The Renaissance was a cultural revitalization that spread across Europe, and had repercussions across the globe, but one smallish city-state in Italy was in many ways the epicenter of the thing. Florence, or as Italians might say,...

It's no secret that people like pretty stuff, or that we like to make our worlds as pretty as possible. And for centuries, tons of people have used the mineral in this month's Rocks Box to paint the towns blue, so let's talk about some...

Jedi master of visual effects Rob Bredow, known for his work at Industrial Light & Magic and Lucasfilm, takes us on a cinematic journey through the evolution of visual effects, with behind-the-scenes stories from the making of fan...

Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler unveils a radical new economic model that could transform how creative people build sustainable careers, amass collective wealth and escape the burnout of hustle culture. Hear his vision for how...

What separates struggling artists from successful ones? Looking to creative geniuses like Mozart, Edison and Monet, video creator Jon Youshaei explains why aiming to be prolific — despite flops and failures along the way — is the key to...

AI won't kill us all — but that doesn't make it trustworthy. Instead of getting distracted by future existential risks, AI ethics researcher Sasha Luccioni thinks we need to focus on the technology's current negative impacts, like...

The climate of the Sahara was completely different thousands of years ago. And we’re not talking about just a few years of extra rain. We’re talking about a climate that was so wet for so long that animals and humans alike made...

In 1915, an exhibition of radical artworks opened in Russia. Many pieces pushed the boundaries of form and style, but one was particularly controversial: Kazimir Malevich's "Black Square." Criticized as simple and uninspired, Malevich's...

What happens when human and machine creativity meet? From an AI model trained on classic works to generate a seemingly infinite stream of portraits to a neural network that envisions otherworldly life-forms in impossible detail, media...

K Allado-McDowell has co-written three books with AI, so they speak from experience when they say that nurturing a creative relationship with these systems can open minds and make new worlds possible. Before giving the stage over to a...

In the 1920s, there was a blossoming of all kinds of art made by African Americans in the New York neighborhood Harlem. Let's call it a renaissance. While all the arts were having a great run, some extremely interesting things were...

What does inclusive leadership look like? Artist and TED Fellow Constance Hockaday shares how the captain of a trans-Atlantic community raft taught her how to voice her hopes and desires, inspiring a vision of possibility for the future....

In a lyrical talk full of radical imagination, poet Aja Monet and community organizer phillip agnew share the story of how they fell in love and what they've learned about the powerful connection between great social movements and...

Just like animals, plants evolve and change over time. And you might think we'd be looking for things like fossils to figure out how they've changed, but some scientists are using a far less traditional resource: art.

Craft curator Nora Atkinson takes us on a trip to Nevada's Black Rock Desert to see the beautifully designed and participatory art of Burning Man, revealing how she discovered there what's often missing from museums: curiosity and...

You might have heard about the debut of Hologram Tupac at the music festival Coachella earlier this year. But with Queen's recent announcement of a Hologram Freddie Mercury and TLC's plans for a Hologram Lisa Left Eye Lopes, it looks...

Spray-painted subway cars, tagged bridges, mural-covered walls -- graffiti pops up boldly throughout our cities. And it turns out: it's nothing new. Graffiti has been around for thousands of years. And across that span of time, it's...

Long before we had cameras scientists still needed visual documentation—enter the science illustrator! Chapters VITRUVIAN MAN Credit: Leonardo da Vinci 0:34 ANDREAS VESALIUS 1:25 DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA 1:59 MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN 2:39...

A rabbit attempts to play a church organ, while a knight fights a giant snail and a naked man blows a trumpet with his rear end. These bizarre images, painted with squirrel-hair brushes on vellum or parchment by monks, nuns and urban...

When radium was first discovered, its luminous green color inspired people to add it into beauty products and jewelry. It wasn't until much later that we realized that radium's harmful effects outweighed its visual benefits....

This week, researchers reveal the single most important influence on music since 1960. Also, turns out that sleepwalking and sleep terrors are genetically linked.

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, a new way to see, hear and interpret scientific data. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ... and detect previously unseen patterns that could lead to new...

every artist has a name, and every artist has a story. Laolu Senbanjo's story started in Nigeria, where he was surrounded by the culture and mythology of the Yoruba, and brought him to law school, to New York and eventually to work on...

"We will start inhabiting outer space," says Angelo Vermeulen, crew commander of a NASA-funded Mars simulation. "It might take 50 years or it might take 500 years, but it's going to happen." In this charming talk, the TED Senior Fellow...