Today’s viewing audiences are far too sophisticated for advertisements full of fake doctors, the word “sale” flashing on repeat, and tight clothing on attractive models. Today, we want ads to actually speak to us—to connect to our hopes and dreams, to flip our thinking in unexpected ways and to reflect the world we’d like to […]Read more
There’s wild sex. And then there’s sex in the wild — a topic that biologist and animal sex expert Carin Bondar has been talking about for years, spawning not only a book, The Nature of Human Nature, but also a popular web series, “Wild Sex,” all about the evolution of sexual behavior. In her funny and […]
June 2013 was a shocking month for Dan Pallotta, in a good way. “I thought I was living in an alternate universe or something,” he says. “It was like hell freezing over.” Two things happened in June that Pallotta never expected to see. First, this gay father of triplets saw the United States Supreme Court […]
TED2014 begins in five short days, and we have added even more new speakers to look forward to. Below, a bit about each one: Cellist and beatboxer Kevin Olusola from Pentatonix (swoon!) will open Session 1: The Next Chapter. And as a bonus in Session 1, we’ll be honoring TED’s co-founder, Richard Saul Wurman. In […]
By Clayton Cameron As a 5-year-old kid, I barely knew what the word rhythm meant. At least no one told me what banging on inanimate objects and creating my own little beats might be called. It was like rhythm chose me and I really had no say in the matter. My favorite elementary school pastime was tabletop […]
With just one week left to go until TED2014, our speakers are putting the final touches on their talks. But that’s hardly all they’ve been up to. This week, check out which speaker has a bold prediction about artificial intelligence, which one put out a call for a more creative condom design, which one wrote […]
TED2014 will bring together more than 70 speakers with fresh thinking on topics as diverse as leadership, genetics and the magic of fireflies. But this is our 30th anniversary conference, and it’s also time to look back at some of the incredible ideas surfaced in the past. At TED2014, we will hold five All-Stars sessions that bring 50+ […]
Last week on TED.com, origami-folding techniques transformed a 50-cent piece of paper into a fully functioning microscope, human DNA came tumbling out of a vending machine, and we got a look at how an industry is growing to help governments conduct surveillance on citizens. These fascinating talks have something neat in common: The speakers are […]
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 […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkEX0eb2eBo&w=586&h=440] If you’ve ever seen grainy old sports footage—for example, a boxing match from the late 1800s, a Princeton/Yale game from 1903, or Babe Ruth’s famous home run from 1932—you probably noticed something: how different the game looks, compared to its modern counterpart. The equipment looks too clunky, the uniforms impossibly baggy. Even the bodies […]
[ted id=205] J.J. Abrams’ talk has perhaps the best title of all time: “The mystery box.” In it, the Star Trek director and Lost co-creator reveals how, years ago, he purchased a box at a magic shop that promised $50 of magic for $15. Only, he has never had the heart to open it because […]
[ted id=1942] When TED Fellow Gabriel Barcia-Colombo saw an extraction of strawberry DNA for the first time, he was smitten. “I’d never thought about DNA being a beautiful thing before I saw it in this form,” he says in today’s talk, given at the TED Fellows Retreat. Barcia-Colombo was inspired to join the public biotech […]
[ted id=189] Surgeon, author and speaker Sherwin Nuland died on March 3, 2014, at age 83. The author of a dozen books — including the award-winning How We Die, a clear-eyed look at life’s last chapter — Nuland came to TED in 2001 to tell a story he’d never told before. The world-renowned surgeon, clinical […]