In the year leading up to this talk, the web tool Twitter exploded in size (up 10x during 2008 alone). Co-founder Evan Williams reveals that many of the ideas driving that growth came from unexpected uses invented by the users themselves.

A mountain separating two lakes. A room papered floor to ceiling with bridal satins. The lid of an immense snuffbox. These seemingly unrelated images take us on a tour of a sperm whale's head in Herman Melville's "Moby Dick." Though the...

At Serious Play 2008, astrophysicist George Smoot shows stunning new images from deep-space surveys, and prods us to ponder how the cosmos -- with its giant webs of dark matter and mysterious gaping voids -- got built this way.

Evan Grant demonstrates the science and art of cymatics, a process for making soundwaves visible. Useful for analyzing complex sounds (like dolphin calls), it also makes complex and beautiful designs.

In this touching talk, Ash Beckham offers a fresh approach to empathy and openness. It starts with understanding that everyone, at some point in their life, has experienced hardship. The only way out, says Beckham, is to open the door...

Null results often get a bad rap, sometimes characterized as a study "finding nothing," but there's a lot we can learn from studies whose results fail to support their hypotheses.

Can we ever achieve absolute cold?

You or someone you know may have struggled to get a cowlick to just stay down already, but you can take solace in the fact that these inconvenient hair tufts have a lot to teach us about the world around us.

What does it mean when a virus is airborne? It turns out it's more than just what comes out when you sneeze

Hank talks about how your toilet is actually one of the cleanest places in your house, despite its function. Research has shown that cutting boards, dish towels and sponges have FAR more fecal bacteria on them than your toilet seat,...

A bump on the head, a mysterious femme fatale and a strange encounter on a windswept peak all add up to a heck of a night for Manny Brot, Private Eye. Watch as he tries his hand at saving the dame and getting the cash! Shudder at the...

Using simple, delightful illustrations, designer Stefan Sagmeister shares his latest thinking on happiness -- both the conscious and unconscious kind. His seven rules for life and design happiness can (with some customizations) apply to...

The majority of the universe is made up of a currently mysterious entity that pervades space: dark energy. We don’t know exactly what it is, but we do know that dark energy accelerates the expansion of space. We think this means the...

Maybe you'd like to just hear about one topic for a while. We understand. So today, let's just watch some videos about Matter. What is matter? What are particles? And why is this important to know? Did you know that coal can turn into...

You might have heard that playing violent video games makes people more aggressive, but is it true or is it just a myth?

In politics, representation matters -- and that's why we should elect leaders who reflect their country's diversity and embrace its multicultural tapestry, says Sayu Bhojwani. Through her own story of becoming an American citizen, the...

My open letter to the universe.

Gill Hicks's story is one of compassion and humanity, emerging from the ashes of chaos and hate. A survivor of the London terrorist bombings on July 7, 2005, she shares her story of the events of that day -- and the profound lessons that...

Swallowing pills to get medication is a quick, painless and often not entirely effective way of treating disease. A potentially better way? Lasers. In this passionate talk, TED Fellow Patience Mthunzi explains her idea to use lasers to...

Over the last few years astronomers have been doing more and more research based on string theory, and thanks to modern telescopes the results are... less than encouraging

Have you ever seen static electricity cause a spark of light? What is that spark? What about lightning, the Northern Lights, or the tail of a comet? All of those things and many others _ in fact, 99.9% of the universe -- are made of...

Zebras and horses are very similar - so why do we only ride one but not the other?

In this video Paul Andersen explains why light is important in probing matter. Light travels in photons and the energy of individual photons is determined by Planck's equation. Infrared spectroscopy is useful in detecting the...

In this video Paul Andersen explains how matter can act as a wave at the nanoscale. Louis de Broglie showed that the wavelength of matter can be calculated using the momentum of an object and Planck's constant. The Davisson-Germer...