We all think we understand the formula for keeping healthy — eat right, exercise, don’t smoke, skip dessert. But that picture is vastly incomplete, perhaps fatally so. In the eye-opening new TED book, The Upstream Doctors: Medical Innovators Track Sickness to Its Source, physician Rishi Manchanda says that while our individual health is highly dependent on […]
Are your endless tweets, status updates and Instagrams robbing you of enjoying what’s special about the moments you’re trying to share? Damon Brown fears they may. In the TED Book Our Virtual Shadow: Why We Are Obsessed With Documenting Our Lives Online, he lays out a compelling case for mindfully balancing your online presence with being present in […]
When it comes to US politics, many are frustrated that gridlock and grandstanding so often substitute for the hard job of getting things done. Just 14% of Americans say they approve of the work that Congress is doing, according to a recent Gallup poll. (Which, as a recent TED speaker notes, is lower than the […]
Before we can tackle climate change, financial reform, education reform or, well, anything, there is a single issue that we in the United States must confront. As legal activist Lawrence Lessig says in today’s talk, before we can bring about change on any of the thousands of issues that matter to us, we must change […]
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would stretch 1,700 miles from Western Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas. And it has become a touchstone for the bitter fight over America’s energy future. Opponents say the pipeline — designed to bring oil from Canadian tar sands down through the United States — would further bind future […]
On the morning after more than a billion viewers worldwide tuned into the Academy Awards and its glitzy salute to motion pictures, 44 TEDsters trekked up to one of the most enduring signs of moviedom for a tour of the fabled Hollywood sign and an update on the successful battle to preserve the scenic hills […]
Who hasn’t found themselves at party, standing awkwardly by the guacamole, approximately five feet from another person doing the same? Sometimes it’s just hard to know what to say to start a conversation. Davy Rothbart can help. In his new TED Book, How Did You End Up Here?: The Surprising Ways Our Questions Connect Us, Rothbart […]
It is not nearly enough for students to simply churn out answers from memory. No, in our ever-changing time, they need to be able to think expansively and creatively. In order to solve the complex problems of tomorrow, the traditional academic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic must be replaced with creativity, curiosity, critical thinking […]
Secrecy and propriety used to define our cultural and professional lives. We kept trade secrets, held closed-door meetings, had whispered conversations and kept the details of our comings-and-goings to ourselves. That’s no longer the case. We have entered a new era — one characterized by openness — in which our world and our relationships have […]
All around the globe, people are feeling increasingly skeptical and mistrustful of their leaders. According to one global trust barometer, only 52% of survey respondents said that they trusted their government to do the right thing in 2011 and, in 2012, the number plummeted to 43%. As recent surveys reveal, only 18% of Italians believe their […]
Pause for a moment and imagine the grand, confusing and ultimately exhilarating drama that is the sweep of your life. Think you can summarize it into a half-dozen carefully crafted words? Larry Smith thinks you can, and created the popular ‘Six-Word Memoir‘ project, that challenges contributors to make us pause, reflect and even laugh. He […]
Designer Emily Pilloton believes that education not only enriches the mind but the heart as well. And, in the best cases, it can also enhance a community. With that goal in mind, Pilloton and her partner Matthew Miller started Studio H, a program to bring design-based instruction and learning into the high school classroom, with […]
The mad rush of the holidays can stress out the sunniest soul, and yet somehow, beneath it all, we remain cheerfully optimistic. We look ahead, make New Year’s resolutions and generally believe next year will be better than this one and the year before. Why? Tali Sharot, who spoke at TED2012, says we homo sapiens are […]
Can we draw instructive parallels between the development of the human brain and the emergence of the electronic global ‘brain’ of the Internet? New research in neuroscience suggests that, yes, we can. In the new TED ebook, Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks, filmmaker Tiffany Shlain explores the links between the two. The book also arrives concurrently […]
Seafood is delicious, not to mention extremely healthy. But from where TED Book author Maria Finn sits, there are even more benefits to eating fish and shellfish — because they offer anyone the opportunity to lessen their impact on global systems. An advocate of “whole food” cooking, Finn knows that nearly every part of a […]
Finding answers to complex questions on the Internet is often a challenge, as a simple search can sometimes lead you down a rabbit hole of impersonal data. In A Haystack Full of Needles: Cutting Through the Clutter of the Online World to Find a Place, Partner or President, Jim Hornthal explores groundbreaking new approaches to discovering the […]