Counting down the final hours of the workweek is a Friday afternoon tradition. And today, you have extra incentive to watch the clock — TEDxWomen kicks off at 6pm in Washington, DC. While one session of the event — “Poverty and Plenty,” hosted by Pat Mitchell of The Paley Center for Media — is taking […]
Multitasking is highly overrated, says Paolo Cardini. In this talk, given at TEDGlobal 2012, he shares that he fed up with doing multiple things at once and would much prefer to “monotask.” He has created a series of 3D-printed “monotasking” smartphone covers to this end, which ensure that you can only do one thing at […]
TED Playlists are designed to give you deep dive into the topics that fascinate you— like “Re-imagining school,” “The future of medicine,” and “How to live with robots.” To celebrate our billionth video view earlier this month, we also asked some incredible personalities in the areas of technology, entertainment and design — from Bill Gates to […]
Teen reporters Sadie Cruz and Nia Ashley conducted lots of interviews with speakers at the TEDYouth conference on November 17. Their Q&As will run on the TED Blog over the next few weeks. Here, a interview conducted by Sadie. Photographer Rick Smolan brought the flavor of homes across the United States to life, helped 25,000 photographers capture […]
Foreign Policy magazine has picked its annual list of the 100 Top Global Thinkers and, nestled among their ranks, are many a TED Speaker. Below, watch the talks from those who appear on the 2012 list, as well as what number on the list they occupy. 3. Bill Clinton talks “rebuilding Rwanda” and Hillary Clinton […]
In Shanghai, China, where it’s always night, directly across the street from a pirated DVD shop called Movie Star is another pirated DVD shop called Better Than Movie Star … and that’s where TED’s founding video director, Jason Wishnow, discovered this pirated DVD (which: sigh! but it’s too good not to share). It’s a bootleg […]
Ever wanted to fly like a bird? The 3D video game AERO not only gives you a chance to see what it’s like to flap your wings and take off — it also teaches the principles of physics at the same time. In the game, which was developed with the help of TED-Ed speaker Bill […]
[ted id=1610 width=560 height=315] In today’s talk, Munir Virani extols the virtues of vultures. Despite our harsh judgments of these funny-looking birds, Virani explains that they are natural garbage collectors and that they kill harmful bacteria that might otherwise threaten us, as well as our livestock. As of now, 11 of the world’s 16 vulture […]
. Dutch artist and engineer Theo Jansen introduced us to a new form of life at TED2007—nimble kinetic sculptures that he crafts out of electric tubes and fans which gather wind energy. Jansen shared his idea: that his sculptures that could live as a herd on the beach and survive on their own. Salazar, a […]
Young Guru, best known for producing Jay-Z’s albums, may be on tour in Europe. But he couldn’t resist the opportunity to remix the teenage singers, MCs and thinkers who contributed their vocals at TEDYouth. At the event on November 17, World Up — a non-profit dedicated to making the world smaller through hip hop, technology […]
TEDxWomen is just days away—on November 30 and December 1, the conference will take place in Washington, D.C. While it’s sold out, there are still many opportunities to watch. Over the weekend, webcasts will be streamed during more than 140 TEDxWomen events across the globe — from Abuja, Nigeria, to Warsaw, Poland. Head to the […]
[ted id=1621 width=560 height=315] Cross-country skier Janine Shepherd was Olympics-bound in 1986, with many thinking that she was a strong contender to earn Australia’s first-ever medal at the winter games. But everything changed on a training bike ride through the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. Shepherd was hit by a truck, and broke both her back […]
Sharing is caring, and here at TED we do a lot of both — especially on social media. You can like our Facebook page, catch us on Instagram and follow us on 19 active Twitter handles. That’s a lot, we know, but sometimes good sharing means not oversharing. In other words, we want to make sure you get the information […]
Teen reporters Sadie Cruz and Nia Ashley conducted lots of interviews with speakers at the TEDYouth conference on November 17. Their Q&As will run on the TED Blog over the next few weeks. Below, an interview conducted by Nia. The Flight Director of the Mars Curiosity Mission, Bobak Ferdowsi, is best known for landing a […]
[ted id=1620 width=560 height=315] It’s an experience that can inspire road rage in even the calmest person: an urban traffic jam where cars crawl along at a pace of inches per hour. As Jonas Eliasson, a professor of transportation at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), explains in today’s talk, traffic congestion occurs in almost […]
The world may be a tough and tenuous place, but we humans tend to think that the future will be better than the past. Why? In the new TED ebook, The Science of Optimism: Why We’re Hard-Wired for Hope, author Tali Sharot expands on her earlier research into the optimism bias, and explores the many reasons why we are […]