In the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, 350,000 people were presented with the heart-rending decision: to stay in their homes and risk exposure to radiation, or to uproot their lives and move away. The overwhelming majority left. But in today’s powerful talk, Holly Morris introduces us to a group of elderly women who returned to […]
TED-Ed lessons are for kids, teenagers and, well, anyone with a passion for learning. And yet, sometimes these animated lessons get downright scary. Here, a collection of terrifying creatures from TED-Ed lessons—in gif form, naturally—to help you get in the Halloween spirit. From the lesson: Beware of nominalizations (AKA zombie nouns) From the lesson: Diagnosing a […]
Bahia Shebab is an artist, activist, and advertising executive who has been living in Cairo since 2003. And she also has been known to head out on the streets in the middle of the night to spray paint stenciled series that protest injustice and reflect on the fast-shifting politics of the city. Of course, Shehab […]
Early one morning, hours before the sun would rise, Lebanese-Egyptian artist, activist and historian Bahia Shehab was alone on the streets of Cairo, spray-painting a stenciled message that spoke out against the stripping of veiled women. It’s a campaign she discussed in “A thousand times no,” her inspiring TED Talk, and it was not only […]
If your home had been devastated by a disaster, would you stay? Why do people choose to remain in potentially life-threatening places? These are just a few of the complex questions that photojournalist Michael Forster Rothbart and filmmaker Holly Morris explore in their respective work, documenting the lives of people living in Chernobyl and Fukushima. […]
In the new TED Book, Would You Stay?, photojournalist Michael Forster Rothbart travels to Chernobyl and Fukushima to try to understand why people refuse to leave these areas despite the risks. Pulling together stunning photos, moving words, recorded interviews and multimedia maps, Rothbart weaves a complex narrative and poses an even tougher question: If your hometown […]
In June of 2006, we posted six talks online. Since then, our universe has grown exponentially to 1600+ talks and all the initiatives you see on the map above. Thus, we’re planning an exciting new version of TED.com, designed for deeper exploration of ideas. To find out how we’re rebuilding the site, and how you […]
How long have you been staring at a screen? Chances are this is not the beginning of your day on your mobile device or computer — and it’s very unlikely to be the end of it. You reading this blog post is only a moment in your digital day, nestled among Facebook updates, Twitter posts, […]
Jess Thom wants you to know that it’s okay to laugh. “You’re going to hear the words ‘biscuit’ and ‘hedgehog’ a lot in the next few minutes,” she says at the beginning of her talk from TEDxAlbertopolis. That’s because Thom has Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological condition that causes involuntary movements and noises commonly referred to as […]
In today’s TED Talk, biologist Mohamed Hijri directs our attention to an incredible biotechnology — not one he invented, but one that’s been around for 450 million years. They are: mycorrhiza, microscopic mushrooms that grow in a symbiotic relationship with the roots of plants. These mushrooms are incredible at helping plants find phosphorous, an essential […]
Your email inbox almost always looks the same. The content may change, but it’s still a chronological list — a narrow, time-based organization of correspondence, deeply set in the present. But a team from the MIT Media lab has created a new way for you to see your email, as an intimate and elegant visualization […]
Should the government act like a venture capitalist? It might seem crazy to some, but in today’s eye-opening talk, economist Mariana Mazzucato shows why it might just work — and how it has, in fact, been working for decades. In this talk, Mazzucato flips the script on the image of a big government meddling in […]
Three years ago, Jennifer Brea, then a PhD student in political science, was struck down by what appeared to be a severe flu. It turned out to be the beginning of a long illness — including neurological dysfunction and extreme exhaustion — that she has yet to recover from. Discovering that the medical community did […]
If you look closely at the Lideta Mercato — a shopping mall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, designed by TED Fellow Xavier Vilalta — you will notice a unique pattern on its skin, inspired by the beautiful, bold patterns found on Ethiopian women’s dresses. But if you look closer, you will also notice something else: that […]
“When we feel jealous, we tell ourselves a story. We tell ourselves a story about other people’s lives,” says Parul Sehgal, an editor for The New York Times Book Review, in her TED Talk, a poetic meditation on an oft-resented emotion. “These stories make us feel terrible because they are designed to make us feel […]
In 2005, at the start of my first visit to Shanghai, the city clothed itself in a growling thunderstorm. When dusk fell and neon began to score the sky, the city was more Blade Runner-y than I thought a real place possible to be. I remember diving into a luxe spa for a post-train massage, […]