It's 1997. The United States Senate has called a hearing about global warming. Some expert witnesses point out that past periods in Earth's history were warmer than the 20th century. Because such variations existed long before humans, they claim the current trend is also the result of natural variation. Can you spot the problem with this argumen...

Over the last two years, a collective of composers, musicians, computer programmers, scientists and activists has set out to reinterpret Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" for a transformed world, restituting Vivaldi's score in expected climate scenarios for the year 2050. The project, titled "The [Uncertain] Four Seasons," launches November 5, 2021, ...

Betsy Kauffman helps leaders create innovative, aligned, disruptive agile organizations.

At iCarbonX, Jun Wang aims to establish a big data platform for health management.

Jonathan Eisen studies the ecology and evolution of microbial communities -- and their co-evolution with their hosts.

Russ Altman uses machine learning to better understand adverse effects of medication.

At the Simons Foundation, Wendy Chung is working to characterize behavior, brain structure and function in people with genetic variations that may relate to autism.

Heather Knight runs Marilyn Monrobot, which creates socially intelligent robot performances and sensor-based electronic art. (and she helped build the amazing Rube Goldberg machine for OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass.")

Kate Stafford's research examines migratory movements, geographic variation and physical drivers of marine mammals, particularly large whales.

Lara Durgavich brings historical context to human biology, sharing the importance of evolutionary medicine in personal life and beyond.

About this event: What we want from our participants is ”Variation”. Encounter with the outside world, stimulation, acceptance. To come into contact with a new external factor that causes a change that was not even anticipated. ”Variation" is a word that includes the meaning of such "Big change". We want the conference to be a place where participants can trigg...

Peter Donnelly is an expert in probability theory who applies statistical methods to genetic data -- spurring advances in disease treatment and insight on our evolution. He's also an expert on DNA analysis, and an advocate for sensible statistical analysis in the courtroom.

About this event: TEDxDefensie is all about the people working within the Dutch Ministery of Defence. Our speakers will amaze, inspire and encourage others to create, innovate and improve their leadership. 'Leaders develop leaders'. Unique in this event are the themes of the breaks. Break 1 'creativity'. Employees will show their artistic talents throu...

Tabetha Boyajian is best known for her research on KIC 8462852, a puzzling celestial body that has inspired otherwise sober scientists to brainstorm outlandish hypotheses.

Steve McCarroll is conducting groundbreaking research on the causes of mental illness.

Dee Boersma considers penguins ocean sentinels, helping us understand the effects of pollution, overfishing and climate change on the marine environment.

Cheryl Hayashi studies the delicate but terrifically strong silk threads that make up a spider's web, finding startling applications for human use.

After watching the collection of talks on The Deep Ocean, read a thoughtful recap of the major points in this TED Study, and learn where experts believe things are headed. Where next? TED speaker Robert Ballard and many other scientists and ocean explorers find it remarkable that we're expending so much effort to explore outer space when we have...

About this event: The universe has no fixed flow. Once you make any decision, it works its way around that. There is no right or wrong, only a series of possibilities that shift with each thought, feeling, and action that you experience and as life is a complex formula formed up of very simple elemental decisions, which in turn creates a universe of bottomless co...

Since "Awakenings" stormed the bestseller lists (and the silver screen), Oliver Sacks has become an unlikely household name, single-handedly inventing the genre of neurological anthropology.

A self-described "radical, queer, emotionally driven, instinct-based concept artist and thinker," Machine Dazzle creates costumes and theater sets that push the boundaries of craft and identity.

You may be overflowing with talent and ideas, but you won’t start making an impact unless you step up and stand out, says political commentator Symone D. Sanders. This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community. To see all the posts, go here. ...

Written by the educator who created What Makes Us Human?, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in his field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material. As a biological anthropologist, I never liked drawing sharp distinctions between human and non-human. Such boundaries ma...

Growing old in traditional societies Jared Diamond is the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, which was a provocative answer to the question of why Europe dominated the world for much of recent history. More recently, he has written The World Before Yesterday, an investigation of traditional societies, and what the modern world might le...

About this event: Turtles are reptiles characterized by a special shell developed from their ribs, acting as a shield. The earliest known turtles dates from 157 million years ago making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than snakes and crocodiles. Currently there are 327 known Turtle-species.    TEDx Venlo got inspired by the story...

By Keith Chen How are China, Estonia and Germany different from India, Greece and the UK? To an economist, one answer is obvious: savings rates. Germans save 10 percentage points more than the British do (as a fraction of GDP), while Estonians and Chinese save a whopping 20 percentage points more than Greeks and Indians. Economists think a lo...

If you could ask a stranger any question, what would it be? This is the question Davy Rothbart set out to answer when he embarked on a nationwide tour to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his magazine, Found. Rothbart -- a writer, reporter and documentary filmmaker known for his curiosity about other people’s lives -- traveled across North A...

Anyone who has appreciated a meditative mental drift while knitting or mowing a lawn knows that there is something calming about engaging in a familiar, low-impact activity that requires minimal thought and bestows a clear sense of progress. That goes at least some of the way toward explaining the immense appeal of adult coloring books, which no...

Watch Andreas Schleicher's TED Talk >> "Learning is not a place, it's an activity," says Andreas Schleicher. He heads up the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment, also known as PISA, and he's here to make the case that international comparisons of education systems can help to raise the global bar for students and l...

Philippa Neave is senior advisor on the UN's Lexicon of Electoral Terminology.