Gratefulness isn’t always something that comes easily. Below, some reading and watching to get you into a thankful headspace. Watch: “Want to be happy? Be thankful.” This TED Talk from David Steindl-Rast is the perfect Thanksgiving appetizer. In it, the Benedictine monk and interfaith scholar talks about what, exactly, it means to be grateful and offers a simple process for living […]
Alicia Eggert makes kinetic sculptures that investigate the nature of language and time. Meanwhile, Ryan Holladay is a musical artist who creates sound-specific installations and GPS compositions as part of the duo BLUEBRAIN. Just a week before TED2013, Eggert and Holladay made contact for the very first time. See, Holloday is a curator of new media at Artisphere. And he was […]
Here, your weekly recap of TED-related news: Science writer John Bohannon (watch his TED talk) runs the annual Dance Your Ph.D. contest. This year’s winners must be seen to be believed. In the video above: a dance that explains sperm cell competition in chickens. Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a brilliant, troubling cover story on the drowning […]
You could, on first glance, see Dhaka as a fast and loose place, the kind of city that draws people in, churns them around and spits them out after a few tough years. Many in Dhaka face circumstances similar to those in other South Asian cities: poverty, limited education, exploitation. Dhaka itself sits at or […]
Nurur Rahman Khan was born and bred in Dhaka, Bangladesh. A practicing architect and university lecturer, Khan alternately marvels at the city’s convivial culture and bemoans its economic and structural deficiencies. He’ll brook no debate over the quality of Dhaka’s food, though: It’s miraculously good. Here’s a taste of Khan’s Dhaka, photographed by Mohammad Tauheed, a […]
The few days before a holiday are brutal. It doesn’t matter if you have a lot of work on your plate or have midterms to study for — your mind just wants to be distracted from it all. And so, we bring you the best TED Talks for procrastinating, so you don’t have to feel […]
Invented here. There. And, well, everywhere. This year’s TEDWomen is dedicated to out-of-the-box thinking from women around the globe. TEDWomen 2013 will take place on December 4th through 6th in San Francisco — but the whole world will be watching. There are 220 TEDxWomen events being held in 58 countries, each tuning into the webcast of the […]
Béatrice Coron doesn’t so much tell stories, as cut them. At TED2011, the French-born artist shared how she creates intricate, fantastical worlds by slashing paper into beautiful silhouettes. During a party at TED, held in the rotunda of Long Beach’s Aquarium of the Pacific, Coron ran into James Stewart, the Canadian film director who pioneered digital […]
The world’s population is getting older. Across the globe, people are living longer thanks to improvements in healthcare, nutrition and technology. This population shift brings with it incredible possibilities, but also a new set of challenges. How do we care for our elderly? In today’s talk, Jared Diamond examines the vast differences in how societies […]
“When I started working in this field, the word ‘drone’ wasn’t used at all!” Sergei Lupashin says a little plaintively. “We called them UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles, and they were clearly flying robots. Nowadays it’s all a bit more mixed up; you have to take extra steps to convince people that what you’re doing is […]
Experiences we have all had: walking into a room with a tremendous sense of purpose, only to realize that you have completely forgotten what the purpose was. Talking to someone in a restaurant and losing the thread of your conversation because you’re distracted by the juicier one at the table next door. Slowing down as […]
When Cole Plante starts to DJ, you’d never guess he’s only 17. His hands move over the mixing board with the confidence of someone older, purposefully weaving over the knobs that adjust the sounds and beats. On some of the adjustments, his grip holds a few beats, while others are so fleeting his reflex gives […]
Above: Reggie Watts demonstrates the littleBits SynthKit For the last week, the internet has been grooving to the video above of Reggie Watts making some funky noise with the newly launched SynthKit — the latest offering from littleBits electronic building block company, and the product of a three-way partnership between littleBits, Watts and world-renowned synthmasters KORG. The […]
By Krystian Aparta, as told to Kate Torgovnick Silesian is a Slavic language spoken by about 500,000 people in a region of Poland known as Silesia. Because the region had been home to a large German population until World War II, and because it neighbors the Czech Republic, it consists largely of German and Czech […]
New Zealand is located on a continental plate boundary, so earthquakes aren’t unexpected. But no one was ready for the quake that hit at 12.51 pm on February 22, 2011. “Everyone in Christchurch will never forget that moment,” says Danny Squires, who lives in the city with his wife and four children. Even though they’d […]
Christchurch-based Danny Squires is director of Space Craft Systems and co-founder of WikiHouse/NZ, a global project aiming to make it possible for anyone to design, download and “print” houses. Squires was going about his daily business in Christchurch on February 22, 2011, when a 6.3-magnitude earthquake ripped through the city, causing horrific damage and killing […]