TED Science

John Lloyd: An animated tour of the invisible

Gravity. The stars in day. Thoughts. The human genome. Time. Atoms. So much of what really matters in the world is impossible to see. A stunning animation of John Lloyd's classic TEDTalk from 2009, which will make you question what you actually know.

2 Oct 2012 8 min

Ben Goldacre: What doctors don't know about the drugs they prescribe

When a new drug gets tested, the results of the trials should be published for the rest of the medical world -- except much of the time, negative or inconclusive findings go unreported, leaving doctors and researchers in the dark. In this impassioned talk, Ben Goldacre explains why these unreported…

1 Oct 2012 13 min

Read Montague: What we're learning from 5,000 brains

Mice, bugs and hamsters are no longer the only way to study the brain. Functional MRI (fMRI) allows scientists to map brain activity in living, breathing, decision-making human beings. Read Montague gives an overview of how this technology is helping us understand the complicated ways in which we interact with…

25 Sep 2012 13 min

Susan Solomon: The promise of research with stem cells

Calling them "our bodies' own repair kits," Susan Solomon advocates research using lab-grown stem cells. By growing individual pluripotent stem cell lines, her team creates testbeds that could accelerate research into curing diseases -- and perhaps lead to individualized treatment, targeted not just to a particular disease but a particular…

17 Sep 2012 14 min

Scott Fraser: Why eyewitnesses get it wrong

Scott Fraser studies how humans remember crimes -- and bear witness to them. In this powerful talk, which focuses on a deadly shooting at sunset, he suggests that even close-up eyewitnesses to a crime can create "memories" they could not have seen. Why? Because the brain abhors a vacuum.

11 Sep 2012 20 min

Alanna Shaikh: How I'm preparing to get Alzheimer's

When faced with a parent suffering from Alzheimer's, most of us respond with denial ("It won't happen to me") or extreme efforts at prevention. But global health expert and TED Fellow Alanna Shaikh sees it differently. She's taking three concrete steps to prepare for the moment -- should it arrive…

1 Jul 2012 6 min

Jane McGonigal: The game that can give you 10 extra years of life

When game designer Jane McGonigal found herself bedridden and suicidal following a severe concussion, she had a fascinating idea for how to get better. She dove into the scientific research and created the healing game, SuperBetter. In this moving talk, McGonigal explains how a game can boost resilience -- and…

1 Jun 2012 19 min

Mina Bissell: Experiments that point to a new understanding of cancer

For decades, researcher Mina Bissell pursued a revolutionary idea -- that a cancer cell doesn't automatically become a tumor, but rather, depends on surrounding cells (its microenvironment) for cues on how to develop. She shares the two key experiments that proved the prevailing wisdom about cancer growth was wrong.

1 Jun 2012 16 min

Hannah Fry: Is life really that complex?

Can an algorithm forecast the site of the next riot? In this accessible talk, Mathematician Hannah Fry shows how complex social behavior can be analyzed and perhaps predicted through apt analogies to natural phenomena, like the patterns of a leopard's spots or the distribution of predators and prey in the…

1 Jun 2012 10 min

Melissa Garren: The sea we’ve hardly seen

An average teaspoon of ocean water contains five million bacteria and fifty million viruses – and yet we are just starting to discover how these "invisible engineers" control our ocean's chemistry. At TEDxMonterey, Melissa Garren sheds light on marine microbes that provide half the oxygen we breathe, maintain underwater ecosystems,…

1 Apr 2012 11 min

Tal Golesworthy: How I repaired my own heart

Tal Golesworthy is a boiler engineer -- he knows piping and plumbing. When he needed surgery to repair a life-threatening problem with his aorta, he mixed his engineering skills with his doctors' medical knowledge to design a better repair job.

1 Apr 2012 13 min

Rives: Reinventing the encyclopedia game

Prompted by the Encyclopaedia Britannica ending its print publication, performance poet Rives resurrects a game from his childhood. Speaking at the TEDxSummit in Doha, Rives takes us on a charming tour through random (and less random) bits of human knowledge: from Chimborazo, the farthest point from the center of the…

1 Apr 2012 10 min

Seth Shostak: ET is (probably) out there -- get ready

SETI researcher Seth Shostak bets that we will find extraterrestrial life in the next twenty-four years, or he'll buy you a cup of coffee. At TEDxSanJoseCA, he explains why new technologies and the laws of probability make the breakthrough so likely -- and forecasts how the discovery of civilizations far…

1 Apr 2012 18 min

Ivan Oransky: Are we over-medicalized?

Reuters health editor Ivan Oransky warns that we’re suffering from an epidemic of preposterous preconditions -- pre-diabetes, pre-cancer, and many more. In this engaging talk from TEDMED he shows how health care can find a solution... by taking an important lesson from baseball.

1 Apr 2012 10 min

Diane Kelly: What we didn’t know about penis anatomy

We’re not done with anatomy. We know a tremendous amount about genomics, proteomics and cell biology, but as Diane Kelly makes clear at TEDMED, there are basic facts about the human body we’re still learning. Case in point: How does the mammalian erection work?

1 Apr 2012 11 min

Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species?

Throughout human evolution, multiple versions of humans co-existed. Could we be mid-upgrade now? At TEDxSummit, Juan Enriquez sweeps across time and space to bring us to the present moment -- and shows how technology is revealing evidence that suggests rapid evolution may be under way.

1 Apr 2012 16 min

E.O. Wilson: Advice to young scientists

“The world needs you, badly,” begins celebrated biologist E.O. Wilson in his letter to a young scientist. Previewing his upcoming book, he gives advice collected from a lifetime of experience -- reminding us that wonder and creativity are the center of the scientific life. (Filmed at TEDMED.)

1 Apr 2012 14 min

Jonathan Eisen: Meet your microbes

Our bodies are covered in a sea of microbes -- both the pathogens that make us sick and the "good" microbes, about which we know less, that might be keeping us healthy. At TEDMED, microbiologist Jonathan Eisen shares what we know, including some surprising ways to put those good microbes…

1 Apr 2012 14 min

Regina Dugan: From mach-20 glider to humming bird drone

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" asks Regina Dugan, then director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In this breathtaking talk she describes some of the extraordinary projects -- a robotic hummingbird, a prosthetic arm controlled by thought, and, well, the…

1 Mar 2012 25 min

Sarah Parcak: Archeology from space

In this short talk, TED Fellow Sarah Parcak introduces the field of "space archeology" -- using satellite images to search for clues to the lost sites of past civilizations.

1 Mar 2012 5 min