TED Talks

Rajesh Rao is fascinated by “the mother of all crossword puzzles”: How to decipher the 4,000 year old Indus script. He tells how he is enlisting modern computational techniques to …

Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world probl…

Mary Roach delves into obscure scientific research, some of it centuries old, to make 10 surprising claims about sexual climax, ranging from the bizarre to the hilarious.

Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell gets inside the food industry’s pursuit of the perfect spaghetti sauce — and makes a larger argument about the nature of choice and happiness…

The LXD (the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers) electrify the stage with an emerging global street-dance culture, revved up by the Internet.

Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.

J.J. Abrams traces his love for the unseen mystery – a passion thats evident in his films and TV shows, including Cloverfield, Lost and Alias — back to its magical beginnings.

Emiliano Salinas, son of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, confronts the current climate of violence in Mexico — or rather, how Mexican society responds to it.

Comedian Joshua Walters, who’s bipolar, walks the line between mental illness and mental “skillness” in this funny, thought-provoking talk.

Artist-technologist Honor Harger listens to the weird and wonderful noises of stars and planets and pulsars. In her work, she tracks the radio waves emitted by ancient celestial ob…

Daniel Tammet has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia — meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and under…

Bill Ford is a car guy — his great-grandfather was Henry Ford, and he grew up inside the massive Ford Motor Co. So when he worries about cars’ impact on the environment, and about…

Photographer Camille Seaman shoots icebergs, showing the world the complex beauty of these massive, ancient chunks of ice. Dive in to her photo slideshow, “The Last Iceberg.”

Steve Keil calls for a return to play to revitalize the economy, education and society. A sparkling talk with a universal message for people everywhere who are reinventing their wo…

How do you stage an international art show with work from 100 different artists? If you’re Shea Hembrey, you invent all of the artists and artwork yourself — from large-scale outd…