Fascinating talks that seek to unravel some of the most fundamental, yet unexplainable parts of the cosmos.

An illuminating, if not slightly chilling, exploration of what makes a psychopath.

Numbers, patterns and equations are at the core of these talks, which will teach you how to fold better origami and how to quantify history.

Droids, mushrooms, pranks, fractals -- Reggie Watts shares some simple tools for brain expansion.

Listen closely -- Marvin Minsky's arch, eclectic, charmingly offhand talk on health, overpopulation and the human mind is packed with subtlety: wit, wisdom and just an ounce of wily, is-he-joking? advice.

Linus Torvalds transformed technology twice -- first with the Linux kernel, which helps power the Internet, and again with Git, the source code management system used by developers worldwide. In a rare interview with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Torvalds discusses with remarkable openness the personality traits that prompted his unique philosophy...

A treat for your mind and your eyeballs.

Some advice and perspectives to keep in mind when your company's going through structural changes.

MOMA design curator Paola Antonelli previews the groundbreaking show Design and the Elastic Mind -- full of products and designs that reflect the way we think now.

After he swam the North Pole, Lewis Pugh vowed never to take another cold-water dip. Then he heard of Lake Imja in the Himalayas, created by recent glacial melting, and Lake Pumori, a body of water at an altitude of 5300 m on Everest -- and so began a journey that would teach him a radical new way to approach swimming and think about climate cha...

Entrepreneur Elon Musk is a man with many plans. The founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX sits down with TED curator Chris Anderson to share details about his visionary projects, which include a mass-marketed electric car, a solar energy leasing company and a fully reusable rocket.

Tim Urban knows that procrastination doesn't make sense, but he's never been able to shake his habit of waiting until the last minute to get things done. In this hilarious and insightful talk, Urban takes us on a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes and bouts of staring out the window -- and encourages us to think harder about ...

Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media ("Make:" magazine, anyone?) shares his favorite TED Talks with notes about why each one had an impact. Surprise: It's not all tech.

What would a city designed for the blind be like? Chris Downey is an architect who went suddenly blind in 2008; he contrasts life in his beloved San Francisco before and after -- and shows how the thoughtful designs that enhance his life now might actually make everyone's life better, sighted or not.

Brain imaging pioneer Nancy Kanwisher, who uses fMRI scans to see activity in brain regions (often her own), shares what she and her colleagues have learned: The brain is made up of both highly specialized components and general-purpose "machinery." Another surprise: There's so much left to learn.

Sebastian Seung is a leader in the new field of connectomics, currently the hottest space in neuroscience, which studies, in once-impossible detail, the wiring of the brain.

Daniel Kish expands the perceptual toolbox of both blind and sighted humans by teaching echolocation -- the ability to observe our surroundings via sound.

What happens when a dream you've held since childhood ... doesn't come true? As Lisa Bu adjusted to a new life in the United States, she turned to books to expand her mind and create a new path for herself. She shares her unique approach to reading in this lovely, personal talk about the magic of books.

Amishi Jha studies how we pay attention: the process by which our brain decides what's important out of the constant stream of information it receives. Both external distractions (like stress) and internal ones (like mind-wandering) diminish our attention's power, Jha says -- but some simple techniques can boost it. "Pay attention to your attent...

We often think of bias and prejudice as rooted in ignorance. But as psychologist Paul Bloom seeks to show, prejudice is often natural, rational ... even moral. The key, says Bloom, is to understand how our own biases work -- so we can take control when they go wrong.

Psychopathic killers are the basis for some must-watch TV, but what really makes them tick? Neuroscientist Jim Fallon talks about brain scans and genetic analysis that may uncover the rotten wiring in the nature (and nurture) of murderers. In a too-strange-for-fiction twist, he shares a fascinating family history that makes his work chillingly p...

Photographer Levon Biss was looking for a new, extraordinary subject when one afternoon he and his young son popped a ground beetle under a microscope and discovered the wondrous world of insects. Applying his knowledge of photography to subjects just five millimeters long, Biss created a process for shooting insects in unbelievable microscopic ...

Sebastian Seung is mapping a massively ambitious new model of the brain that focuses on the connections between each neuron. He calls it our "connectome," and it's as individual as our genome -- and understanding it could open a new way to understand our brains and our minds.

These TED Talks push us to question more -- our doctors, our governments and even our own eyes.

Listening to Bobby McFerrin sing may be hazardous to your preconceptions. Side effects may include unparalleled joy, a new perspective on creativity, rejection of the predictable, and a sudden, irreversible urge to lead a more spontaneous existence.

Explore the emotional landscape of life and identify those hard to define feelings with these fascinating talks.

In this rare clip from 1972, legendary psychiatrist and Holocaust-survivor Viktor Frankl delivers a powerful message about the human search for meaning -- and the most important gift we can give others.

About this talk: Natalie Gunn makes a case for thinking of our minds and bodies as a continuum rather than a duality. She’s especially intrigued by how this continuum may relate to cancer and whether our mindset has an impact the disease. Natalie argues that we have to take the question seriously: “We need to investigate how a disease of the bod...

Modern technology lets neuroscientists peer into the human brain, but can it also read minds? Armed with the device known as an electroencephalogram, or EEG, and some computing wizardry, our intrepid neuroscientists attempt to peer into a subject's thoughts.

Developmental behavior studies spearheaded by Laura Schulz are changing our notions of how children learn.