan Africa, power outages, low technology penetration, slow internet and understaffed hospitals plague health care systems. To make progress on these problems in Malawi, TED Fellow Soyapi Mumba and his team created a new system from scratch -- from the software that powers their electronic health records to the infrastructure used to ...

In this low-key, image-packed talk from 2002, designer Christopher C. Deam talks about his makeover of an American classic: the Airstream travel trailer.

College can feel like a lonely place, especially if you're a student of color, a low-income individual, a first-generation youth -- or all three. Educator Chitra Aiyar outlines how she encourages her students to cultivate spaces for other marginalized students to connect and help each other grow.

Every day, we move and operate within systems of power that other people have constructed. But we're often uncomfortable talking about power. Why? Eric Liu describes the six sources of power and explains how understanding them is key to being an effective citizen.

They're the second-largest fish in the world, they're almost extinct, and we know almost nothing about them. In this talk, Simon Berrow describes the fascinating basking shark ("great fish of the sun" in Irish), and the exceptional -- and wonderfully low-tech -- ways he's learning enough to save them.

The easiest way to alienate young STEM students is to reduce scientific concepts to dry equations and bullet points on the pages of a textbook. Scientist and educator Ashwini Bhandiwad explains how cooking can teach children actionable lessons about scientific principles, allowing them to learn (and to fail) in an engaging, low stakes environment.

Sloths spend most of their time eating, resting, or sleeping; in fact, they descend from their treetops canopies just once a week, for a bathroom break. How are these creatures so low energy? Kenny Coogan describes the physical and behavioral adaptations that allow sloths to be so slow. [Directed by Anton Bogaty, narrated by Addison Anderson].

Cities pump out 70 percent of all global carbon emissions -- which means they also have the greatest opportunity to lower CO2 levels and energy consumption. Climate and data scientist Angel Hsu shares how cities around the world are leading the response to climate change by innovating new, low-carbon ways of living.

MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld talks about his Fab Lab -- a low-cost lab that lets people build things they need using digital and analog tools. It's a simple idea with powerful results.

Using low-cost virtual reality, education activist Jessica Ochoa Hendrix helps bring science to life in schools across the US. In this quick talk, she explains how a VR experience she developed invites students to explore underwater ecosystems as if they're marine biologists -- and envision themselves in other careers they might not have otherwi...

TV news anchor Lee Thomas thought his career was over after he was diagnosed with vitiligo, an autoimmune disorder that left large patches of his skin without pigment and led to derision and stares. In a captivating talk, he shares how he discovered a way to counter misunderstanding and fear around his appearance with engagement, dialogue -- and...

There's an irony behind the latest efforts to extend human life: It's no picnic to be an old person in a youth-oriented society. Older people can become isolated, lacking meaningful work and low on funds. In this intriguing talk, Jared Diamond looks at how many different societies treat their elders -- some better, some worse -- and suggests we ...

Designing electronics is generally cumbersome and expensive -- or was, until Leah Buechley and her team at MIT developed tools to treat electronics just like paper and pen. In this talk from TEDYouth 2011, Buechley shows some of her charming designs, like a paper piano you can sketch and then play.

When they're used well, graphs can help us intuitively grasp complex data. But as visual software has enabled more usage of graphs throughout all media, it has also made them easier to use in a careless or dishonest way — and as it turns out, there are plenty of ways graphs can mislead and outright manipulate. Lea Gaslowitz shares some things to...