Every year, ocean levels rise and high tides flood the low-lying Marshall Islands in the Pacific, destroying homes, salinating water supplies and disrupting livelihoods. In a stirring poem and talk, youth climate warrior Selina Neirok...

Reading and stories can be an escape from real life, a window into another world -- but have you ever considered how new fictional experiences might change your perspective on real, everyday life? From Pride and Prejudice to Harry...

In this short, optimistic talk from TED2009, Pete Alcorn shares a vision of the world of two centuries from now -- when declining populations and growing opportunity prove Malthus was wrong.

Economics PhD Sebastião Salgado only took up photography in his 30s, but the discipline became an obsession. His years-long projects beautifully capture the human side of a global story that all too often involves death, destruction or...

Baked or fried, boiled or roasted, as chips or fries; at some point in your life you've probably eaten a potato. But potatoes have played a much more significant role in our history than just that of the dietary staple we have come to...

In the year 1066, 7,000 Norman infantry and knights sailed in warships across the English Channel. Their target: England, home to more than a million people . Around the same period of time, other groups of Normans were setting forth all...

Over the course of her fearless career, extreme action specialist Elizabeth Streb has pushed the limits of the human body. She's jumped through broken glass, toppled from great heights and built gizmos to provide a boost along the way....

Our bones are multi-functional body builders, but perhaps their most mysterious function is the production of blood. Scientists now think they have a pretty good idea why this is where our blood gets made.

What drives society's understanding of right and wrong? In this thought-provoking talk, futurist Juan Enriquez offers a historical outlook on what humanity once deemed acceptable -- from human sacrifice and public executions to slavery...

Don't be fooled! The yellow or white corn you see in the grocery store is only the tip of the rainbow-colored iceberg of corn coloration. And these more genetically diverse varieties of corn might just save our husks one day. <br/>

Plastic is a huge problem in the oceans, but engineers and research groups are working on how to deal with it. Hank describes some of the leading proposed solutions.

Over the years, scientists have found evidence for a lot of weird prehistoric animals, but some of the strangest have been the crocodyliformes!

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Having trouble remembering the order of operations? Let's raise the stakes a little bit. What if the future of your (theoretical) kingdom depended on it? Garth Sundem creates a world in which PEMDAS is the hero but only heroic when in...

Enslaved people resisted their condition in a range of different ways. Oftentimes those ways were small and personal. There were also times when that resistance took on larger, more dramatic forms, like with slave uprisings and...

For thousands of years, people made both functional maps and what are known as cosmographies, illustrating the earth and its position in the cosmos, often including constellations, gods, and mythic locations. These maps were meant to...

In this video Paul Andersen explains how land is developed for human use. Urbanization has occurred through the last century as people have moved to cities in large numbers. Transportation and the arrival of the car have led to urban...

Indigenous communities have looked after their ancestral forests for millennia, cultivating immense amounts of knowledge on how to protect, nourish and heal these vital environments. Today, 470 million Indigenous people care for and...

Farming erodes soil 50 times faster than it forms. We can change that, but will we?

Hank updates us on two new missions that will help us learn more about some of the fascinating things in our space neighborhood.

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to point at a fossil and know that it’s the first, say, plant? Well... yeah! But it's not that easy! Scientists are always making new discoveries that throw all our old assumptions into...

The supercontinent Pangaea, with its connected South America and Africa, broke apart 200 million years ago. But the continents haven't stopped shifting -- the tectonic plates beneath our feet (in Earth's two top layers, the lithosphere...

Ever wonder what happens after you flush? You should, because your pee is causing problems! Hank talks about how, and why, human waste is having weird effects on the natural world. We're talking homicidal fish and hermaphroditic frogs...

About 10,000 years ago, humans began to farm. This agricultural revolution was a turning point in our history and enabled the existence of civilization. Today, nearly 40 percent of our planet is farmland. Spread all over the world, these...

Forests don't usually come to mind as a habitat for sharks. But marine forests provide a home for 35% of the world's sharks. Mangrove forests in particular function as an essential bridge between land and sea and have evolved various...