"Punkin Chunkin" is the United State's annual contest to see whose homemade machine can hurl a pumpkin the farthest (without explosives!). Every November, thousands of amateur engineers converge on a farm in Delaware to put their...

Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Well, not always. Steven Johnson shows us how some of the most transformative ideas and technologies, like the computer, didn't emerge out of necessity at all but instead from the strange...

Try talking to yourself without opening your mouth, by simply saying words internally. What if you could search the internet like that -- and get an answer back? In the first live public demo of his new technology, TED Fellow Arnav Kapur...

In this short, amazing demo, Fabian Hemmert imagines one future of the mobile phone -- a shape-shifting and weight-shifting handset that "displays" information nonvisually. It's a delightfully intuitive way to communicate.

From the "I have a dream" speech to Steve Jobs' iPhone launch, many great talks have a common structure that helps their message resonate with listeners. In this talk, presentation expert Nancy Duarte shares practical lessons on how to...

After 14 years of going unnoticed, a vulnerability in Wi-Fi security was published last week. It's a serious problem, but it's already in the process of being fixed.

The smartphone you use reflects more than just personal taste ... it could determine how closely you can be tracked, too. Privacy expert and TED Fellow Christopher Soghoian details a glaring difference between the encryption used on...

This week we are exploring biodevices and the part they play in the healthcare world. We’ll look at the challenges of implantable biodevices, like biocompatibility, power and connectivity, packaging, structural design, delivery systems,...

Radio, Cinema, and Television have been staples in news coverage, entertainment, and education for almost 100 years. But... where did they all come from? Who started what and when and why? In this episode, Hank Green talks to us about...

The sounds of the rainforest include: the chirps of birds, the buzz of cicadas, the banter of gibbons. But in the background is the almost-always present sound of a chainsaw, from illegal loggers. Engineer Topher White shares a simple,...

Improving batteries is a tough problem, but it’s also an important one because in many ways the future of our planet also depends on the future of batteries. Luckily, scientists are on the case, figuring out ways to give this essential...

To figure out an organism's genome and DNA sequence, field biologists need big, expensive equipment in the labs. But, new high-tech devices help scientists to examine samples on the sites!

As cinema started to take off, things like "single viewer" devices weren't going to cut it as the medium advanced. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig talks to us about the Lumiere brothers, their invention of the...

Have you ever wondered why 75% humidity in the summer feels sticky, but 75% humidity in the winter feels super dry? Turns out, the common definition of humidity is inconvenient and confusing. But there is a better way!

Humans have long known that glass bends light. However, it took us awhile to figure out that stacking lenses in a tube would open up a whole new world to science, finally allowing us a peek at the microscopic.

Today, we're going to take a look at a seemingly cutting-edge technology that has actually been around for decades - virtual reality. Virtual reality devices have been introduced multiple times in the video game era, but they never seem...

Once your smart devices can talk to you, who else are they talking to? Kashmir Hill and Surya Mattu wanted to find out -- so they outfitted Hill's apartment with 18 different internet-connected devices and built a special router to track...

Astronauts need to know their mass while in orbit, but a normal scale would be free-falling around the Earth with them. So how do they measure their mass without gravity?

Mining unobtainium is hard work _ the rare mineral appears in only 1% of rocks in the mine. But your friend Tricky Joe has something up his sleeve. The unobtainium detector he's been perfecting for months is finally ready, and it returns...

Humans have long known that glass bends light. However, it took us awhile to figure out that stacking lenses in a tube would open up a whole new world to science, finally allowing us a peek at the microscopic.

You're being watched. That sounded more sinister than I intended, but online, it's true. Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Netflix... the list goes on and on. They're watching what you do, what you shop for, what you watch... all of it. And...

If you want to improve your wireless internet signal, we've got a few things to keep in mind.

Imagine trying to use words to describe every scene in a film, every note in a song, or every street in your town. Now imagine trying to do it using only the numbers 1 and 0. Every time you use the Internet to watch a movie, listen to...

The latest and greatest gadget from Apple, the Watch Series 4, has doubled down on the health monitoring game, and is sporting an electrocardiogram, or ECG, function. But how useful is this thing? Does it make sense to monitor lots of...