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After a vote that banned same-sex marriage in California, activist David Fleischer and his team at the Los Angeles LGBT Center started knocking on doors to test whether they could change voters' minds with a simple conversation. The results were encouraging. In this talk, Fleischer stresses the importance of deep canvassing and face to face inte...

Joan As Police Woman performs a gorgeous, tender version of "Your Song" and "Real Life."

If you're a law-abiding American citizen, you've entered a social contract whose terms guarantee services and protections from the government, and the right to vote for the people and laws that provide them. Unless, that is, you live in the District of Columbia, the nation's capital. Civil rights lawyer Mónica Palacio explains how DC came to lac...

Conventional wisdom says that to win an election, you need to play to your constituencies' basest, most divisive instincts. But as a candidate for mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, G.T. Bynum decided to skip the smear campaigns, tell voters what he wanted to accomplish and give them ways to measure his success -- and it led him to win the election. In a...

"An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport," argues Enrique Peñalosa. In this spirited talk, the mayor of Bogotá shares some of the tactics he used to change the transportation dynamic in the Colombian capital... and suggests ways to think about building smart cities of the ...

Climate innovation leader Rich Powell dives into the bureaucracy, bottlenecks and not-in-my-backyard attitude preventing the US from achieving its green energy goals, warning that we need about 10,000 new clean energy projects to be built in the US this decade if we're to reach net zero by 2050. Learn more about what's needed to fight NIMBYism, ...

Ethan Nadelmann has ushered the once-marginal issue of drug legalization onto the center stage of US political debate.

China's one-child policy ended in 2015, but we're just beginning to understand what it was like to live under the program, says TED Fellow and documentary filmmaker Nanfu Wang. With footage from her film "One Child Nation," she shares untold stories that reveal the policy's complex consequences and expose the creeping power of propaganda.

As CEO of Citizen University, Eric Liu is working to spark a civic revival in the US and beyond.

Mario Paluzzi presents us with a logistical puzzle: How can we deliver packages to the three-quarters of the global population who don't have a street address? In this what-if talk, he proposes a bold new system of pinpointing addresses not to people's homes, but to their mobile phones. It's a glimpse of the future of global package delivery.

Are you in control of your choices? Magic tricks might reveal otherwise, says scientist and illusionist Alice Pailhès. Watch closely as she performs magic tricks that unveil how your brain works, how you can be subtly influenced and what that means for free will and your day-to-day life. Did she guess your card right?

Insightful talks that can help improve political debate so that we can build toward a better society.

Public policy expert Anne-Marie Slaughter made waves with her 2012 article, "Why women still can't have it all." But really, is this only a question for women? Here Slaughter expands her ideas and explains why shifts in work culture, public policy and social mores can lead to more equality -- for men, women, all of us.

TED Fellow and economic policy researcher Huiyi Lin is cocreator of "The Poverty Line," an art project examining poverty through the lens of food. By photographing the daily food choices of people living at the poverty line in 38 countries and territories around the world, Lin shines a light on the problem of poverty in a way no policy report ev...

After 20 years working with the presidents and prime ministers of 54 countries, Simon Anholt has a plan to make the world work better.

South Africa transitioned to democracy in the 1990s with a visionary constitution, but the promises of that constitution are largely unfulfilled to this day. Public leader Lindiwe Mazibuko explores how poor leadership failed to deliver a better life for the country's citizens — and shares her mission to cultivate a new generation of ethical lead...

Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States, killing more people each year than alcohol, AIDS, car accidents, illegal drugs, murder and suicide combined. Follow health policy expert Mitch Zeller into the murky depths of the tobacco industry as he details the sordid history of nicotine addiction -- ...

Ilona Szabó de Carvalho designs solutions for some of the world's biggest challenges -- from reducing violence and reforming drug laws to renewing democracy and fighting polarization.

Far too many Americans are illiterate in power — what it is, how it operates and why some people have it. As a result, those few who do understand power wield disproportionate influence over everyone else. "We need to make civics sexy again," says civics educator Eric Liu. "As sexy as it was during the American Revolution or the Civil Rights Mov...

Timothy Graf's experiences moving from America to England sparked some fresh ideas about immigration. Our exacting border policies often ignore the significant benefits delivered by the new perspectives of immigrants, fresh ideas that are vital for future success. He argues that smart countries should be lowering roadblocks and setting both caps...

Is the War on Drugs doing more harm than good? In a bold talk, drug policy reformist Ethan Nadelmann makes an impassioned plea to end the "backward, heartless, disastrous" movement to stamp out the drug trade. He gives two big reasons we should focus on intelligent regulation instead.

The electoral system in the United States needs a redesign, says political reformer Andrew Yang. Exposing the flaws of a system built on poor incentives, he proposes a cost-effective overhaul inspired by primary elections already working in places like Alaska and advocates for ranked-choice voting, where voters can choose candidates in order of ...

The global drug trade is complex. These talks offer nuanced reframes on an issue which is so often thought about in absolutes.

Enrique Peñalosa is the mayor of Bogotá, Colombia. He advocates for sustainability and mobility in the cities of the future.

Alessandra Orofino founded Meu Rio, Rio de Janeiro’s largest mobilization network.

Former judge Victoria Pratt advocates for public policy change towards a more equitable and humane justice system.

Johann Hari is the author of two "New York Times" best-selling books.