Easy, straightforward techniques to jumpstart innovative thinking and surface new, brilliant ideas.

There are several ways to help artists: showing up to events, spreading the word ... (and yes, money does help, too).

Like all of us, economist Tyler Cowen loves a good story. But in this intriguing talk, he asks us to step away from thinking of our lives -- and our messy, complicated irrational world -- in terms of a simple narrative.

A simple ode to joy and the light it brings.

Myriam Sidibe is a warrior in the fight against childhood disease. Her weapon of choice? A bar of soap. For cost-effective prevention against sickness, it’s hard to beat soapy hand-washing, which cuts down risk of pneumonia, diarrhea, cholera and worse. Sidibe, a public-health expert, makes a smart case for public-private partnerships to promote...

Simple solutions are often best, even when dealing with something as complicated as Parkinson's. In this inspiring talk, Mileha Soneji shares accessible designs that make the everyday tasks of those living with Parkinson's a bit easier. "Technology is not always it," she says. "What we need are human-centered solutions."

Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more than 2 million children a year in the developing world. MIT engineer Amy Smith details an exciting but simple solution: a tool for turning farm waste into clean-burning charcoal.

In a talk that's part history lesson, part love letter to graphics, information designer Tommy McCall traces the centuries-long evolution of charts and diagrams -- and shows how complex data can be sculpted into beautiful shapes. "Graphics that help us think faster, or see a book's worth of information on a single page, are the key to unlocking ...

Adam Savage walks through two spectacular examples of profound scientific discoveries that came from simple, creative methods anyone could have followed -- Eratosthenes' calculation of the Earth's circumference around 200 BC and Hippolyte Fizeau's measurement of the speed of light in 1849.

Some simple (and honestly sort of scary) ways we can potentially prolong the human life.

Jimmy Lin is developing technologies to catch cancer months to years before current methods. He shares a breakthrough technique that looks for small signals of cancer's presence via a simple blood test, detecting the recurrence of some forms of the disease 100 days earlier than traditional methods. It could be a ray of hope in a fight where earl...

Children who live in rural areas can have a hard time getting to the doctor -- much less to an audiologist's clinic for expensive, complex tests to check their hearing. The result for too many kids is hearing loss caused by ear infections and other curable or preventable problems. That's why ear surgeon and TED Fellow Susan Emmett is working wit...

60% of people with dementia wander off, an issue that can prove hugely stressful for both patients and caregivers. In this charming talk, hear how teen inventor Kenneth Shinozuka came up with a novel solution to help his night-wandering grandfather and the aunt who looks after him ... and how he hopes to help others with Alzheimer's.

Too busy to take care of yourself? These talks offer simple ways to stay healthy -- both emotionally and physically.

TED Fellow Zubaida Bai works with medical professionals, midwives and mothers to bring dignity and low-cost interventions to women's health care. In this quick, inspiring talk, she presents her clean birth kit in a purse, which contains everything a new mother needs for a hygienic birth and a healthy delivery -- no matter where in the world (or ...

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

There's a farming crisis no one is talking about: The world is running out of phosphorus, an essential element that's a key component of DNA and the basis of cellular communication. As biologist Mohamed Hijri shows, all roads of this crisis lead back to how we farm -- with chemical fertilizers chock-full of the element, which plants are not effi...

Can we break bad habits by being more curious about them? Psychiatrist Judson Brewer studies the relationship between mindfulness and addiction -- from smoking to overeating to all those other things we do even though we know they're bad for us. Learn more about the mechanism of habit development and discover a simple but profound tactic that mi...

While it may not be simple or easy, these fascinating talks make aerospace engineering a little more accessible to the average person.

Time is measured in seconds, minutes and hours. But these talks show it isn't always so simple.

These speakers offer beautiful, sweeping, simple life advice — the kind to tuck in the back of your mind and let inspire you onward.

About this talk: If you’re diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, your treatment would be no more effective today than on the day of its discovery … in 1872. Why has progress treating brain diseases been so slow? After 20 years of research, neuroscientist James Kozloski has come to a startling conclusion: Scientists are thinking too small. He look...

Science educator Arvind Gupta uses simple toys to teach.

These speakers — all under 21 when they gave their talks — have big ideas for our health. Meet young people who are taking on cancer, asthma, injuries, even Alzheimer’s with a bold new approach.

Imagine a set of electronics as easy to play with as Legos. TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir introduces littleBits, a set of simple, interchangeable blocks that make programming as simple and important a part of creativity as snapping blocks together.

Jorge Soto is helping develop a simple, noninvasive test that identifies cancer.

For foreigners, learning to speak Chinese is a hard task. But learning to read the beautiful, often complex characters of the Chinese written language may be less difficult. ShaoLan walks through a simple lesson in recognizing the ideas behind the characters and their meaning -- building from a few simple forms to more complex concepts. Call it ...

Alzheimer’s and dementia are a heart-breaking reality for millions across the world. Find out what inventors and scientists on the cutting edge of medical research are doing to combat this neurological puzzle.

How the simple button changed the world, according to fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi.

Physicist Geoffrey West believes that complex systems from organisms to cities are in many ways governed by simple laws -- laws that can be discovered and analyzed.