Carl Kasell of NPR hosts the show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me. And in the video above, he uses his classic radio voice to narrate LOLCats, reading lines like “I can has cheezburger?” and “I tried to hang up your laundry — that’s when I realized I didn’t have thumbs.” The audio in this video […]Read more
When you think of bacteria, the word ‘heroic’ hardly pops to mind. Bacteria don’t have the best reputation (case in point: the poop problem). But, we are reminded in today’s talk, from teen scientists Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao, that not all bacteria are our enemies. Wang and Yao found themselves faced with an immovable […]
In today’s talk, Pico Iyer looks at the complexity of the question, “Where do you come from?” If the question is code for, “Where are your family’s roots?” his answer is India — although he has never lived there. If the question means, “Where were you born?” his answer is England — though he left […]
As Edward Snowden is linked to one country after the next, the media has its eye fixed on where he will next request asylum. (Today, it’s Russia.) Meanwhile, back at US headquarters, as NSA officials speak in a House Judiciary Committee hearing, the agency is still doing what it’s doing. To get more information on exactly what […]
In today’s thought-provoking talk, author Pico Iyer looks at the complex nature of the simple question: “Where are you from?” Because while his family comes from India, he grew up in the United Kingdom. As soon as he left school, however, he moved to the United States — where he was required to carry a […]
The Cloud Appreciation Society may be the first official organization to celebrate the beauty of clouds, but these fluffy pillows in the sky have been a source of fascination since 3,000 B.C., when they were first discussed in the Upanishads. Aristotle poetically described cloud formation in his 350 B.C. work Meteorology as the process by […]
A “cloud on the horizon” means that something bad is about to happen. Meanwhile, someone with their “head in the clouds” is thoroughly out to lunch. As Gavin Pretor-Pinney points out in today’s talk, clouds get a bad rep when it comes to language. “But I think they’re beautiful, don’t you?” he says. “It’s just […]
The TED Android app has long let you watch more than 1,500 TED Talks, with subtitles in 102* languages. But with the launch of version 2.0 today, our award-winning app is now localized in 20 languages — from Spanish to Swedish, Chinese to Czech, Arabic to Korean. This means that fans in more than 100 […]
Like so many people in the United States, we were shocked by George Zimmerman’s acquittal this weekend in the shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin, above. And, like so many others, we can’t stop reading about it, to try to understand the complexities of this verdict — wrapped around issues of race, gender, gun ownership and […]
“Let us wage a glorious struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism. Let us pick up our books and our pens, and let us shield ourselves with unity and togetherness.” These were the words spoken by 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai, above, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012 for […]
There are thousands of faces in the skyscraper windows in this anime-inspired 3D music video. Each face is a webcam capture of a singer — 5,905 of them to be exact, from 101 countries across the globe. Their voices have been blended together into a virtual choir by composer Eric Whitacre for his latest composition, […]
The world of athletics is brutal. Athletes put themselves through grueling workout schedules and intense competitions, pushing their bodies and minds to the limit. But because part of being an athlete is constantly going up against (and sometimes with) faster, stronger and/or younger competitors, by far the hardest test any athlete faces is their internal […]
“Your lifestyle is the future of marketing,” Bob Lord told a group of young New Yorkers at the TED Annex (our new spillover office) on Tuesday night. About 80 interns and young professionals from local marketing firms came together to eat pizza and hear Lord’s advice on merging creativity and digital know-how, during a conversation […]