Businesses have the resources to make contributions to the collective good. Here, TED Talks on what can happen when corporations make saving the environment and helping people a priority, plus talks on how business principles might even be more effective for creating change than non-profit models.

Want to join the fight for equality? A starter pack of TED Talks for those looking to understand the basics of social justice.

You’ll want to think about how to utilize the space outside of your main stage area, so that your guests can also have a comfortable (and even stimulating) experience when they’re not in their seat. Social spaces for your event Here are some things to consider when designing the space that exists outside of the main stage: Create a layout of t...

Social media is an undeniable force in today's world. These talks highlight its impact -- from big history-defining moments to the silliness we’ve come to expect.

One of the big goals of a TEDx event is to spark conversation – and this shouldn’t be exclusive to your live event! Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are vibrant online forums for your guests and others to discuss the topics and ideas you’ll be sharing before, during, and after your event. Plus, it’s one of the most effective ways to ...

Great, practical advice on ways to responsibly invest (time, money, and even your company's data) for the good of our global society.

These photographers capture beautiful and sometimes sobering images, using their art to help fight for social justice.

Educator and activist Geoffrey Canada chose a powerful list of favorites — talks that address the cycles of poverty and gender violence, and offer bold suggestions for change.

The Audacious Project is TED's collaborative experiment to put bold ideas for social change into action. Learn more at AudaciousProject.org.

Columnist David Brooks unpacks new insights into human nature from the cognitive sciences -- insights with massive implications for economics and politics as well as our own self-knowledge. In a talk full of humor, he shows how you can't hope to understand humans as separate individuals making choices based on their conscious awareness.

With the advent of the Internet and social media, news is distributed at an incredible rate by an unprecedented number of different media outlets. How do we choose which news to consume? Damon Brown gives the inside scoop on how the opinions and facts (and sometimes non-facts) make their way into the news and how the smart reader can tell them a...

Attention: everybody wants some -- social media, tech companies and more. Watch these talks to better understand the ways these entities try and get on your radar.

Here's a stat worth knowing: In the UK, 63% of men who finish short-term prison sentences are back inside within a year for another crime. Helping them stay outside involves job training, classes, therapy. And it would pay off handsomely -- but the government can't find the funds. Toby Eccles shares an imaginative idea for how to change that: th...

After mapping humans' intricate social networks, Nicholas Christakis and colleague James Fowler began investigating how this information could better our lives. Now, he reveals his hot-off-the-press findings: These networks can be used to detect epidemics earlier than ever, from the spread of innovative ideas to risky behaviors to viruses (like ...

Alleviating poverty is more guesswork than science, and lack of data on aid's impact raises questions about how to provide it. But Clark Medal-winner Esther Duflo says it's possible to know which development efforts help and which hurt -- by testing solutions with randomized trials.

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.

Does quitting social media make you an unemployable Luddite? Computer scientist Dr. Cal Newport doesn't think so. In this eye-opening talk, he debunks three objections commonly offered up as rationale for keeping that all-important Facebook account.

On this episode of ZigZag, host Manoush Zomorodi is joined by Eric Ries, who went from writing Silicon Valley's bible to building a stock market for social justice. Together, they examine why quarterly earnings reports cause anti-social behavior and how a new stock exchange in the US might present a systemic solution. As Eric says, this "will se...

We're all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits -- from happiness to obesity -- can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don't even know.

Insights and advice to escaping the echo chambers of social media, newsfeeds, and everyday conversation so that we may get a better, less rose-tinted grasp of the world and people around us.

Bryan Kramer believes that social media is so popular because it allows us to control our personal brand: aligning the perceptions others have of us with our perception of ourselves. Concluding with a live Twitter experiment to test the true reach that sharing can have, he makes a case for the use of social media, and -- in the process -- illumi...

Susan Etlinger promotes the smart, well-considered and ethical use of data.

Sociologist and philosopher Renata Salecl scrutinizes our individual and societal neuroses, and suggests ways out of our current paralysis.

Toby Eccles has created a radical financial instrument that helps private investors contribute to solving thorny public problems.

As the director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland, Jennifer Golbeck studies how people use social media -- and thinks about ways to improve their interactions.

Wendy Woods reveals the powerful impact of collective cooperation in the social sector. Using examples of different NGOs, each one working independently to eradicate malaria, she explains how an individualistic approach reduced their efforts and resulted in fatal inefficiencies -- and what happened when they finally aligned their overall mission.

Courtney E. Martin’s work has two obsessions at its core: storytelling and solutions.

While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.

MacArthur winner Sendhil Mullainathan uses the lens of behavioral economics to study a tricky set of social problems -- those we know how to solve, but don't. We know how to reduce child deaths due to diarrhea, how to prevent diabetes-related blindness and how to implement solar-cell technology ... yet somehow, we don't or can't. Why?

Sarah Corbett does activism in a quiet, humble and intriguing way using handicrafts.