It has been nearly three hundred years since Italy’s Antonio Vivaldi composed one of the most innovative pieces of classical music of all time: the four-part series of concertos “The Four Seasons.” Vivaldi drew inspiration from the natural world, trying to capture its essence and give musical expression to flowing waters, singing birds, blowing winds, […]
At TEDSummit in June, we featured a talk by a young Syrian architect, Marwa Al-Sabouni. In it, she shares an important and original insight about how the roots of conflict can be traced, among other better-studied reasons, to misdirected and divisive urbanism. She offers the example of her own country, where violent conflict has been […]
In the face of global crises like climate change and refugee migration, it seems sometimes that nation-states are hopelessly gridlocked and unable to act. At TEDGlobal 2013, political theorist Benjamin Barber laid out a counter-proposal: Go local. Big cities are demonstrating a remarkable capacity to govern themselves democratically and efficiently in networks, both locally and […]
TED-Ed Clubs are about to get a lot of visibility in Italian high schools. On Thursday, March 3, in Rome, the Italian Minister of Education, University and Research, Stefania Giannini, and the European Director of TED, Bruno Giussani, signed a 3-year memorandum of understanding on cooperation regarding the spread of the TED-Ed Clubs curriculum across Italian high […]
Installed in the middle of the social spaces during TEDGlobal 2013 two weeks ago, three visual scribes kept busy throughout the conference drawing, capturing and sometimes deconstructing the content of every talk on giant whiteboards. David Christie, Fernanda de Uriarte and Tom Oswald, of the London firm Innovation Arts, turned the ideas expressed by the speakers on […]
Books, film, art, food — and science and social issues — were at the center of the talks at the sixth TEDSalon in London. The event took place on May 10 in a packed Unicorn Theatre, with the support of longtime TED partner frog. “Our bodies are made of atoms, but our lives are made […]
Three weeks ago, the first democratically elected president of the island nation of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, was ousted in a coup that brought back to power supporters of the past regime. One of the TED’s curators, Bruno Giussani, had been in discussion with Nasheed and his entourage about a possible talk on climate change […]
“Travels in Space, Time & Imagination” was the theme of the fifth TEDSalon in London, which took place on Thursday 10 November and played to a packed house. “Journeys can be of many sorts,” TED European director, and the evening’s host, Bruno Giussani said, opening the Salon. And indeed the program was eclectic, featuring nine […]
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/26440850 w=525&h=294] TED Blog exclusive video: US astronaut Ron Garan is currently on board the International Space Station with five colleagues from the US, Russia and Europe. (This is Garan‘s second trip to the ISS.) For TEDGlobal 2011, he recorded a talk sharing the perspective from space and describing the wide range of scientific experiments […]
I’m just back from Tunisia where I attended (and spoke at) TEDxCarthage, held in Tunis. It has been a short visit, only two days (and this post is just a quick note without pretense). But it was a very intense visit, and I come back with a lot of hope and optimism for the future […]
Solar Impulse, the solar airplane that Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard described in his captivating talk at TEDGlobal 2009, took off successfully this morning from Payerne airfield, in Western Switzerland, on its maiden flight. The aircraft (which has a wingspan of 63.40 meters but a weight of only 1600 kg and a speed at takeoff of […]
In her TED 2007 talk, director Deborah Scranton detailed how she put cameras in the hands of soldiers fighting in Iraq to realize her acclaimed “The War Tapes” documentary. For her new film, “Earth Made of Glass“, which will premiere on April 26th at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York (Film’s trailer – Facebook […]
Fields Wicker-Miurin, co-founder of Leaders’ Quest in London, trains business leaders by connecting them to other leaders. Yes, it sounds rather common – but her leaders live in the Amazon forest or are advocates of HIV education in India or collect and display artifacts related to uneasy periods in Chinese history: they are leaders that […]
Four of the speakers that participated in the first TEDGLOBAL in Oxford (July 2005) have all published new books recently. Former Afghani minister and head of Kabul University Ashraf Ghani (watch his TEDtalk), together with Clare Lockhart, has penned “Fixing Failed States: A Framework For Rebuilding A Fractured World“. They discuss the “between forty and […]
To reach Edward O. Wilson’s office on the Harvard campus, one must first push through a door with a sign warning the public not to enter. Then, enter a creaky old elevator and press two buttons simultaneously. This counterintuitive procedure transports one into a strange realm. It is a space that holds the world’s largest […]
British multi-entrepreneur and TEDster Richard Branson (watch his TEDtalk) may be in a pretty bad business when it comes to pollution — airlines, among others — but he is an eco-convert. On Tuesday he told the Global Humanitarian Forum‘s first gathering in Geneva, Switzerland, that he favors “polluter-pay” policies and that the climate crisis should […]