What if you never had to fill out paperwork again? In Estonia, this is a reality: citizens conduct nearly all public services online, from starting a business to voting from their laptops, thanks to the nation's ambitious post-Soviet...

Tour the deep dark world of the East German state security agency known as Stasi. Uniquely powerful at spying on its citizens, until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the Stasi masterminded a system of surveillance and psychological...

Government deficits have gotten a bad rap, says economist Stephanie Kelton. In this groundbreaking talk, she makes the case to stop looking at government spending as a path towards frightening piles of debt, but rather as a financial...

In which John Green teaches you about Reconstruction. After the divisive, destructive Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had a plan to reconcile the country and make it whole again. Then he got shot, Andrew Johnson took over, and the...

African growth is a trend, not a fluke, says economist and former Finance Minister of Nigeria Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. In this refreshingly candid and straightforward talk, Okonjo-Iweala describes the positive progress on the continent and...

It is the artist's job to unearth stories that people try to bury with shovels of complacency and time, says poet and freedom fighter Mwende "FreeQuency" Katwiwa. Performing her poem "The Joys of Motherhood," Katwiwa explores the...

Former Republican member of the u.S. Congress Bob Inglis shares an optimistic message about how conservatives can lead on climate change and other pressing problems -- and how free enterprise (and working together across ideologies) hold...

Robb Willer studies the forces that unite and divide us. As a social psychologist, he researches how moral values -- typically a source of division -- can also be used to bring people together. Willer shares compelling insights on how we...

* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Ghanaian economist George Ayittey unleashes a torrent of controlled anger toward corrupt leaders in Africa -- and...

Hacking, fake news, information bubbles ... all these and more have become part of the vernacular in recent years. But as cyberspace analyst Laura Galante describes in this alarming talk, the real target of anyone looking to influence...

During the financial crisis, the central banks of the United States, United Kingdom and Japan created $3.7 trillion in order to buy assets and encourage investors to do the same. Michael Metcalfe offers a shocking idea: could these same...

Only one in nine people in the united States gets the care and treatment they need for addiction and substance abuse. A former Director of National Drug Control Policy, Michael Botticelli is working to end this epidemic and treat people...

When historians talk about the atrocities of the 20th century, we often think of those that took place during and between the two World Wars. But two months before the Rape of Nanking in China, and a year before Kristallnacht in Germany,...

Long conflict can wreck a country, leaving behind poverty and chaos. But what's the right way to help war-torn countries rebuild? At TED@State, Paul Collier explains the problems with current post-conflict aid plans, and suggests 3 ideas...

If you've watched the news or followed politics, chances are you've heard the term Orwellian thrown around in one context or another. But have you ever stopped to think about what it really means, or why it's used so often? Noah Tavlin...

In the uS, the press has a right to publish secret information the public needs to know, protected by the First Amendment. Government surveillance has made it increasingly more dangerous for whistleblowers, the source of virtually every...

In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, protests and unrest continued continued across Europe, and the Soviet Union was having increasing trouble holding its sphere of influence together. Today you'll learn about the labor strikes of...

Will the future of space exploration be guided by public or private entities? Which is better?

What's stopping the American government from recording your phone calls, reading your emails and monitoring your location? Very little, says surveillance and cybersecurity counsel Jennifer Granick. The government collects all kinds of...

Nobody really knows how much it would cost to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Yet historian Yuval Noah Harari's analysis, based on the work of scientists and economists, indicates that humanity might avert catastrophe by...

Today from SciShow World News Headquarters (Hank's office) - news about radiation risks, the most hi-def astronomy ever, and the truth about aquatic humanoids.

In 1882, the United States Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first federal law that restricted immigration based explicitly on nationality. In practice, the Act banned entry to all ethnically Chinese immigrants besides...

We're building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time, says techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. In an eye-opening talk, she details how the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get...

Why do we turn to nonprofits, NGOs and governments to solve society's biggest problems? Michael Porter admits he's biased, as a business school professor, but he wants you to hear his case for letting business try to solve massive...