In 2010, technologist Tan Le took the TEDGlobal stage to demo a powerful new interface. But now, at TEDxWomen, she tells a very personal story: the story of her family -- mother, grandmother and sister -- fleeing Vietnam and building a...

Humans are fascinated by shiny stuff. Not only do we find these things attractive, but we also tend to perceive them as being high quality. Well, turns out this infatuation may be related to our evolutionary relationship to water.

In this video Paul Andersen describes the science practice of data collection. He begins with a brief description of science and the scientific method. He details concepts related to data collection in each of the four big ideas. He...

When someone asks you where you're from … do you sometimes not know how to answer? Writer Taiye Selasi speaks on behalf of "multi-local" people, who feel at home in the town where they grew up, the city they live now and maybe another...

We all want to save more money -- but overall, people today are doing less and less of it. Behavioral scientist Wendy De La Rosa studies how everyday people make decisions to improve their financial well-being. What she's found can help...

When we tell women that sex isn't worth the risk during pregnancy, what we're telling her is that her sexual pleasure doesn't matter ... that she in fact doesn't matter, says sex researcher Sofia Jawed-Wessel. In this eye-opening talk,...

Could someone hack your pacemaker? Avi Rubin shows how hackers are compromising cars, smartphones and medical devices, and warns us about the dangers of an increasingly hack-able world.

We've been to the moon, we've mapped the continents, we've even been to the deepest point in the ocean -- twice. What's left for the next generation to explore? Biologist and explorer Nathan Wolfe suggests this answer: Almost everything....

When Andres Ruzo was a young boy in Peru, his grandfather told him a story with an odd detail: There is a river, deep in the Amazon, which boils as if a fire burns below it. Twelve years later, after training as a geoscientist, he set...

As the founder of a startup, Tracy Young often worried that employees and investors valued male CEOs more -- and that being a woman compromised her position as a leader. In this brave, personal talk, she gives an honest look at the...

We tend to think of physical blindness like a blindfold, but it’s much more complicated than that, and in some instances, people who have lost their vision can still "see" subconsciously.

What do science and play have in common? Neuroscientist Beau Lotto thinks all people (kids included) should participate in science and, through the process of discovery, change perceptions. He's seconded by 12-year-old Amy O'Toole, who,...

Psychologists consider nostalgia a complex emotion and it may have both benefits and risks.

Hacking is about more than mischief-making or political subversion. As Catherine Bracy describes in this spirited talk, it can be just as much a force for good as it is for evil. She spins through some inspiring civically-minded projects...

An artwork's color or composition can pull you in -- and put you on the path to having important and difficult conversations, says artist Titus Kaphar. In this stunning talk, he reflects on his artistic evolution and takes us on a tour...

MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte takes you on a journey through the last 30 years of tech. The consummate predictor highlights interfaces and innovations he foresaw in the 1970s and 1980s that were scoffed at then but are...

Jacqueline Novogratz tells a moving story of an encounter in a Nairobi slum with Jane, a former prostitute, whose dreams of escaping poverty, of becoming a doctor and of getting married were fulfilled in an unexpected way.

Before he was a legend, architect Frank Gehry takes a whistlestop tour of his early work, from his house in Venice Beach to the American Center in Paris, which was under construction (and much on his mind) when he gave this talk.

As you surf the Web, information is being collected about you. Web tracking is not 100% evil -- personal data can make your browsing more efficient; cookies can help your favorite websites stay in business. But, says Gary Kovacs, it's...

It took a life-threatening condition to jolt chemistry teacher Ramsey Musallam out of ten years of "pseudo-teaching" to understand the true role of the educator: to cultivate curiosity. In a fun and personal talk, Musallam gives 3 rules...

Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he...

It turns out there are number of aspects of driving that can potentially conspire to lull our bodies into a potentially dangerous state of drowsiness.

Losing half of the world sounds like a weird, abstract dream state. But for those that develop hemispatial neglect, that’s exactly what happens, without them even realizing it.

Some days, it's hard to be optimistic. But cynicism -- the idea that people are inherently selfish, greedy and dishonest -- is making humanity lonelier and more divided, says psychologist Jamil Zaki. Presenting fascinating research on...