For Nobel Prize-winning biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, it all began with pond scum. She was curious about chromosomes, and specifically the caps at the ends of chromosomes, known as telomeres, and pond scum provided an ample supply for her research. Her curiosity sent her on a journey that shed light on one of humanity’s biggest, and oldest, […]
Robert Sapolsky is “your basic confused human when it comes to violence.” He’s for gun control but loves shooting people in laser tag. He doesn’t believe in the death penalty but has specific fantasies about how he would kill Hitler. He’s also a neuroscientist who studies stress and its effects in primates. So, naturally, he wanted […]
Polar ice doesn’t care who’s in the White House. It just melts. In the sixth session of TED2017, hosted by TED’s Head Curator Chris Anderson, we hear blunt talk on climate change — taking a 30,000-foot view from the clouds and examining some market-based solutions for cleaning the planet. Below, recaps of the talks from Session 6, in […]
The world is changing faster than ever, bringing with it brand-new problems, while our most persistent troubles — like poverty and health — haven’t gone anywhere. One thing has become abundantly clear: our machines aren’t going to save us; people are. How do we respond to problems new and old with humanity and dignity? In the […]
Glossophobia, or the fear of public speaking, is one of our best-known fears. Depending on who you ask or what study you consult, more people fear public speaking than death, snakes, heights and just about anything else. We’re very familiar with this fear at TED — and we have a not-so-hidden secret approach to overcoming […]
This morning, we kick off TED2017 in the new Community Theater with a program of fresh ideas, music and dance from the TED2017 Fellows and Senior Fellows. These Fellows are change-makers from many fields — design, tech, education, business, science and many more — offering a peek at the future us. Stanford Thompson opens the TED Fellows sessions, performing the Shaker […]
Timothy Snyder grew up in America, but as a historian of 20th-century Europe at Yale, he’s spent much of his adult life in, or thinking deeply about, Central and Eastern Europe. And what he sees there — especially in looking at the Europe of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s — is a pattern that may […]
Welcome the class of TED2017 Fellows! Representing 12 countries, one tribal nation and an incredible range of disciplines, this year’s Fellows are all leaders in their fields who constantly find new ways to collaborate and bring about positive change. Among those selected are an Ecuadorian neurobiologist working to uncover the neural circuits that connect the […]
From artists to scientists, mothers, mathematicians and business visionaries, people in every corner of the world are dreaming up solutions to our most pressing problems. Whether tackling war and peace or the principles of machine learning, ingenuity starts with one thing: a spark. And regardless of where the spark takes hold, inspiration demands action to […]
Just a few of the intriguing headlines involving members of the TED community this week: The cascading effect of small lies. Tali Sharot is the senior author on a paper published in Nature Neuroscience that sheds light on the possible slippery-slope effect of telling small, self-serving lies. Using an fMRI scanning device to monitor the […]
Bullies never win — not even in the comments section. TED’s community manager, Katie Pierce, shares these tips on how to react to a comment-thread bully.
In December 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 space mission captured a historic photo: “Earthrise,” an image of our home planet as seen from lunar orbit. Astronaut Jim Lovell was on that mission, and here’s what he said: “Everything that you’ve ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself … is all behind your thumb.” It […]
When it comes to equality across race, class and gender: “None of us has time to sleep — we need to be woke as hell,” says Mia Birdsong, host of Session 3 of TEDWomen 2016. In an emotional, pointed session, seven speakers and one performer explored the painful realities of the present and offered hopeful […]
If you head to Google.com today, you might notice something interesting underneath the search bar: an invitation to watch a series of animations called #WhoWeAre. A collaboration between StoryCorps and Upworthy, with support from Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation and Delta Airlines, #WhoWeAre is designed to encourage people across the United States to reach out to others who’ve […]
The TED community has been very busy over the past few weeks. Below, some newsy highlights. Wellesley has a new president. Dr. Paula Johnson, a longtime champion of women’s health and health policy, is Wellesley College’s 14th president. The celebrations surrounding her inauguration focused on the theme of Intersections; in her inauguration address, she reflected […]
Bodacious beats: Kenyan musician, producer and DJ, “Blinky Bill” Sellanga simultaneously brought the house down and the TED audience to their feet with a lively, genre-bending musical performance. “My, oh my,” he sings: “What a wonderful feeling.” Sexual assault, social media and justice. One night, walking home from London’s Tube, Ione Wells was followed home, grabbed from behind, […]