Cooperating in large groups is a signature accomplishment of the human brain: among similar species, we are remarkably good at working together and negotiating our differences.

In the spring of my career, I found myself questioning the choice of my life's work. The students did not appear to be motivated, the paperwork was overwhelming and the constant change of educational direction was discouraging. But, I just could not seem bring myself to do anything else.

The EyeWriter has been a journey, and due to the nature of ALS it's a never-ending one. It started in 2008, and it continues on today. I am often asked, "Why did you do it?"

I began collecting and sharing secrets in 2004. I printed 3,000 self-addressed postcards with simple instructions about sharing an artful secret. I passed them out to strangers on the streets of Washington, D.C., not knowing what to expect.

When I was researching my book, on Chinese food in America, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, it puzzled me why Korean cuisine (unlike many of its Asian brethren) had not gone mainstream yet.

Doctors need the results of clinical trials to make informed choices, with their patients, about which treatment to use. But the best currently available evidence estimates that half of all clinical trials, for the treatments we use today, have never been published.

Becoming a psychopath-spotter can turn you a bit psychopathic because it compels you to start reducing people to items on a checklist -- to their maddest edges.

Here's the thing: Despite being U.S. memory champions, Kolli, Dellis, and I occasionally misplace our car keys, just like everyone else. We don't actually have great memories.

I lost a friend and colleague last spring. His diagnosis was way worse than mine. He was not so lucky.

Why did some kids give in and start down that slippery slope of evil, while others resisted and stayed on the right side of that line separating good from evil?

We need a curriculum of big questions, examinations where children can talk, share and use the Internet, and new, peer assessment systems. In the networked age, we need schools, not structured like factories, but like clouds. Join us up there.

Images of space are ubiquitous in our lives. We have been surrounded by stunning portrayals of our own solar system and beyond for generations. But in popular culture, we have no sense of what space sounds like. And indeed, most people associate space with silence.

In 2009, I walked onto the TED stage and gave a talk that included video of a Danish pig inseminator. The topic of the talk was orgasm, and the video related to a centuries-old debate over "upsuck."

With a near-complete record of life at home over the first two years of my son's life, we were able to pinpoint each time he learned to say a new word. We could then trace back in time to find each occasion where he heard that word from caregivers -- the "gestation" period leading to the word's birth.

Current symptom tests are done in a clinic. They are expensive, time-consuming, and logistically difficult. Our technology could enable some radical breakthroughs, because voice-based tests can be administered remotely, and patients can do the tests themselves.

My goal is to visualize life in all its glory. And to see how daily lifestyle decisions affect the choreography of all of our cellular activity, causing disturbances stored in trillions of X, Y, Z coordinates.

It's not uncommon for people to overvalue the importance of demonstrating their competence and power, often at the expense of demonstrating their warmth. People judge trustworthiness before competence.

The issues of mental health and global health are closely linked -- if not one and the same. Similar processes we use to improve our mental health can help us make better, more responsible decisions as a society -- by focusing on the compassion and integrity of our right brain, rather than the judgment, punishment and deception of our left brain.

It is clear that some advances in medical technologies fit the definition of a cyborg. But can the cyborg definition of "a symbiotic fusion of human and machine," be broadly applied to all of us?

It only takes one asteroid, 100 or so meters across, impacting the Earth to explode with the force of a dozen nuclear weapons. This is something we might wish to avoid! So what do we do?

There's just one thing I'd like to clarify. It sounds like I'm railing against the establishment, and their mistake of rejecting me. But here's the thing -- I don't think they were wrong.

We're all born with deep natural capacities for creativity, and systems of mass education tend to suppress them. It is increasingly urgent to cultivate these capacities and to rethink the dominant approaches to education to make sure that we do.

Few of us come face-to-face with death in such a clear and present way as Ric Elias, who was on board Flight 1549 when it crash-landed on New York's Hudson River four years ago.

Our virtual family celebrates together, we mourn together, but through it all we are singing, connecting with each other in a way that only singing allows. And the community has begun spilling over into "real life" as well.

A blue sky is a contradiction: the sky at night is devoid of colour, so why during the day does the world seem to be shrouded in a blanket of blue?