For those times when living a life far beyond our planet looks a little too appealing.

Statistician Nic Marks asks why we measure a nation's success by its productivity -- instead of by the happiness and well-being of its people. He introduces the Happy Planet Index, which tracks national well-being against resource use (because a happy life doesn't have to cost the earth). Which countries rank highest in the HPI? You might be sur...

Learn all the hubbub going on with the big Red Planet in these insightful and utterly fascinating talks.

Humanity's increasingly permanent mark on the planet has spurred a new geological age in earth's history: the Anthropocene. Learn how we got to this point -- and what our footprint means to the future of the planet.

Forget the rest of solar system -- Mars is humanity's next destination. We keep talking about it, but what would it really be like to live there?

There's something special about our busy, blue marble of a planet. These talks explore why we should make strides to preserve our shared, galactic home.

Master architects share their vision for buildings that inflate, float, twist and glitter, while artfully addressing the challenges faced by their residents, their cities and the planet.

We all share one planet -- we breathe the same air, drink the same water and depend on the same oceans, forests and biodiversity. Economist Naoko Ishii is on a mission to protect these shared resources, known as the global commons, that are vital for our survival. In an eye-opening talk about the wellness of the planet, Ishii outlines four econo...

"Venus is too hot, Mars is too cold, and Earth is just right," says planetary scientist Dave Brain. But why? In this pleasantly humorous talk, Brain explores the fascinating science behind what it takes for a planet to host life -- and why humanity may just be in the right place at the right time when it comes to the timeline of life-sustaining ...

Sure, we're looking beyond the planet to other worlds we may one day inhabit -- but a lot of this technology we've developed can be used for the good of the Earth, too.

Here's a question we all have to answer sooner or later: What do you want to happen to your body when you die? Funeral director Caitlin Doughty explores new ways to prepare us for inevitable mortality. In this thoughtful talk, learn more about ideas for burial (like "recomposting" and "conservation burial") that return our bodies back to the ear...

Our planet is a wonder, a perfectly improbable incubator for life. It’s also in danger because of our indifference. Reflections on both those truths.

Oceanographer Penny Chisholm introduces us to an amazing little being: Prochlorococcus, the most abundant photosynthetic species on the planet. A marine microbe that has existed for millions of years, Prochlorococcus wasn't discovered until the mid-1980s -- but its ancient genetic code may hold clues to how we can reduce our dependence on fossil...

Forget the latest disease in the news: Cardiovascular disease kills more people than everything else combined -- and it’s mostly preventable. Dr. Dean Ornish explains how changing our eating habits can save lives.

Spoken word artist IN-Q poetically captures the urgency of climate change in his original spoken word poem, "Movie Stars." He urges us to take ownership of the Earth and the damage we've committed, and ends with a call to action: "One little dot is all that we've got," says IN-Q. "We just forgot that none of it's ours; we just forgot that all of...

Did you know that one of the most notorious poisons is also a key ingredient for life as we know it? Join space chemist Karin Öberg and learn how she scans the universe in search of this paradoxical chemical using ALMA, the world's largest radio telescope, to detect hotbeds of molecular activity and the formation of life-sustaining planets.

Consider the spot where you're sitting. Travel backwards in time and it might've been submerged at the bottom of a shallow sea, buried under miles of rock or floating through a molten landscape. But go back about 4.6 billion years, and you'd be in the middle of an enormous cloud of dust and gas orbiting a newborn star. What exactly is this cosmi...

We have archives of films, newspapers, even seeds -- what if we could make one for the entire surface of the earth? Drawing on his experience mapping an ancient city in the Honduran jungle, archaeologist Chris Fisher makes the case for scanning the whole planet with LiDAR -- a technology that uses lasers shot from an airplane to map the ground -...

All our manufacturing currently takes place on Earth and, as a result, all its harmful byproducts and wasteful processes end up wreaking Earthbound havoc. In this forward-thinking talk, James Orsulak argues that the fix is to move manufacturing operations off-planet, using automated labor to mine resources and perform all those ecosystem-destabi...

Given the option, few would choose to buy products that harm the earth -- yet it's nearly impossible to know how most consumer goods are made or where they're sourced from. That's about to change, says supply chain innovator Markus Mutz. He shares how he used blockchain technology to track Patagonian toothfish on their journey from ocean to dinn...

Could the strange orbits of small, distant objects in our solar system lead us to a big discovery? Planetary astronomer Mike Brown proposes the existence of a new, giant planet lurking in the far reaches of our solar system -- and shows us how traces of its presence might already be staring us in the face.

Is Earth really the only life-sustaining planet? These speakers think there might just be something or someone else out there -- and urge us to keep looking for it.

How do we find planets -- even habitable planets -- around other stars? By looking for tiny dimming as a planet passes in front of its sun, TED Fellow Lucianne Walkowicz and the Kepler mission have found some 1,200 potential new planetary systems. With new techniques, they may even find ones with the right conditions for life.

The climate crisis could destroy our entire cultural and ecological heritage in a matter of decades – how can we document everything before it disappears? Archaeologist Chris Fisher explains how we could scan the surface of the Earth, not just as a record for future generations, but as a tool to fight climate change.

"We start this new decade knowing that it is the most consequential period in history," says Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy's "Moonshot," he calls on us all to rise to our greatest challenge ever: the "Earthshot." A set of ambitious objectives for the planet, the Earthshot goals seek to protect and r...

What is nature? Follow the camera's eye to many stunning places on the planet -- from the African veldt to the Amazon rainforest to the teeming world under the Arctic ice.

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 ...

Legendary primatologist Jane Goodall says that humanity's survival depends on conservation of the natural world. In conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson, she tells the story of her formative days working with chimpanzees, how she transformed from a revered naturalist into a dedicated activist and how she's empowering communities around t...

"For the first time, we are forced to consider the real risk of destabilizing the entire planet," says climate impact scholar Johan Rockström. In a talk backed by vivid animations of the climate crisis, he shows how nine out of the 15 big biophysical systems that regulate the climate -- from the permafrost of Siberia to the great forests of the ...

We've all heard the theories on why the dinosaurs died -- but how did they come to dominate the earth for so long in the first place? (Hint: it has nothing to do with their size, speed, spikes or fantastic feathers.) Travel back in time to 200 million years before their extinction with paleontologist Emma Schachner for a breath of fresh air on d...