As dawn breaks over a moveable city of ten thousand yurts, Queen Boraqchin readies her kingdom for departure to their summer camping grounds. While her husband, the grandson of Genghis Khan, is out raiding, she juggles the duties of...

Time and time again, we've failed to predict that the technologies of the present will change the future. Recently, a similar pattern was discovered in our individual lives: we're unable to predict change in ourselves. But is there...

Jay Walker, curator of the Library of Human Imagination, conducts a surprising show-and-tell session highlighting a few of the intriguing artifacts that backdropped the 2008 TED stage.

* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Media big shot Felix Dennis roars his fiery, funny, sometimes racy original poetry, revisiting haunting memories...

Today, there are thousands of cults around the world. Broadly speaking, a cult is a group or movement with a shared commitment to a usually extreme ideology that's typically embodied in a charismatic leader. But what exactly...

Extreme weather sometimes happens in very specific areas thanks to extreme surface temperature differences.

In which John Green teaches you about railroads, and some of the ways they changed the world, and how they were a sort of microcosm for the Industrial Revolution as a whole. Prior to the invention of steam powered railroads, pretty much...

TED Fellow Sophal Ear shares the compelling story of his family's escape from Cambodia under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. He recounts his mother's cunning and determination to save her children.

It's 427 BCE and the worst internal conflict ever to occur in the ancient Greek world is in its fourth year. Athens is facing a big decision: what to do with the people of Mytilene, a city on the island of Lesbos where a revolt against...

How did the young, wealthy women of Ancient Rome spend their days? Meet Domitia and her sister Domitia and her sister Domitia and her sister Domitia. Ray Laurence sketches the domestic life of leisure that these young girls lived,...

The myth of the bloodsucking vampire has stalked humans from ancient Mesopotamia to 18th-century Eastern Europe, but it has differed in the terrifying details. So, how did we arrive at the popular image we know, love and fear today? And...

What would you do if your job was to save the planet? When Christiana Figueres was tapped by the uN to lead the Paris climate conference (COP 21) in December 2015, she reacted the way many people would: she thought it would be impossible...

Sixty-five million people were displaced from their homes by conflict and disaster in 2016. It's not just a crisis; it's a test of who we are and what we stand for, says David Miliband -- and each of us has a personal responsibility to...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" brought Latin American literature to the forefront of the global imagination and earned Garcia Marquez the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. What makes the novel so...

Since its founding in 1851, the "New York Times" has published thousands of obituaries -- for heads of state, famous celebrities, even the inventor of the sock puppet. But only a small percentage of them chronicle the lives of women and...

Every great and difficult thing has required a strong sense of optimism, says editor and author Kevin Kelly, who believes that we have a moral obligation to be optimistic. Tracing humanity's progress throughout history, he's observed...

Refugee and immigrants rights attorney Melanie Nezer shares an urgently needed historical perspective on the crisis at the southern US border, showing how citizens can hold their governments accountable for protecting the vulnerable. "A...

In 2004, a nutrition company offered a life-changing opportunity to earn a full-time income for part-time work. There were only two steps to get started: purchase a $500 kit and recruit two more members. By 2013, the company was making...

What do communities on the social, economic and environmental margins have in common? For one thing, they tend to be on the east sides of cities. In this short talk about a surprising insight, anthropologist and venture capitalist...

Author George Dyson spins the story of Project Orion, a massive, nuclear-powered spacecraft that could have taken us to Saturn in five years. His insider’s perspective and a secret cache of documents bring an Atomic Age dream to life.

The dot-com boom and bust is often compared to the Gold Rush. But Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos says it's more like the early days of the electric industry.

An ancient disease is taking on a deadly new form. James Nachtwey share his powerful photographs of XDR-TB, a newly drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis that has developed due to misused and inadequate medical treatments -- and that...

Philosopher Stephen Cave begins with a dark but compelling question: When did you first realize you were going to die? And even more interesting: Why do we humans so often resist the inevitability of death? Cave explores four narratives...

As machines take on more jobs, many find themselves out of work or with raises indefinitely postponed. Is this the end of growth? No, says Erik Brynjolfsson -- it’s simply the growing pains of a radically reorganized economy. A riveting...