Author Steven Johnson takes us on a 10-minute tour of The Ghost Map, his book about a cholera outbreak in 1854 London and the impact it had on science, cities and modern society.

Outside.in's Steven Johnson says the Web is like a city: built by many people, completely controlled by no one, intricately interconnected and yet functioning as many independent parts. While disaster strikes in one place, elsewhere, life goes on.

Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Well, not always. Steven Johnson shows us how some of the most transformative ideas and technologies, like the computer, didn't emerge out of necessity at all but instead from the strange delight of play. Share this captivating, illustrated exploration of the history of invention. Turns out, you'll fi...

People often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web.

Doubling human life expectancy in a century is our greatest achievement, says author Steven Johnson. How did we make it happen -- and can we keep it going? Backed by fascinating historical anecdotes, he shares some life-lengthening innovations and reminds us of three key things needed to make sure all of humanity enjoys these advancements in hea...

Future forecaster and game designer Jane McGonigal ran a social simulation game in 2008 that had players dealing with the effects of a respiratory pandemic set to happen in the next decade. She wasn't literally predicting the 2020 pandemic -- but she got eerily close. In this episode, McGonigal teaches us how to be futurists and talks about the ...

James Surowiecki pinpoints the moment when social media became an equal player in the world of news-gathering: the 2005 tsunami, when YouTube video, blogs, IMs and txts carried the news -- and preserved moving personal stories from the tragedy.

As COVID-19 spread, BioNTech cofounders Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci had one goal: to make a safe, effective vaccine faster than ever before. In this illuminating conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson, the immunologists (and married couple) share the fascinating story of how their decades of mRNA research powered the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccin...

In a disturbing — but fascinating — walk through history, Frances Larson examines humanity's strange relationship with public executions … and specifically beheadings. As she shows us, they have always drawn a crowd, first in the public square and now on YouTube. What makes them horrific and compelling in equal measure?

Stefanie Jansen came into this world scared. Scared of new things, and scared of new people. As an adolescent, she saw her future self participating in, as well as leading “think and do tanks”, consisting of diverse people, working together to create out-of-the-box solutions for the complex challenges our world is facing. Today, as a CoCreator, ...

Stephen is the author of EMERGENT - Ignite Purpose | Transform Culture | Make Change Stick (Wiley 2017), an essential guide for conscious leadership. In this talk, Stephen unpacks the rise of the Connection Economy and the paradigm shift from media-dependent awareness and campaigns to people-powered advocacy and engagement. Why do 70% of enterpr...