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 […]Read more
Anyone in the room here today, at the glossy Times Center in Times Square, has been affected by the imagination and tenacity of Janette Sadik-Khan. It was her vision that created the much-loved pedestrian zones on Broadway and the cool new CitiBikes. In 2008, when Sadik-Khan took the job as New York’s traffic commissioner, she saw […]
Capitalism and charity. A seemingly paradoxical combination. But could running charities like businesses foster the innovation and problem-solving needed to address the most pressing issues of our time? In his talk at TED2013, The way we think about charity is dead wrong, Dan Pallotta argued that the way we think about charity is dead wrong. We […]
Oh, the places you’ll go with TEDx. This week, we’ve been exploring everything beyond the urban jungle. We followed an explorer to the dark caverns of underground caves, an astronaut to outer space, a time lapse photographer to fields and mountain ranges, and a group of TEDx’ers to the top of snowy Mount Everest. This […]
Over on TED Conversations, we’re exploring a question from George McCarthy of the Ford Foundation. He asks: “How can we build cities that are sustainable, inclusive and truly just?” He writes: The fact is more than half the world’s people now call cities home. All of the world’s population growth over the next four decades—some […]
TEDCity2.0 is a day-long TED event for urban innovators, organizers, stewards and builders–and it’s happening right now, with a hub event taking place at the Times Center in New York City, and 138 self-organized TEDx events also being held in 48 countries, including Vietnam, Malawi, Mexico and Egypt. Here’s what happened in the morning sessions: […]
The challenges we face in the 21st century are global in nature. Yet it often seems like we are woefully ill-equipped to address issues such as poverty, violence, security or public health with our large-scale political institutions. In this bold talk, Benjamin Barber suggests that we should transition away from nation states towards a system […]
David Lang wants to make investigating the mysteries of the ocean accessible to anyone curious and adventurous enough to dive deep. Here, the co-founder of OpenROV — a community of citizen ocean explorers and creators of low-cost underwater robots — recounts his blistering journey from office job to fledgling maker to inventor of a robot […]
By Courtney E. Martin and John Cary Curating the program for TEDCity2.0 — a one-day conference about the future of cities that takes place, gulp, today — was a true honor for us. The two of us come at cities from very different angles. John is trained as an architect, but has spent his career building the […]
In August, the first lab-grown beefburger was cooked and tasted in London. The verdict? “[It tasted] like an animal protein cake, said Josh Schonwald, author of The Taste of Tomorrow and one of the “lucky” few to taste the $330,000 morsel of petri dish meat. The future of slaughter-less meat is not far off. In fact, scientists project it […]
In the first of a series of city-related articles, we profile Robin Nagle, anthropologist-in-residence at the Department of Sanitation and long-time resident of New York City. She describes a life dedicated to, well, trash, and documents some of her favorite locations throughout the American city’s boroughs, captured in an accompanying photoessay by Ryan Lash. In […]
Robin Nagle has lived in New York City since 1982. As the anthropologist-in-residence at the Department of Sanitation in New York, she has more than a passing familiarity with some of the grimier parts of town. But she loves the city for more than just its garbage. In this beautiful photo essay, shot by Ryan […]
If you’re lucky enough to live without want, it’s a natural impulse to want to try and help others. But what’s the most effective way to give? This was the question philosopher Peter Singer asked in his 2013 TED Talk, given in Long Beach, California, and he shared some surprising thought experiments to help balance emotion […]