What would happen if artists Art Wolfe and Liu Bolin stepped into the same room? It’s possible that the space around them would melt into paint. While Wolfe is best known for his documentary photography, charting locations from Madagascar to New Zealand, for his latest series — called The Human Canvas Project — Wolfe painted […]
Kylie Dunn has come up with the perfect analogy for her Year of TED, a self-improvement project she dreamed up in 2011 to infuse ideas from TED Talks into her everyday life. She says that the experience was akin to the Wizard of Oz, with herself playing each of the main characters. Dunn was recently […]
In his TED Talk, “The shared experience of absurdity,” Charlie Todd shared the hilarity he creates for his fellow New Yorkers through flashmobs like the No Pants Subway Ride. The flashmob idea has, of course, spread widely. In the video above, watch one coordinated by the organizers of TEDxAden, a spontaneous musical performance in the […]
Frederic Kaplan has found an unconventional way to build a time machine. Rather than making a metal object (or, uh, a police call box) that whisks you through time and space, he wondered: Could a time machine be built out of information? In today’s TED Talk, filmed at TEDxCaFoscariU, Kaplan previews the Venice Time Machine, […]
By the organizers of TEDxBeirut Archaeologists believe that Phoenician traders, who set out from the shores of Lebanon, spread their alphabet across the ancient Mediterranean world, unleashing a chain reaction that they couldn’t have conceived of even in their wildest dreams. Today, we are honored to spread that word again as Suzanne Talhouk’s talk from […]
How does being rich affect the way we behave? In today’s talk, social psychologist Paul Piff provides a convincing case for the answer: not well. “As a person’s levels of wealth increase, their feelings of compassion and empathy go down, and their feelings of entitlement, of deservingness, and their ideology of self-interest increases,” he says in […]
When the lights went down at TEDxMet, a TEDx event hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in October, anyone looking very closely could see a tiny light in the first row, casting a dim glow on a lucite desk. The desk was created for artist Alice Attie, who sat with a piece of paper […]
Beyoncé must love surprises. Because late last night, she unexpectedly dropped her fifth studio album, Beyoncé, on iTunes. It’s what she’s calling a “visual album,” and it features 14 songs and 17 music videos — including a song about her daughter, Blue Ivy, and guest appearances from husband Jay-Z, pals Justin Timberlake and Frank Ocean […]
We each live in the shadow of a personal apocalypse: the knowledge that — someday, somehow — we will die. It’s a terrifying thought, and so we look for a way out. In my talk from TEDxBratislava (and in my book Immortality), I walk through four stories that people have told throughout cultures and time, as a […]
The weekend before last, we joined hundreds of New Yorkers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first-ever TEDx event at a museum: TEDxMet. The speakers included Nobel-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel, artist Maira Kalman, legendary choreographer Bill T. Jones, and writer Andrew Solomon. The day was peppered with stunning music and dance performances, and […]
Jess Thom wants you to know that it’s okay to laugh. “You’re going to hear the words ‘biscuit’ and ‘hedgehog’ a lot in the next few minutes,” she says at the beginning of her talk from TEDxAlbertopolis. That’s because Thom has Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological condition that causes involuntary movements and noises commonly referred to as […]
Your email inbox almost always looks the same. The content may change, but it’s still a chronological list — a narrow, time-based organization of correspondence, deeply set in the present. But a team from the MIT Media lab has created a new way for you to see your email, as an intimate and elegant visualization […]
In the remote town of Leh, tucked away in the Indian Himalayas, a group of 100 TEDx’ers gathered among the stunning valleys and sweeping mountain vistas. The diverse group of speakers at TEDxLeh included a Tibetan Buddhist monk, a Ladakhi filmmaker, a snow leopard preservationist, India’s best white water rafter, a solar energy entrepreneur, and […]
by Rebecca Smith Hurd Spanish architecture generally conjures images of grandeur, particularly when it comes to modernist and contemporary construction. Gaudí’s basilica. Calatrava’s bridges, airports and centers for the arts. Bofill’s state and corporate headquarters. Moneo’s museums. The list of splendiferous urban structures goes on and on. But not everything built on the Iberian Peninsula […]
by Rebecca Smith Hurd 29-year-old Iñaki Romero Larrea describes himself as an “urbanist before architect.” As one of the five members of design and architecture collective Paisaje Transversal, he is particularly interested in figuring out how to revitalize Spain’s cities without indulging in the time-consuming traditional bid process or incurring exorbitant construction costs. For the group, […]
In an interview on the Today Show this morning, Kevin Breel reveals why he thinks his TED Talk has gone viral: not because his story is unique, but because it is so common. Breel’s talk, given at TEDxKids@Ambleside, has been watched about 1.5 million times so far. In it, the 19-year-old reveals that, while he […]