Biologist Robert Full shares slo-mo video of some captivating critters. Take a closer look at the spiny legs that allow cockroaches to scuttle across mesh and the nanobristle-packed feet that let geckos to run straight up walls.

How can robots learn to stabilize on rough terrain, walk upside down, do gymnastic maneuvers in air and run into walls without harming themselves? Robert Full takes a look at the incredible body of the cockroach to show what it can teach robotics engineers.

Biologist Robert Full studies the amazing gecko, with its supersticky feet and tenacious climbing skill. But high-speed footage reveals that the gecko's tail harbors perhaps the most surprising talents of all.

Insects and animals have evolved some amazing skills -- but, as Robert Full notes, many animals are actually over-engineered. The trick is to copy only what's necessary. He shows how human engineers can learn from animals' tricks.

Robert Lang is a pioneer of the newest kind of origami -- using math and engineering principles to fold mind-blowingly intricate designs that are beautiful and, sometimes, very useful.

It's hard to always show compassion -- even to the people we love, but Robert Thurman asks that we develop compassion for our enemies. He prescribes a seven-step meditation exercise to extend compassion beyond our inner circle.

Robert Wright uses evolutionary biology and game theory to explain why we appreciate the Golden Rule ("Do unto others..."), why we sometimes ignore it and why there’s hope that, in the near future, we might all have the compassion to follow it.

Ocean explorer Robert Ballard takes us on a mindbending trip to hidden worlds underwater, where he and other researchers are finding unexpected life, resources, even new mountains. He makes a case for serious exploration and mapping. Google Ocean, anyone?

In 1947, explorers noticed a strange phenomenon while crossing the Pacific Ocean. Somehow, small squid known to live deep beneath the waves kept appearing on the roof of their boat. The crew was mystified— until they saw the squids soaring above the sea for roughly 50 meters. How and why do these marine creatures take to the sky? Robert Siddall ...

How can humans be so compassionate and altruistic -- and also so brutal and violent? To understand why we do what we do, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky looks at extreme context, examining actions on timescales from seconds to millions of years before they occurred. In this fascinating talk, he shares his cutting edge research into the biology th...

As machines take on more jobs, many find themselves out of work or with raises indefinitely postponed. Is this the end of growth? No, says Erik Brynjolfsson -- it’s simply the growing pains of a radically reorganized economy. A riveting case for why big innovations are ahead of us … if we think of computers as our teammates. Be sure to watch the...

Your money habits reveal a lot about you: your hopes, fears, dreams and other deep personal truths you may not even be aware of, says accountant Robert A. Belle. He shares how taking stock of your transaction history can unlock surprisingly valuable insights about what drives you to spend (and save) -- and provides practical tips on how to perfo...

This year, explorer Ben Saunders attempted his most ambitious trek yet. He set out to complete Captain Robert Falcon Scott's failed 1912 polar expedition — a four-month, 1,800-mile round trip journey from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole and back. In the first talk given after his adventure, just five weeks after his return, Saunders off...

Zambia-born filmmaker Franco Sacchi tours us through Nollywood, Nigeria's booming film industry (the world's 3rd largest). Guerrilla filmmaking and brilliance under pressure from crews that can shoot a full-length feature in a week.

Conceptual artist Tavares Strachan creates the kinds of projects that make you stop in your tracks, like a 4.5-ton block of Arctic ice he brought back to his birthplace in the Bahamas or a gold, Egyptian-inspired sculpture he launched into orbit around the Earth. Now he presents his latest creation, the Encyclopedia of Invisibility: a 3,000-page...

Canadian filmmaker Martin Villeneuve talks about "Mars et Avril," the sci-fi spectacular he made with virtually no money over a seven-year stretch. In this charming talk, he explains the various ways he overcame financial and logistical constraints to produce his unique and inventive vision of the future.

Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab, talks about his life as an inventor, starting with his high-school company selling solar energy plans and kits. Learn here about a groundbreaking system for solar cells -- and some questions we haven't yet solved.

In June 1776, a little over a year after the start of the American Revolutionary War, the US Continental Congress huddled together in a hot room in Philadelphia to talk independence. Historian Kenneth C. Davis dives into some of the lesser known facts about the process of writing the Declaration of Independence and questions one very controversi...

Geneticist Steve McCarroll wants to make an atlas of all the cells in the human body so that we can understand in precise detail how specific genes work, especially in the brain. In this fascinating talk, he shares his team's progress -- including their invention of "Drop-seq," a technology that allows scientists to analyze individual cells at a...

In 2008, two 9,000-year old skeletons were found with their bones infected by an all too familiar bacterium. The ancient Greeks knew its effects as phthisis; the Incans called it chaky oncay; and today we call it tuberculosis, or TB. TB is still one of the world's most infectious killers, causing more deaths than malaria or even HIV. How has it ...

When the dotcom bubble burst, hotelier Chip Conley went in search of a business model based on happiness. In an old friendship with an employee and in the wisdom of a Buddhist king, he learned that success comes from what you count.

Richard Dawkins urges all atheists to openly state their position -- and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. A fiery, funny, powerful talk.

Clifford Stoll captivates his audience with a wildly energetic sprinkling of anecdotes, observations, asides -- and even a science experiment. After all, by his own definition, he's a scientist: "Once I do something, I want to do something else."

Before he hit eighteen, Fred Swaniker had lived in Ghana, Gambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. What he learned from a childhood across Africa was that while good leaders can't make much of a difference in societies with strong institutions, in countries with weak structures, leaders could make or break a country. In a passionate talk the entrepreneur ...

Medical animator David Bolinsky presents 3 minutes of stunning animation that show the bustling life inside a cell.

There's no shortage of resources to help people change their health behaviors -- but far too often, these resources aren't accessible in underserved communities, says physician Priscilla Pemu. Enter "culturally congruent coaching," a program Pemu and her team developed to help patients with chronic diseases monitor their health with the assistan...

We each want to live a life of purpose, but where to start? In this luminous, wide-ranging talk, Jacqueline Novogratz introduces us to people she's met in her work in "patient capital" -- people who have immersed themselves in a cause, a community, a passion for justice. These human stories carry powerful moments of inspiration.

At the 2008 EG Conference, artist Miru Kim talks about her work. Kim explores industrial ruins underneath New York and then photographs herself in them, nude -- to bring these massive, dangerous, hidden spaces into sharp focus.

What if your hour-long commute was reduced to just minutes? That's the promise of the hyperloop: a transit system designed around a pod that zooms through a vacuum-sealed space (roughly the size of a subway tunnel) at hyper-speed, powered by next-generation batteries and state-of-the-art magnetic levitation. In the visionary talk, Josh Giegel, t...

Who gets to be an entrepreneur? Saamra Mekuria-Grillo says the image we most commonly see — a guy in a hoodie — is a limiting representation of entrepreneurial success. She highlights the importance of young Black people seeing entrepreneurship as a possibility for themselves and explains the key to making the field more inclusive.