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 […]Read more
In today’s TED Talk, biologist Mohamed Hijri directs our attention to an incredible biotechnology — not one he invented, but one that’s been around for 450 million years. They are: mycorrhiza, microscopic mushrooms that grow in a symbiotic relationship with the roots of plants. These mushrooms are incredible at helping plants find phosphorous, an essential […]
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 […]
Should the government act like a venture capitalist? It might seem crazy to some, but in today’s eye-opening talk, economist Mariana Mazzucato shows why it might just work — and how it has, in fact, been working for decades. In this talk, Mazzucato flips the script on the image of a big government meddling in […]
Three years ago, Jennifer Brea, then a PhD student in political science, was struck down by what appeared to be a severe flu. It turned out to be the beginning of a long illness — including neurological dysfunction and extreme exhaustion — that she has yet to recover from. Discovering that the medical community did […]
If you look closely at the Lideta Mercato — a shopping mall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, designed by TED Fellow Xavier Vilalta — you will notice a unique pattern on its skin, inspired by the beautiful, bold patterns found on Ethiopian women’s dresses. But if you look closer, you will also notice something else: that […]
“When we feel jealous, we tell ourselves a story. We tell ourselves a story about other people’s lives,” says Parul Sehgal, an editor for The New York Times Book Review, in her TED Talk, a poetic meditation on an oft-resented emotion. “These stories make us feel terrible because they are designed to make us feel […]
In 2005, at the start of my first visit to Shanghai, the city clothed itself in a growling thunderstorm. When dusk fell and neon began to score the sky, the city was more Blade Runner-y than I thought a real place possible to be. I remember diving into a luxe spa for a post-train massage, […]
David Li has lived in Shanghai since 2003, when the Taiwan-born consultant and entrepreneur moved to the city to take advantage of a place in which he felt like “everything was possible.” A decade later, he’s still relishing all that the city has to offer, from vast cultural spaces to XinCheJian, the small community hackerspace he […]
Many of us in the TED office have been in Orange Is the New Black withdrawal. We inhaled the first two seasons of the Netflix series, and have been waiting ever since for the new season to come out. If, like us, the mere mention of the show sends Regina Spektor’s “You’ve Got Time” blasting through your head, […]
How do you pick the 10 thinkers in the world whose ideas are making the biggest ripples? It’s a task sort of akin to asking: which are the 10 most beautiful flowers in a meadow? Luckily, we don’t have to answer this intimidating question. Because CNN is all over it. Today, CNN Tech published “The […]
Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of TED-related news items in the ether. Here, some highlights: Chip Kidd (watch his TED Talk) has just released a new book: a how-to guide to graphic design for kids. Read The New York Times’ Q&A with him in which he says, “I was utterly floored [when […]
In today’s talk, economist Charles Robertson turns up the heat on an idea that’s been simmering for several years: that Africa is seeing rapid economic growth. Looking at statistics and at the precedents set by China and India, Robertson brings this idea to a full boil, saying that economists haven’t been nearly optimistic enough in […]