14 May 2008
The bad news about the news: Alisa Miller on TED.com
Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, talks about why -- though we want to know more about the world than ever -- the US news media is actually showing less. Eye-opening stats and graphs. (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 4:29.)
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13 May 2008
The amazing intelligence of crows: Joshua Klein on TED.com
Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human. (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 10:16.)
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06 May 2008
6 ways mushrooms can save the world: Paul Stamets on TED.com
Mycologist Paul Stamets studies mycelium and lists 6 ways that this astonishing fungus can help save the world. Cleaning polluted soil, creating new insecticides, treating smallpox and maybe even the flu ... in 18 minutes, he doesn't get all the way through his list, but he has plenty of time to blow your mind. An audience favorite at TED2008. (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:44.)
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29 April 2008
What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider: Brian Cox on TED.com
"Rock star physicist" Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive complex -- and describes the vital role it's going to play in understanding our universe. (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 14:59.)
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22 April 2008
Where does creativity hide? Amy Tan on TED.com
Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, journeying through her childhood and family history and into the worlds of physics and chance, looking for hints of where her own creativity comes from. It's a wild ride with a surprise ending. (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 22:52.)
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16 April 2008
Open-source economics: Yochai Benkler on TED.com
Law professor Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization. By disrupting traditional economic production, copyright law and established competition, they're paving the way for a new set of economic laws, where empowered individuals are put on a level playing field with industry giants. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 17:52.)
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15 April 2008
Playing the music in your head: Tod Machover & Dan Ellsey on TED.com
Tod Machover of MIT's Media Lab invented the musical technology behind Guitar Hero, and here he talks about what's coming next. Listen for some brand-new ways to interface with music -- to play it, compose it, enjoy it. Machover then introduces Dan Ellsey, a composer with cerebral palsy who uses some new tools to write and perform his own music. Onstage, Ellsey conducts his "My Eagle Song," in a soaring performance that underscores music's power to move you and give you chills. (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 20:35.)
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27 March 2008
18 minutes with an agile mind: Clifford Stoll on TED.com
Clifford Stoll could talk about the atmosphere of Jupiter. Or hunting KGB hackers. Or Klein bottles, computers in classrooms, the future. But he's not going to. Which is fine, because it would be criminal to confine a man with interests as multifarious as Stoll's to give a talk on any one topic. Instead, he simply captivates his audience with a wildly energetic sprinkling of anecdotes, observations, asides -- and even a science experiment. After all, by his own definition, he's a scientist: "Once I do something, I want to do something else." (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:50.)
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25 March 2008
See inside your brain in real time: Christopher deCharms on TED.com
From last month's TED conference: Neuroscientist Christopher deCharms demos an amazing new way to use fMRIs to watch the brain in action. Using this technology, if you move your arm, get angry, feel pain, you can see what it looks like in your brain as it happens -- and then you can learn to control it. The applications for real-time fMRI start with pain management and run on into the realm of science fiction, but this technology is very real. (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 3:56.)
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20 March 2008
Finding the next Einstein in Africa: Neil Turok's TED Prize wish on TED.com
Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, physicist Neil Turok speaks out for talented young Africans starved of opportunity: by unlocking and nurturing the continent's creative potential, we can create a change in Africa's future. Turok asks the TED community to help him expand the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences by opening 15 new centers across Africa in five years. By adding resources for entrepreneurship to this proven model, he says, we can create a network for progress across the continent -- and perhaps discover an African Einstein. To brainstorm on this wish and get involved, visit TEDPrize.org >> (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 24:44.)
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19 March 2008
Help bring compassion back to religion: Karen Armstrong's TED Prize wish on TED.com
As she accepts her 2008 TED Prize, author and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- have been diverted from the moral purpose they share: to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion -- to help restore the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") as the central global religious doctrine. To brainstorm on this wish and get involved, visit TEDPrize.org >> (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 21:27.)
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18 March 2008
Once Upon a School: Dave Eggers' TED Prize wish on TED.com
Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to engage with their local school. With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open their own volunteer-driven, wildly creative writing labs. But you don't need to go that far, he reminds us -- it's as simple as asking a teacher "How can I help?" Share your own volunteering stories at his new website, Once Upon a School. To brainstorm on this wish and get involved, visit TEDPrize.org >> (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 24:29.)
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12 March 2008
Stroke of insight: Jill Bolte Taylor on TED.com
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story of recovery and awareness -- of how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another. (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 18:44.)
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TRANSLATIONS:
Read the talk in German here (in the "Hintergrund") >>
Read the talk in Portuguese here >>
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14 February 2008
Rocket to Saturn: George Dyson on TED.com
George Dyson tells the amazing story of Project Orion, a 4,000-ton, nuclear-bomb-propelled spacecraft that could have taken us to Saturn in five years. With a priceless insider's perspective and a cache of documents, photos and film, Dyson brings this dusty Atomic Age dream to vivid life. (Recorded February 2002 in Monterey, California. Duration: 08:31.)
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11 February 2008
Way-new collaboration: Howard Rheingold on TED.com
Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group. As he points out, humans have been banding together to work collectively since our days of hunting mastodons. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, California. Duration: 19:30.)
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07 February 2008
The omnivore's next dilemma: Michael Pollan on TED.com
What if human consciousness isn't the end-all and be-all of Darwinism? What if we are all just pawns in corn's clever strategy game, the ultimate prize of which is world domination? Michael Pollan asks us to see things from a plant's-eye view -- to consider the possibility that nature isn't opposed to culture, that biochemistry rivals intellect as a survival tool. By merely shifting our perspective, he argues, we can heal the Earth. Who's the more sophisticated species now? (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:31.)
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06 February 2008
Rome antics: David Macaulay on TED.com
His love and fascination for Rome dates to his days as an architecture student, but David Macaulay found the path to his book Rome Antics took some unusual (and frustrating) turns. Through failed pop-up designs, scribbled-out title possibilities, surreal sketchbook pages (think "Piranesi meets Escher"), and rambling storylines, Macaulay details each step of his winding journey toward completion of his illustrated homage to the city. (Recorded February 2002 in Monterey, California. Duration: 21:34.)
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04 February 2008
Sing a song of cities: Jaime Lerner on TED.com
With maverick flair and a strategist's disdain for accepted wisdom, Jaime Lerner re-invented urban space in his native Curitiba, Brazil. He talks about how to revolutionize bus transit, awaken green consciousness in a populace accustomed to litter and blight, and change the way city planners and bureaucrats worldwide conceive what's possible within the tangled structure of the metropolitan landscape. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 15:42.)
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31 January 2008
Zipcar and beyond: Robin Chase on TED.com
Robin Chase rose to fame by founding Zipcar, the world's biggest car-sharing business, but that was one of her smaller ideas. In this presentation she travels much farther, contemplating road-pricing schemes that will shake up our driving habits and a no-fee mesh network as sprawling as the United States Interstate highway system. But how could you build a free wireless system that vast and pervasive? Chase finds the answer in a few short lines from The Graduate. And it has nothing to do with plastic. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 13:39.)
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30 January 2008
A vision for TED: Chris Anderson on TED.com
At the time of this talk, TED's future was in the balance. Its founder, Richard Saul Wurman, had just sold the conference to Chris Anderson's foundation, and had announced that this 2002 conference was the last TED he would run. Many in the audience had concluded that the conference would not survive the transition to a new owner, and few had signed up for the following year's event. This was Anderson's attempt to persuade TEDsters that the conference had a future, and that the transition from a for-profit event, to one owned by a nonprofit, could work. The talk took place five months after September 11, and at the very bottom of the dot-com stock market bust, when many in the room had lost 90% or more of their net worth. Here, Anderson shares his own story -- and his vision for what TED can become. (Recorded February 2002 in Monterey, California. Duration: 12:47.)
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28 January 2008
Looking at celebrity: Alison Jackson on TED.com
Why can't you make it through the checkout line without flipping through page after page of pregnant celebs in Us magazine? Alison Jackson knows why. In her work, she photographs the people you think you recognize doing what you really want to see. And in the process, she's questioning our shared desire to get personal with celebrity culture. Funny and sometimes shocking, Jackson's work contains some graphic images. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 17:36.)
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23 January 2008
Telling the story of a passionate life: Ben Dunlap on TED.com
Sit back and listen, as Ben Dunlap tells the story of Sandor Teszler, a Hungarian man he met at Wofford College. In telling Teszler's dramatic life story, which arcs from the Holocaust to the American Deep South of the 1950s, Dunlap shares some deep and, ultimately, moving lessons about justice -- and the power of lifelong learning. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 19:08.)
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17 January 2008
"Nice building. Then what?" Frank Gehry on TED.com
Frank Gehry wanted to be a scientist when he grew up. But after blowing up a part of his house, at age 14, he decided against it. He's gone on to create some mindblowing buildings, including the Guggenheim at Bilbao and LA's Walt Disney Concert Hall. This wildly entertaining conversation with Richard Saul Wurman (then host of TED) touches on many topics, including the power of failure, the importance of collaboration, and the need for architects to bring personal expression to the table. (Recorded February 2002 in Monterey, California. Duration: 22:00.)
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11 January 2008
Underwater astonishments: David Gallo on TED.com
David Gallo shows jaw-dropping footage of amazing sea creatures, including a shape-shifting cuttlefish, a pair of fighting squid, and a mesmerizing gallery of bioluminescent fish that light up the blackest depths of the ocean. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 5:21.)
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Download this talk in 480p high definition >>
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10 January 2008
The mystery box: J.J. Abrams on TED.com
Filmmaker J.J. Abrams traces his love of the unseen mystery -- the heart of Alias, Lost and the upcoming Cloverfield -- back to its own magical beginnings, which may or may not include an early obsession with magic, the love of a supportive grandfather, or his own unopened Mystery Box. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 18:02.)
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08 January 2008
How do ants know what to do? Deborah Gordon on TED.com
Armed with a few students, a backhoe and a handful of markers, Deborah Gordon digs up ant colonies in the Arizona desert. She asks: How do these chitinous creatures get down to business -- and even multitask when they need to -- with no language, memory or visible leadership? Her answers could lead to a better understanding of all complex systems, from the brain to the Web. Thanks, ants. (Recorded February 2003 in Monterey, California. Duration: 20:25.)
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06 December 2007
Beauty and truth in physics: Murray Gell-Mann on TED.com
Wielding laypeople's terms and a sense of humor, Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann drops some knowledge about particle physics, asking questions like, Are elegant equations more likely to be right than inelegant ones? Can the fundamental law, the so-called "theory of everything," really explain everything? His answers will surprise you. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:07.)
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