By Becky Chung and Emily McManus The SF Jazz theater fills with the beeping and plinking sounds of a cellphone. Bora Yoon, a TED Fellow and experimental musician who weaves found sounds from old and new technologies, is on stage surrounded by her instruments: a golden flowered gramophone horn, a mixer, a computer and her […]
Here, your weekly recap of TED-related news: Science writer John Bohannon (watch his TED talk) runs the annual Dance Your Ph.D. contest. This year’s winners must be seen to be believed. In the video above: a dance that explains sperm cell competition in chickens. Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a brilliant, troubling cover story on the drowning […]
The world’s population is getting older. Across the globe, people are living longer thanks to improvements in healthcare, nutrition and technology. This population shift brings with it incredible possibilities, but also a new set of challenges. How do we care for our elderly? In today’s talk, Jared Diamond examines the vast differences in how societies […]
Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of TED-related news items in the ether. Here, some highlights: J. Craig Venter (watch his talks on creating “synthetic life” and sampling the ocean’s DNA) has come up with what The New York Times describes as “a biological fax machine.” Huh? In brief, Venter wants to detect life […]
Could unemployment be a factor that leads to terrorism? In today’s talk, peace strategist Mohamed Ali (not to be confused with the boxer) introduces us to the youth of Mogadishu, Somalia — 70 percent of whom are unable to find jobs. In this talk, Ali highlights just how appealing the messages of terrorist organizations and […]
Percussionist and composer Susie Ibarra is creating virtual sanctuaries for real cities. Working in collaboration with local artists, historians, architects, city planners and musicians, Ibarra and her partner Roberto Rodriguez — who together form Electric Kulintang — have created a musical pilgrimage that takes the public on a sound walk through 12 sites in Lower […]
“We already knew this.” “It’s necessary for the War on Terror.” “Other countries are doing it too.” “But I have nothing to hide.” These are the most common reasons people express for not feeling outrage over the revelations this year that the United States’ National Security Agency has been involved in widespread surveillance. In today’s […]
“In this place, you can connect to people that have been drawn apart for years by nationalists and the war. You can put them together in the same room and … people are talking about the greater good.” This quote was recorded at the first regional Open Translation Project workshop held in Novi Sad, Serbia, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Artist Sharmistha Ray has spent her life moving between India, the Middle East and the United States, discovering, layer by layer, her own sense of self, sexual identity and artistic vision in contrast or harmony with each new environment. Now, as her latest exhibition Reflections + Transformations is set to open at the Aicon Gallery in […]
Today’s talk isn’t so much a “talk” as a hilarious topsy-turvy performance by Hetain Patel that reflects on an identity forged as much from Spider-Man comics and Bruce Lee movies as by a father who emigrated from India to the United Kingdom in the 1960s. An excerpt from his latest stage work, Be Like Water, […]
By Nicola Twilley “In Lahore, you don’t get lost: you start off lost,” explains Khurram Siddiqi. “It’s a condition, not a situation.” Siddiqi, and his friends Asim Fayaz and Omer Sheikh, decided to collaborate on a proposal to install and maintain road signs in the city after it took several phone calls and half an hour for Fayaz to […]
Iwan Baan is not as interested in what architects build as he is in the beautiful ways that people appropriate the spaces once the planners are gone. In today’s talk, Baan — whose breathtaking image of lower Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy hangs on at least one of our walls — shows incredible images from communities thriving […]
This week, over at the TEDx blog, we got really into oceans and all the fascinating creatures that hang out there. (Especially sea turtles. We’re obsessed.) We explored how baby sea turtles survive the great wide world, how dolphins blow bubble rings for underwater play, and how divers feel swimming with some of the world’s […]
Ever bowled with a Muslim? Why not? Negin Farsad wants to know. The comedian and filmmaker’s new documentary The Muslims Are Coming! follows a group of Muslim-American comedians as they travel through Middle America setting up street actions — Hug a Muslim, Bowl with a Muslim, Ask a Muslim — skewering stereotypes and turning Islamophobia […]