What comes to mind when you think about the most fun moments of your life? Science journalist Catherine Price asked thousands of people across the world this question, and their answers led her to a new definition of "true" fun: a...

Paul Catchlove believes strongly in the power of reflection. Through every career he's held -- from priest to opera singer to senior management consultant -- he's benefitted from a habit of considering and analyzing his goals, needs and...

Have you ever been forced to limit your identity to a single box on an application, survey or census questionnaire? For many, it is a futile and overall outdated exercise, especially for those with multiracial and multi-ethnic...

You are constantly becoming a new person, says journalist Shankar Vendantam. In a talk full of beautiful storytelling, he explains the profound impact of something he calls the "illusion of continuity" -- the belief that our future...

Despite common belief, retirement takes more than financial planning. And while you may be beyond ready to go on permanent vacation, you also have to psychologically prepare for when the novelty wears off. Riley Moynes explains the four...

Sebastian Wernicke thinks every TED Talk can be summarized in six words. In this talk, he shows how to do just that -- and less.

If we want to fix our politics, we have to do something about inequality, says social psychologist Keith Payne. Showing how economic inequality changes the way people see and behave towards one another, Payne helps explain the rise of...

The combined market capitalization of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google is now equivalent to the GDP of India. How did these four companies come to infiltrate our lives so completely? In a spectacular rant, Scott Galloway shares...

China is a huge laboratory of innovation, says retail expert Angela Wang, and in this lab, everything takes place on people's phones. Five hundred million Chinese consumers -- the equivalent of the combined populations of the uS, uK and...

We all know that when we make decisions in groups, they don't always go right -- and sometimes they go very wrong. How can groups make good decisions? With his colleague Dan Ariely, neuroscientist Mariano Sigman has been inquiring into...

The real reason you buy insurance may have as much to do with pleasing your psyche as it does protecting your wallet. Behavioral psychologist Orit Tykocinski explores the connection between insurance and the reality-distorting risks of...

Ursus Wehrli shares his vision for a cleaner, more organized, tidier form of art -- by deconstructing the paintings of modern masters into their component pieces, sorted by color and size.

Kids get so excited to meet their favorite characters in real life, but studies show they might not really believe the the princess they met at a theme park is actually the cartoon character.

Fast food was invented to help us keep up with our fast-paced world. But it’s also had some unintended psychological consequences and can influence our choices in situations that don’t have anything to do with food.

Reading and writing can be acts of courage that bring us closer to others and ourselves. Author Michelle Kuo shares how teaching reading skills to her students in the Mississippi Delta revealed the bridging power of the written word --...

Often people make decisions that are not "rational" from a purely economical point of view - meaning that they don't necessarily lead to the best result. Why is that? Are we just bad at dealing with numbers and odds? Or is there a...

Imagine a police lineup where ten witnesses are asked to identify a bank robber they glimpsed fleeing the scene. If six of them pick the same person, there's a good chance that's the culprit. And if all ten do, you might think the case...

Whether you're a Beyonce fan or faithfully following Phish- your personal taste in music is probably all linked to your memories.

This joke video is about how Internet Service Providers (aka ISPs, internet companies, telecommunications companies, etc) violate the basic axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory. Like the axiom of choice (sometimes Well-ordering...

Even if it's been a while since you last rode a bike, you could probably ride it again without going through the training wheel phase. It’s because our brains do some fascinating works to store those memories.

Strong faith is a core part of Alaa Murabit's identity -- but when she moved from Canada to Libya as a young woman, she was surprised how the tenets of Islam were used to severely limit women's rights, independence and ability to lead....

During the period of rapid industrialization at the turn of the 20th century, factory jobs were incredibly unsafe. That is, until Dr. Alice Hamilton basically became an investigative reporter to figure out how factories were poisoning...

The more we rely on technology to make us efficient, the fewer skills we have to confront the unexpected, says writer and entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan. She shares why we need less tech and more messy human skills -- imagination,...

As theaters closed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the creatives who populated their stages were plunged into a state of seemingly endless uncertainty. Aided by a delightful and metaphorically resonant piece of performance...