In your brain the right side controls the left half of your body and vice versa. We still aren't sure why this is, but some scientists have come up with a pretty bizarre explanation: that some ancient vertebrate ancestor was born with...

"Life comes at us very quickly, and what we need to do is take that amorphous flow of experience and somehow extract meaning from it." In this funny, enlightening talk, educational psychologist Peter Doolittle details the importance --...

Only four species in the cat family can roar: lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars. And zoologists are pretty sure those four species can't purr. But why?

Whether it's a car in the background of Braveheart or the inconsistent cliff in Jurassic Park, movies tend to have mistakes. Why don't we notice them more often?

Having feelings isn't a sign of weakness -- they mean we're human, says producer and activist Nikki Webber Allen. Even after being diagnosed with anxiety and depression, Webber Allen felt too ashamed to tell anybody, keeping her...

How can cities help save the future? Alex Steffen shows some cool neighborhood-based green projects that expand our access to things we want and need -- while reducing the time we spend in cars.

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...

Scientists have worked out how likely it is that distant planets can see earth, and we are learning new ways to study the magnetic fields of galaxies.

Everyone has their own opinion as to whether or not aliens exist. But let's assume they do for a second and we wanted to let them know we're here!!!! How should we signal our species' existence through the expanse of space? There are a...

Graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister takes the audience on a whimsical journey through moments of his life that made him happy -- and notes how many of these moments have to do with good design.

For sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor, the ocean is more than a muse -- it's an exhibition space and museum. Taylor creates sculptures of human forms and mundane life on land and sinks them to the ocean floor, where they are subsumed by the...

It's been a year since astronomer Tabetha Boyaijan found strange signals coming from a star called KIC 8462852, aka Tabby's Star. Now, new research shows that it's even stranger than we thought. Plus, good news from spaceflight company...

Would you negotiate with someone you knew to be evil, to save lives? Samantha Power tells a story of a complicated hero, Sergio Vieira de Mello. This UN diplomat walked a thin moral line, negotiating with the world's worst dictators to...

Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools. With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around...

While living and working as a marine biologist in Maldives, Charles Anderson noticed sudden explosions of dragonflies at certain times of year. He explains how he carefully tracked the path of a plain, little dragonfly called the globe...

How is the chemical energy of gasoline transformed into kinetic energy of a moving car? And where does that kinetic energy go when the car crashes into something and stops moving?

What if super speed wasn't just the stuff of epic comic book stories? Is it scientifically possible to be super speedy? In this series, Joy Lin tackles six superpowers and reveals just how scientifically realistic they can be to us mere...

Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA -- in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where "the drive-thrus are...

Filmmaker Deborah Scranton talks about and shows clips from her documentary The War Tapes, which puts cameras in the hands of soldiers fighting in Iraq.

Artist Neil Harbisson was born completely color blind, but these days a device attached to his head turns color into audible frequencies. Instead of seeing a world in grayscale, Harbisson can hear a symphony of color -- and yes, even...

At this school in Tokyo, five-year-olds cause traffic jams and windows are for Santa to climb into. Meet: the world's cutest kindergarten, designed by architect Takaharu Tezuka. In this charming talk, he walks us through a design process...

This week, an update on Dawn's rendezvous with Ceres, a changing of the guard on the ISS, and a viewer's guide to this year's solar eclipse!

We make millions of online purchases daily, but who (or what) actually puts our items into packages? In this talk, Mick Mountz weaves a fascinating, surprisingly robot-filled tale of what happens inside a warehouse.

Paul Andersen describes his philosophy for group size.<br/>
One is for learning, active a<br/>nd private.
Two is for teachi<br/>ng, it goes both ways.
Three <br/>is for working, the jobs divided.
Four is for nothing but wasting the days.