On the coast of Northern Ireland, a vast plateau of basalt slabs and columns called the Giant's Causeway stretches into the ocean. The scientific explanation for this is that it's the result of molten lava contracting and fracturing as...

When TED Fellow Xavier Vilalta was commissioned to create a multistory shopping mall in Addis Ababa, he panicked. Other centers represented everything he hated about contemporary architecture: wasteful, glass towers requiring tons of...

Genitals are the fastest-evolving organs in the animal kingdom. But why is this so? And what's the point of having decorative private parts? Menno Schilthuizen explains how the evolutionary biology of nature's nether regions uncovers a...

Five billion people can't use the internet. Aleph Molinari empowers digitally excluded people, by giving them access to computers and sharing the know-how to use them.

Geckos aren't covered in adhesives or hooks or suction cups, and yet they can effortlessly scale vertical walls and hang from ceilings. What's going on? Eleanor Nelsen explains how geckos' phenomenal feet allow them to defy gravity.

Ever wonder what it'd be like to have a whale as a house? Wonder no more after you watch this episode of SciShow!

We've collected all the episodes we've done over the years answering questions about water. Pour yourself a glass before diving into this watery compilation!

Clay Shirky looks at "cognitive surplus" -- the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy editing Wikipedia, posting to Ushahidi (and yes, making LOLcats), we're building a better, more cooperative world.

We're heading for a world population of 10 billion people -- but what will we all eat? Lisa Dyson rediscovered an idea developed by NASA in the 1960s for deep-space travel, and it could be a key to reinventing how we grow food.

Bladeless fans can look like magic. How does all that air come out of that empty ring?! Well, it turns out that bladeless fans are more like a conventional fan than you might think, but that doesn't mean there isn't some really cool...

We don't have to live in a world where 99 percent of rapists get away with it, says TED Fellow Jessica Ladd. With Callisto, a new platform for college students to confidentially report sexual assault, Ladd is helping survivors get the...

Technology architect Fadi Chehade helped set up the infrastructure that makes the internet work -- essential things like the domain name system and IP address standards. Today he's focused on finding ways for society to benefit from...

Google's "Jolly Good Fellow," Chade-Meng Tan, talks about how the company practices compassion in its everyday business -- and its bold side projects.

Deep inside Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library lies a 240 page tome. Recently carbon dated to around 1420, its pages feature looping handwriting and hand drawn images seemingly stolen from a dream. It is called the Voynich...

When the dotcom bubble burst, hotelier Chip Conley went in search of a business model based on happiness. In an old friendship with an employee and in the wisdom of a Buddhist king, he learned that success comes from what you count.

Calling them "our bodies' own repair kits," Susan Solomon advocates research using lab-grown stem cells. By growing individual pluripotent stem cell lines, her team creates testbeds that could accelerate research into curing diseases --...

We can evolve bacteria, plants and animals -- futurist Juan enriquez asks: Is it ethical to evolve the human body? In a visionary talk that ranges from medieval prosthetics to present day neuroengineering and genetics, enriquez sorts out...

The record for the fastest thing ever created by humans is a tie between the Helios 2 probe and a manhole cover.

The chemistry behind film photography is pretty fascinating. How do film cameras help us turn light into a physical image?

Today we're going to talk about SPAAAAAACE, but not like stars and satellites and stuff. Instead, we're going to talk about geographic space. In geography, we can look at the world and the places and spaces we inhabit with four distinct...

Keith Kirkland is developing wearable tech that communicates information using only the sense of touch. He's trying to figure out: What gestures and vibration patterns could intuitively communicate ideas like "stop" or "go"? Check out...

As an expert on cutting-edge digital displays, Mary Lou Jepsen studies how to show our most creative ideas on screens. And as a brain surgery patient herself, she is driven to know more about the neural activity that underlies invention,...

Paul Andersen answers the following question: How do organisms grow and develop?

Architecture can bring people together, or divide them -- witness the skyscraper, costly, inefficient, and only serving small portions of the community. At TEDxPortofSpain, Mark Raymond encourages city governments to let go of their old...