“If you’re a teen, you’ve been called apathetic, narcissistic and social-media obsessed,” said Taylor Trudon, the youth editor at Huffington Post. Standing tall in a crisp white blazer, the 25-year-old shared how she went from keeping a high school diary — decorated with stickers and magazine clippings of John Mayer and Uggs — to becoming […]
As Randy Bretz neared the end of his long career in TV and radio production, he knew the traditional retirement agenda wasn’t for him. “I don’t golf, and I don’t fish,” he said via Skype from his home in Lincoln, Nebraska. While he kept busy with church, volunteer work, doting on his 13 grandkids and […]
“It is great to be back in Mississippi — yes it is,” said Kermit the Frog on the TEDxJackson stage in 2014. “I have deep roots here.” The Muppet was alluding to the fact that his creator, Jim Henson, was from the area. Kermit spoke about his humble southern upbringing in a swamp not too […]
On the day he was released from his cell, Vincent Cochetel sported a beard “that would be trendy today.” It was not a fashion decision. In 1998, Cochetel, the director of the Bureau for Europe for the UN High Commission on Refugees, was kidnapped in Chechnya and held hostage for 317 days, most of that time […]
By Jenny Groza Habana, Cuba, which was called “the rich man’s playground” before World War II, now evokes an air of mystery—a giant question mark. Are there still midcentury cars roaming the streets? Blighted neighborhoods with broken windows and collapsing roofs? Citizens eking out a living after years of oppression? These, says Andres Levin, the […]
In October, ten thousand people sat in the stands of Argentina’s largest indoor event space, Tecnópolis, bracing themselves for the moment when the stage lights would turn on. They weren’t waiting for your typical amphitheater fare — not for Beyonce, nor for football. Instead, they were waiting to be entertained by a historian who researches […]
The Open Translation Project has a global family of over 18,000 volunteers. But for the Dekkers — living in Sde Warburg, Israel — the OTP family isn’t a figure of speech. They’ve made translating TED Talks into Hebrew a true family affair. Husband and wife Ido and Tal Dekkers have worked on more than 2,000 […]
It’s not every day that you see a desert cyclist, a Tanbour virtuoso, a Persian literature professor and a health systems expert in the same room together. But at the second TEDxTehran, held in September, they all took the stage, sharing stories of their “breakthroughs.” In the audience, representatives from TEDx events in all corners […]
Two guys, a giant red X and an extremely unreliable compact car on a journey from London to Ulaanbaatar. Sounds like an ideal vacation, right? For Nate Mook — organizer of TEDxMidAtlantic, TEDxMogadishu and TEDxEverest — there’s no other way he’d rather spend his time off. This past July, he and Steve Garguilo, organizer of […]
In Northern Canada, near the Beaufort Sea, sits a tiny hamlet with a population of less than 700, consisting of mostly Aboriginal people. It is where 80-year-olds ride their snowmobiles to buy milk, where students go on hunting expeditions for field trips, and where neighbors drop off chunks of fresh muskox meat in the evenings. […]
Bhilwara is a city in Rajasthan, India, famous for its textile industry. Textiles dominate the local economy; after agriculture, it’s the leading employer in the city. The city is populated with spinning looms, fabric processing plants and weaving centers, producing huge swaths of yarn and thousands of tons of suiting fabric. But seeing Bhilwara merely […]
Lon Hodge and his labradoodle, Gander, are at a McDonald’s near the Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois, a quick stop for a bite as they travel across the United States. “He never leaves my side,” Hodge explains to a curious woman, patting Gander on the flank. “He’s special.” Hodge and Gander are on the […]
If you were to map out all 10 TEDx events that Felipe Spath has organized, you’d have a constellation of waypoints zigzagging through Colombia’s countryside—passing farms, mountains, lakes, coffee fields and mines. The tireless Colombian native organized his first TEDx event in 2012 and has been going nonstop ever since, working to bring ideas from […]
TEDx organizer Seema Raman has held three events in the past year, and traveled from her home in Bangalore to the snowy mountains of British Columbia to learn more about putting on great events. But the funny thing is: Raman never intended to organize anything at all. Raman, a 20-year-old engineering student at PES Institute […]
If you happened upon a small park in Nasiriyah, Iraq, last June 28, you would have noticed a group of 15 people, fast asleep, with blue hard hats and orange vests nearby. This group was not homeless, nor staging some kind of occupation. They were volunteers from Iraq Builders who had traveled more than 350 […]