Insightful TED Talks to help guide you on your journey to healthier, stronger relationships with others — and yourself.

These talks examine where (and how) relationships and love factor into our technologically-driven world.

These talks can help guide you in nurturing close, meaningful bonds with a long-distance partner, family, a new acquaintance or anyone in between.

Our hyper-connected lives have been rewired for the digital age. These talks explore how the Internet and social media are shaping our relationships, personal lives and sense of self.

When personal relationships and ideological differences collide, the result can lead to strained relations -- or even years of silence and distance. Actor Betty Hart offers an alternative to cold shoulders and haughty hellos: compassion, and a chance for growth and change instead of losing important time with loved ones.

An idea permeates our modern view of relationships: that men and women have always paired off in sexually exclusive relationships. But before the dawn of agriculture, humans may actually have been quite promiscuous. Author Christopher Ryan walks us through the controversial evidence that human beings are sexual omnivores by nature, in hopes that...

Wendy Troxel looks at the cultural expectations that pressure couples into sharing a bed and why some relationships would benefit from sleeping separately. This talk was filmed at TEDxManhattanBeach. All TEDx events are organized independently by volunteers in the spirit of TED's mission of ideas worth spreading. To learn more about TEDxSHORTS, ...

How can an established company maintain a startup mentality? Intrapreneur Shoel Perelman argues that first it must retain its internal rebels. To do so, Perelman suggests a system inspired by online dating that matches rebels from big companies with small companies that need their skills and keeps the entrepreneurial spirit alive in the biggest ...

Robots reflect their creators: Us. Counterintuitive and insightful, these robots show us glimmers into what it means to be human.

Related or not, living under the same roof can be tough.

In a tech-obsessed culture, it can be difficult to build genuine relationships with people, especially in the workplace. Robert Reffkin shares his tips and tricks for establishing authentic connections on the job.

Hilary Cottam wants to redesign the welfare state using the power of relationships.

No matter how long you've been together, it never hurts to have a little refresher course on what really matters.

Believe it or not, it's often difficult to get people to claim abandoned funds, whether from a forgotten savings account, an uncashed check or a long-ago refund. Why is this? Unclaimed funds manager Monica Johnson posits that, as a society, we have been sucked into a throwaway culture, where we'd rather toss aside what's ours rather than deal wi...

In our busy, technologically-driven world, we need empathy more than ever. It's, as social entrepreneur Gwen Yi Wong puts it, "the capacity to see parts of yourself in everybody else." And it all starts with showing up for the people in our lives and really listening to them.

"Being a psychologist studying empathy today is a little bit like being a climatologist studying the polar ice caps," says psychology professor Jamil Zaki. That's because according to research, our collective empathy is eroding. But there is good news: Empathy is a skill, it can be built, and he explains how he — and others — are doing just tha...

Thought-provoking talks on the ever-expanding definition of what it means to be family.

Love often feels inexplicable, the most unpredictable of forces. Using science, math and methodical observation, these speakers offer clues to understanding it.

Through her podcasts "Where Should We Begin?" and "How's Work?," psychotherapist Esther Perel is changing the conversation on the way we communicate, connect and conflict in our relationships -- at home and at work.

Who doesn't love love? A collection of talks for those who can't get enough of it.

A senior editor of science and technology reporting at TIME magazine, Jeffrey Kluger has written books on a wide range of science subjects, including the Polio vaccine, Apollo 13 and the effect of sibling relationships.

Every day, we meet people and process our interactions-- making inferences and developing beliefs about the world around us. In this lesson, Trevor Maber introduces us to the idea of a 'ladder of inference' and a process for rethinking the way we interact. [Directed by Biljana Labovic, narrated by Trevor Maber].

In long-term relationships, we often expect our beloved to be both best friend and erotic partner. But as Esther Perel argues, good and committed sex draws on two conflicting needs: our need for security and our need for surprise. So how do you sustain desire? With wit and eloquence, Perel lets us in on the mystery of erotic intelligence.

In a lyrical, unexpectedly funny talk about heavy topics such as frayed relationships and the death of a loved one, Elizabeth Lesser describes the healing process of putting aside pride and defensiveness to make way for soul-baring and truth-telling. "You don't have to wait for a life-or-death situation to clean up the relationships that matter ...

In our tech-driven, interconnected world, we've developed new ways and rules to court each other, but the fundamental principles of love have stayed the same, says anthropologist Helen Fisher. Our faster connections, she suggests, are actually leading to slower, more intimate relationships. At 12:20, couples therapist and relationship expert Est...

Should you date your coworker? Should workplace couples keep their relationships secret? And why are coworkers so often attracted to each other? Organizational psychologist Amy Nicole Baker shares the real answers to commonly asked questions about romance at the office.

Rainn Wilson is an actor, writer and co-creator of media and production company SoulPancake.

What if we could form meaningful relationships with AI? IBM designer Adam Cutler argues that we're already doing this -- we name our cars and mourn our iPhones when they break -- but imagine if we could develop a deeper emotional bond with our machines. By interpreting intent through language and pairing it with tone and semantic analysis in rea...

Some think dogs love us just like we love them; others see them as collections of instinctive behaviors incapable of complex feelings. The truth, according to animal behaviorist Julia Espinosa, lies somewhere in the middle. In this talk, she and her canine guest star Loki explain how (and why) we should challenge our assumptions about animal beh...

Cultural historian Fay Bound Alberti explains why we need to reframe our perspective of loneliness, focusing on how nostalgia and our sensory experiences could help us better understand and heal from isolation.