Elizabeth Loftus studies false memories. As she describes in her TED Talk, The fiction of memory, she has implanted erroneous memories of childhood trauma into adult study subjects as part of her work. She has pinpointed failures in eyewitness testimonies. She’s found that misinformation can reshape taste preferences. And, she’s found that people in stressful […]
In 1945, there were 4.5 million hives of bees in the United States. Today, there are just about 2 million. It’s been a subtle decline over time, but one that has dramatically accelerated over the past seven years. And this should be extremely alarming, given that bees pollinate one-third of the world’s crops. In today’s […]
We spend about a third of our lives asleep — a figure that may make all that time spent in bed seem like a waste. But according to neuroscientist Russell Foster, it is quite the opposite. In today’s talk, given at TEDGlobal 2013, Foster explores why we sleep, a question which no one has been […]
Margaret Heffernan thinks deeply about what makes businesses work, and her answers are often surprising. At TEDGlobal 2012, she shared why disagreement is vital for innovation. In today’s talk, given at TEDxDanubia, Heffernan turns her eye to willful blindness — the fact that people are primed to ignore evidence that something is amiss in their […]
By Jon Ronson In 2010, I made a radio documentary about Eleanor Longden for BBC Radio 4. When I heard that TED was doing a talent search — looking to give the TED2013 stage to people who might not normally have access to such a place — I thought of Eleanor. I told the TED […]
During her freshman year of college, Eleanor Longden began hearing voices: a narrator describing her actions as she went about her day. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Longden began what she describes as a “psychic civil war,” fighting to stop the voices as they became antagonistic. What helped her was something unexpected: making peace with them. By […]
Scientists in London have achieved a significant breakthrough on the road to curing blindness this week. Certain kinds of blindness are caused when photoreceptors — the cells in the retina that react with light and send an electrical signal to the brain — die off. Researchers at Moorfields Eye Hospital and University College London have, […]
It’s an alchemic question that’s very hard for us to answer: what makes a great TED talk? In this talk, which was given to a gathering of 100+ TEDx organizers from 43 countries during the TEDx Workshop at TEDGlobal 2013, our curator Chris Anderson stresses the incredible power of a well-structured, honest talk. “We’re giving someone […]
When recording music, it can take days or weeks to get the perfect performances for an album. But when it comes to recording the symphony of nature, the process can take even longer. According to Bernie Krause, a legend in the field of natural soundscapes, it can take 1,000 hours of recording to get just […]
Yo-yo champion BLACK does, in fact, wear a special costume — all black, with a red sash. But he has not always been a superhero. In his very sweet talk from TED2013, BLACK reveals that as a young teenager he struggled with feelings of worthlessness — and that it was dedicating himself to the yo-yo […]
Editor’s note: In today’s talk, Al Vernacchio offers a new metaphor for thinking about sex — ordering a pizza. Outside of his Philadelphia-area classroom, where he works as a sexuality educator for high-school students, Vernacchio also serves as a marriage officiant. With weddings on our minds this summer, we asked him to share his thoughts on […]
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/69568276 w=560&h=315] The weeks after TEDGlobal require serious debriefing. Throughout the course of the conference — which took place June 10 to 14 in Edinburgh, Scotland — the mind is crammed full of so many fascinating ideas that it takes some time to process them. As we look back on the conference, and continue […]
Forecasting the stock market has a storied past of unfruitful predictions. But in today’s TED Talk, Didier Sornette shares how he and his research team have successfully identified unstable market bubbles and even predicted when they’ll pop. His findings, if accepted, could quite literally change the way we do business, by shifting how banks, traders […]
He is a part of you. Whether you are close or not, whether he was a constant part of your life or not, he impacted who you are today. You love him – except maybe when you can’t stand him. For better or worse, he is your dad. Celebrate this Father’s Day with these nine […]
“This was my cancer,” TED Fellow Salvatore Iaconesi begins his TEDGlobal talk, showing a slide of brain scans taken last summer, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer at age 39. Since the moment Iaconesi heard the word “cancer” come out of his doctors’ mouth, he noticed something — that the way people related to […]
Something special happens when you think again. All it takes is an insightful thought and — all of a sudden — your brain does a backflip and you see faulty assumptions underlying what you’d always taken to be true. The first day of mainstage talks at TEDGlobal 2013 brought so many of these paradigm-shifting moments […]