Shane Koyczan has a way with words. “I’ve been shot down so many times I get altitude sickness just from standing up for myself,” he says, beginning today’s talk. “That’s what we were told—stand up for yourself. But that’s hard to do if you don’t know who you are.” Koyczan appeared on the TED2013 stage […]
Spoken-word poet and artist Shane Koyczan is onstage at TED, sharing his own experiences and charming us silly. This is an intimate, heartfelt look into a life that has not always been easy. “I’ve been shot down so many times I get altitude sickness just from standing up for myself,” he says. Being told to stand up […]
TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. This weekend, two new playlists are available: Spoken-word fireworks and That’s absurd! That’s absurd! 5 quirky talks remind us that life is funny, weird, sweet, absurd. Watch talks by Improv Everywhere’s Charlie Todd and […]
[ted id=1625 width=560 height=315] Spoken word artist Lemon Andersen begins today’s talk with the poem, “Please Don’t Take My Air Jordans,” written by Reg E. Gaines in 1994. My Air Jordans cost a hundred with tax. My suede Starter jacket says Raiders on the back. I’m stylin’, smilin’ looking real mean, Cause it ain’t about […]
It’s hard to get one’s brain started on a Monday (especially if you stayed up to watch Curiosity last night). To get synapses firing, here are three killer spoken-word performances from last month’s TEDxBoston. Kemi Alabi: Unlovelies in the Key of C Major Boston University student and slam poet Kemi Alabi takes us to the world […]
[ted id=161] Today, Erin McKean realized the idea that forms the base of her 2007 TED Talk with the launch of Wordnik.com, a dictionary that evolves as language does. On Wordnik, users can add new words and meanings, tag words with related expressions, see real-time search results for words from Twitter and Flickr, discover how many […]
Novelist and poet Chris Abani believes the heart of a place can be best understood through its poems and narratives. He talks about African and Nigerian stories — including his own story of artistic and political awakening, which began with an inventive teacher who taught him the forbidden history of his own people. How, he […]